Freya & Us

The following day we left the others behind and went on an overnight trip to Tirana, Albania's capital city. The journey was a bit challenging after the integrated and efficient public transport systems of Spain and Italy, but it worked well. There's no bus station in Vlore and we could find no timetables or information on where the intercity buses stopped but we grabbed a taxi from outside the marina and asked him to take us to Vlore's bus stop. This was a line of some dilapidated and some new mini-buses on a back road in town, next to a tiny coffee shop.

We found a bus to Tirana, checked the price, 500 Leke each, about £4.00 for a journey of 150km. The taxi from the marina (15km) cost us €10. It wasn't leaving for 30 minutes so we went to the coffee shop for a drink and a snack. They didn't sell snacks, just coffee and Albanian expressos to boot. They spoke no English (or Greek) but we tried to ask for two expressos and water, i.e. Americanos. It took a while but finally we thought they got message until our coffees arrived. Expressos in bigger cups with bottled water to top them up!

Our bus was almost comfortable and the two and a half hour journey up the coast to Tirana via Durres soon passed. The Albanian countryside is beautiful and we drove past some salt lagoons and through some interesting villages on the way. There was an eclectic mix of traffic on the road, a lot of brand new, mostly black 4x4s, Range Rovers, Mercs and the like, battered old Mercedes saloons, looking as if they were into their second million miles and at the "lower" end donkey carts, or trikes pulled by converted rotavators or half a motor bike.

Tirana was an interesting place. It had a youthful cosmopolitan feel, much like most European capitols, the major difference was that it was very cheap. A few pounds for two coffees with a savoury crepe. Less than £10 for two pizzas and a bottle of wine in the trendiest areas. On the tourist trail we climbed up the clock tower for some views over the city, visited St. Paul's cathedral and walked around a cool park bordering a lake full of people chilling out.

Tirana was transformed by the communists after the second world war. It's full of austere buildings decorated with communist murals and other monuments. The buildings have since been painted in bright colours softening the harsh lines somewhat, but I imagine it's what Balamory would look like if it was designed by Enver Hoxha (Albania's communist dictator).

We also visited a communist era bunker built in the1980s. It was built to be the seat of government in case of a conventional or nuclear war. Its now a museum highlighting the role of the police since the Albanian's declared independence from the Ottamans in 1912. It was a very chilling place. The exhibits really bought home the oppression and fear of living in a totalitarian state, supported by a secret police force that used extreme torture and concentration camps to enforce their will. The description of how the police used informers really bought it home. Informers were either coerced or paid into working for the state. There were many thousands of them and often reported on their own family members. It was sobering to think that this society was so oppressed and existed less than 20 years ago in Western Europe's backyard. We are very lucky to have been born and live in the free west.

Just by the exit of the bunker is a small memorial park. It contains a piece of the Berlin Wall, some mine tunnel supports from a concentration camp and a small one man concrete bunker (pillbox). These bunkers are almost everywhere in the countryside and a testament to the paranoia of the former communist rulers.

We enjoyed Tirana, but like the rest of Albania it will be better when it's finished. Like Vlore, they are doing a lot of building work to pretty up much of the tourist sites and improve the infrastructure. We returned to the boat early evening the next day and the others had been very busy cooking. They had arranged a curry night and together with an American/Lithuanian couple we had a lovely meal and a few drinks on Sea Dreams which went on, for the hard core, well into the early hours. Sea Dreams left to head further north at 7:00 am the next morning, I don't think we would have managed it.

After our curry night, we had a day onboard, catching up with our chores and arranged for a hire car to take us and Miss Chips inland to Berati the next day. Berati is another World Heritage site and one the oldest cities in Albania. Because of its historic status, it wasn't "improved" by the communists and so retains a lot of its charm. We arrived in good time, had a coffee and walked around the beautiful old buildings along the river. We then headed back to the car to drive up the hill to the castle at the top. We never got there. The road was very steep, perhaps one-in-three, and paved in slippery cobbles. We got part way and the car lost traction. We were going backwards! I tried again but we decided that it was more important to keep the car and us in one piece rather than see yet another castle. We decided to head towards the birthplace of Ali Pasha, Tepelena 46 miles away.

We set off following the directions of our sat nav, which was taking us over the mountains on what was graded the equivalent of an "A" road. For those that have heard our story of travelling to Lara Bay in Cyprus you know what's coming. The tarmac road was fine for a while as it wound it self up the first mountain, but with only a few miles under our belts it turned into a gravel track. It was still well sign posted with sharp bend signs, mile posts and the like. We were also following a bus and some other cars so we thought all would be well and were looking forward to lunch in Tepelena in a hour or two at the most.

After some more miles we passed the bus as it stopped to pick up passengers in a small village and we carried on up the mountain. The track got worse but as we were now descending we pushed on, going progressively slower, but thinking the road would improve when we were back in the valley. But the road starting going up again, we were crossing another mountain!

We were now going so slowly we cheered every time we got out first gear. We should have turned around, but didn't. By the time we got to the third mountain we were getting worried. The track was now nothing but loose gravel, but still sign posted, and on the uphill sections we were sliding on the gravel. My training on the Land Rover 4x4 course and skid pan/cart track came in very handy. On a number of occasions my passengers got out and walked as we needed the extra ground clearance and needed to reccy the route across the bumps and potholes. How the car survived the knocks and bumps to its underside I don't know. (Mum/Silvana - we should've hired a Nissan Almera!)

After a few hours we were still just under 30 miles from Tepelena. Our objective now was to get off the mountains and find a tarmac road. A couple of hours later we finally found some tarmac and Robin who was walking at the time kissed the ground. It was a false dawn, we followed the tarmac over a very shaky looking timber bridge but a mile or two later and apparently a mile or two away from a main road it turned into an impassable track for our poor little Seat Ibiza. I did a 20 point turn to turn around and we retraced our steps back over the bridge.

We found a slightly better track and followed that past a series of large deserted and ruined buildings in the middle of nowhere. We suspect that these were the remains of communist era work camps. Eventually we found our way out coming out by the dual carriageway linking Tirana and Vlore. It was now 6:00 pm and lunch was very late. We had been in the mountains for nearly six hours and travelled perhaps 20 miles. Luckily there was a roadside restaurant by the side of the road. The food was expensive (for Albania) and mediocre at best, but we were grateful anyway. We got back to the boats around 9:00pm for a well deserved beer on Miss Chips.

Moral of this story, hire a 4x4 and take food, water, blankets, sat phone, backup team etc..... But I'm sure we won't.

As soon as we've recovered and the weather is right we will start heading South back to Greece to meet our visitors who are due in mid May.

The link to our map seems to be stopping people leaving comments on the blog, so I've removed it from these posts for now. I will be keeping it up to date so simply go to one of the special map only posts and click the link there to see it