Well, to our surprise we ended up staying in Albania for 4 days instead of 2! It was just too good to leave. During my time there I went for walk in stifling heat around old goat herders trails in the nearby mountains, which brought me to an isolated Ottoman arch bridge in a secluded little valley. An amazing find considering I had no idea where I was going and there was no-one else in sight for the entire duration of my exploration. The unexpected continued at the dinner table that night when Gary ordered veal brain soup as an entrée and frogs legs for the main course. The brain was absolutely revolting (even the big fella couldn’t finish it) however the frogs legs were a pleasant surprise tasting like a combination of grilled fish and chicken. That night we ran into a couple of old friends who we had met in Greece, who in turn introduced us to a few peace cor. volunteers who were working in Glirokaster in the tourism sector. They told us about their desire to set up a tubing initiative in the nearby river and asked if we would be interested in accompanying them down the river the next morning. Ummm…. Ok!
So the next morning at 9.30am we met the boys in a nearby café, picked up the tubes, hailed a taxi and drove 5 minutes down the road (with one of the blokes inflated fluoro banana chairs tied to the roof) to the head of the river where it leaves the local mountains. The river was fairly narrow, however it was fast flowing in places and although being seriously cold, the water was crystal clear and very inviting considering the sweltering Albanian heat. So after a mandatory pre-departure beer we were off, floating peacefully down the river, lined by weeping willows providing shade for numerous herds of goats, sheep and cows, as well as a group of sunbathing girls, who apparently were being watched closely by their boyfriends. We discovered this quickly, as Seth, one of the peace cor. volunteers, asked them in Albanian ‘do you like my boat’, which was apparently frowned upon by their ever-watching male counterparts. As soon as Seth had finished the question two blokes jumped out of the bushes who, yelling with rage, began to pelt stones at the five of us floating by. We were helpless and luckily managed to paddle out of their reach before anyone got hurt. Poor Gary didn’t even know what was going on before there were stones landing within centimetres of him. Funny in hindsight, but rather scary at the time! Further down the river we were again confronted by a group of locals, although this time they were only kids, however there were swarms of them. As soon as they saw these strangers floating down the river (this was the first time anyone had ever navigated this section of the river) they decided it best to all swim out and try to jump on the tubes at the same time. Now this may sound like a kind of nice thing to have happened, trust me, it wasn’t! They jumped all over us, one kid was on my head and would have probably drowned me if the river was any deeper. A group of kids made off with Gary’s tube and he was left to walk down the bank trying to convince them to give it back. Somehow he managed to reef it off them and we were off again. A kilometre or so downstream we encountered a number of rapids, which although leaving a couple of bruises on the backside, were exhilarating none the less. We passed under old suspension bridges, and beneath towering rocky mountains, which seemed to grow as we approached closer to the valley around every bend. By the end of the day, we had travelled almost 20km down the river in a period of over 5 hours. We were all wrecked! We spotted a nearby town, Tepelene, and walked up a nearby embankment and a further few kilometres or so towards a couple of pizzas and well deserved beers. To get back to Gjirokaster we hitched a ride with a local policeman who during the course of our 20 minute ride back broke inumerous road laws, seemingly accepted a bribe off a passing motorist, and almost ran over a group of school children, all while casually offering us some freshly picked figs stored in the drivers compartment. What a day!
The next morning we finally left Albania at 5.30 am (after being woken up by the mosque blaring an hour earlier), to embark on a journey that involved 3 busses, a ferry, and a taxi, to Olympia in Southern Greece. Here we have discovered ‘touro central’ where whistles blow all day as apparently ignorant foreigners blatantly climb all over roped-off ruins and appear somehow bemused as to the reason behind their constant attention from officials. Anyway the ruins themselves where thankfully worthwhile seeing and we are spending the rest of the day here relaxing after the hectic days of travel yesterday.
Cheers.
Matt.
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