For any of you that follow this blog, you must know that Holly and I do not usually travel with large groups. Rarely have either of us ever signed up for a group tour of any kind. So when our Italian friends, Paola and Maurizio (not to be confused with our friends Paola and Gianfranco, or Roberta and Maurizio – yeah – we get confused sometimes too) asked if we wanted to accompany them on a tour they were taking to Albania, we had to think about it (at least for a few minutes). But in the end we figured what could go wrong traveling with a group of Italians to a country where they would speak little Italian or English and has a reputation of being a little bit on the shady side of life. It was the right decision and we had a great time.
What is any adventure without a little, well, adventure. After asking several times exactly where we needed to meet up for the ferry we were taking from Bari to Durrës, we were just told, “the check-in desk for the ferry company”. The port is a big place and Google maps took us to the place where the ships actually dock and depart from. Well, that is not where you need to check-in. That place is 3 km away and we need to be there soon. We got that figured out, got our boarding passes with the rest of our group, and returned to the place of embarkation only to find relative chaos in the boarding area. We waited well over an hour and a half to finally get on board and into our room well after the scheduled departure time of 10 pm. Finally, the ferry departed after 1 am and we spent a rather miserable night, arriving in Albania nearly 2 hours late. At that point, I was very grateful that everything had been arranged ahead of time and there was nice bus waiting to take us where we were going.
Albania is not part of the Euro Zone and their currency is the lek. We were told that the Euro was widely accepted but I always think that is not the best way to deal with exchange rates as you are at the mercy of whatever exchange rate the vendor you are dealing with thinks appropriate. So I only took a few Euros and expected that we could extract money from cash machines on arrival. As you have probably already guessed, it wasn’t that easy. Our cards would not work. I won’t go into the details, but after a loan from one of the other tour members (Antonio in the waterfall picture later in the post) and several calls to our credit union (with the time difference, we had to wait for 6 hours to do that) we were able to get the money we needed to pay back the loan and have what we needed for the rest of the trip.
The people who arranged our trip are experts on Albania and on our trip from Durrës to Shkudër they had arranged a stop for lunch at a place that we would never have found. It bills itself as the only slow food place in Albania. After several wonderful courses of food, wine and several desserts, the bill came – 11 Euros each. There was something to be said about this whole arrangement.
Just as we were about to arrive in Shkudër, the bus pulled over so we could climb up to the old castle that guarded the whole area and its tremendous views of the surrounding valley. We then spent the night in the city and some time touring and having several great meals.
The vegetable vendors there were plentiful and had great looking produce. They ranged from rather sophisticated markets to little old ladies, that I am sure had grown everything they were selling, just sitting on the sidewalk with their wares spread out before them.
We then separated into two smaller buses that were ready for the rough road we had ahead. It was not a long distance we had to travel to where we were staying in the Albanian Alps, but the last 10 or 12 miles took several hours. It was amazing country (for those of you who have spent time in the North Cascades the place looks familiar) and where we ended up was worth all of the rather bouncy ride.
The next day it was time to do some trekking. There was short hike (2 miles?) to the Blue Eye, a gorgeous little pond seemingly in the middle of nowhere. However, it had a small platform in the middle of the stream where you could order food and/or a cold beer. We opted for the beer. My Facebook friends have already seen some of this, but for the rest of you, there is a story here.
I was siting beside the Blue Eye when I looked over and saw a snake coming out of the grass no more that 6 feet from me. Not knowing what it was, I was duly cautious and we called over some others to see if they could identify it. “Oh, yes”, they said, “That is a European Viper.” “Is it dangerous?”, we asked. “Oh yes, it is deadly.” they said. Good to know. We kept our distance, but I did manage to snap off one good picture.
We took another hike to a waterfall that was about the same distance, but much steeper, on our way passing over a footbridge across a very narrow, steep gorge. I am not sure the pictures do it justice.
One of the fun things of the trip was that there were several very nice children on the trip whose English was quite good and they had fun practicing with us. I don’t think some of them had ever seen a mountain or a waterfall before. This place was magic for them.
On our way back to Durrës to catch our ferry home, we stopped for some lunch and shopping in Krujë. It is not far from the Albanian capital of Tirana (you could see the city in the distance. It was also on the strongholds of one the Albanian national heroes, a man known as Skanderbeg. I won’t get into too much of the history of this rather incredible figure, but just enough to say that, if the Albanians are to be believed, he kept the mighty Ottoman Empire (he served them as a young man) out of Europe for many years, defeating them at nearly every turn. Although Albania did eventually fall to the Ottomans (after Skanderbeg died of malaria) and was ruled by them for nearly 500 years, many credit him with delaying their advance long enough for Europe to finally get their act together so they could finally halt the Ottoman advance just outside of Vienna. We had lunch at a restaurant with a view of his ruined castle in Krujë.
I am not sure how many group tours we have in us, but this one was quite wonderful, great food, great prices, great scenery and most of all, great people.
