The Balkans Are Calling
- jasey5
- Aug 4
- 6 min read
Hello from the other side of the Adriatic! I hopped a (very late) night ferry across the Adriatic from Bari, Italy to Durrës, Albania to meet one of my really close friends, Juliette. Many of you have probably seen her featured in my blog before as we met during my study abroad in Colombia. She’s from Canada and in the two and a half years since we met, we’ve cemented our friendship into one based on international travel, veggie food, and crazy outdoor adventures.
Our original plan was to spend some time in Tirana, the capital, but within 3 hrs of my arrival we were at a coffee shop changing all our plans to get to the mountains faster. No offense to Tirana (the history of the area is fascinating - it was under extremely strict communist rule until about 30 years ago and I wish we’d had time to explore), but we were both very ready to get hiking.
So, with half our reservations moved up a day, we checked out of the hostel we hadn’t stayed in, missed the last bus of the day by 10 minutes (thanks google maps) and headed for the Albanian Alps, otherwise known as the Accursed Mountains, via a modified route. After thoroughly enjoying our Italian scam pasta (see last post), we got up at the crack of dawn and took a series of transports including a beautiful ferry ride across Komani Lake, which I believe used to be a river that was dammed, creating a very long narrow lake through the mountains. Roads in this area are quite new so there is often only one route to get where you want to go and in our case it was a boat! Despite my never having heard of Albania as a tourist destination until planning this trip, we were far from the only ones headed to the remote area of Valbona with plans to hike what is probably the most famous hike in the country. We were joined by plenty of backpackers as well as families and folks coming from all over the world.
Arriving in Valbona, which is mostly a collection of recently built guest houses, we had to repeatedly pick our jaws up off the floor. Valbona sits in a valley between towering mountains that I kept describing as “in your face” because of how sharply they rose from green valley to craggy, dramatic peaks on either side of us. And we hadn’t even started hiking yet! While staying at a lovely little guest house, we indulged in wonderful meals including yummy soups, pickled green tomatoes, a local version of feta, homemade bread, insanely tasty raspberries and fried dough puffs with apple jam, just to name a few.
The famous hike I mentioned is about 10 miles and 3000 vertical feet over a beautiful mountain pass between Valbona and the mountain town of Theth and usually takes most of the day. Because life is no fun if you’re sane, Juliette and I decided to do an even harder hike the day before up a nearby mountain on the border between Albania and Montenegro, called Rosni Peak. We started early to beat the heat and made it to the top of the 8,280 foot peak in time for lunch and a half an hour nap on top of the world. I’m used to climbing Colorado 14ers where you really don’t want to hang out at the top because it’s cold and windy and rocky but when you start from 3,064 feet you get all the climb and it’s still nice on top! (Also we got a perfect day so that could have had something to do with
The view from the top deserves its own paragraph. The ‘having to pick our jaws up off the floor’ only intensified on this hike and I started to sound like a broken record, exclaiming about how insane the mountains were, even for a kid who grew up in the Rockies. With all due respect to the Rockies, the 360 view from the top of Rosni could rival a CO 14er any day. While equally impressive, the Albanian Alps definitely had a different feel to them than my home mountains and probably one of their most jaw dropping features is the color of the streams running through them. We stopped for a very cold swim in the river that runs through Valbona and the only way to describe it was like someone had melted the sky. The rock in the area is very light colored and between that, what I assume is a unique mineral content, and the total lack of sediment in the water, this creek was bright, light blue and straight out of a child’s drawing.
Trekking from Valbona to Theth was also beautiful and much more popular. Our trip included meeting some lovely travelers from Spain, lunch with another crazy view and a watermelon snack break at a small cafe on the hike down. We spent our final day in the small mountain town of Theth hiking to a beautiful waterfall and swimming hole called the Blue Eye. The water was very chilly, but super refreshing and blue as can be. After hiking for three days in a row, we pulled a 20 somethings trick and passed out for a nap on a rocky beach near the river. Who knew a rock mattress could be so comfy (well, at least when you’re exhausted :)
As our Albania days came to a close, we had planned to take a night bus to Croatia, but as the night bus approached we both started dreading it and instead changed our plans once again, this time to add a new country to our itinerary. We made a quick stop in Budva, Montenegro, which is a beautiful small city on the coast. Then we hopped the most ‘extra fees’ bus I’ve ever taken - they charged us a service fee to buy the tickets, an entrance fee to the bus station and a fee to put our bags on the bus - however aside from their “highway robbery” of unexpected random fees, it might have been the prettiest bus ride I’ve ever taken. The route wound its way along the Adriatic coast through Montenegro and southern Croatia featuring beautiful small towns and the bay of Kotor, which is stunning with its red roofs, crazy amounts of flowers and, once again, startlingly blue water.
Our destination of Dubrovnik, Croatia was high on our list because of its incredible old town. The city was a powerful trading city-state for centuries and it’s insanely well-fortified and well-preserved. The narrow stone streets and bustling restaurant scene did not disappoint but what we weren’t expecting was how magical the city was at night. There is very little to remind you of modern technology as you step through the massive stone man-catcher entryway room (trust me you didn’t want to try to attack medieval Dubrovnik) into a city full of soft yellow light, no neon signs, no billboards, no cars, plenty of live music, limestone streets polished to a shine by millions of feet and restaurants spilling on the streets everywhere.
Before arriving in Dubrovnik, we were warned by many people that it was super, super busy and touristy. They were correct, but it was one of the few places where being full of tourists actually added to the feeling of liveliness. That being said, Croatia has become incredibly dependent on tourism with 20% of its GDP coming directly from tourism and a huge number of Croatians working in the tourist industry. As our walking guides explained the situation, tourism in Croatia is a double-edged sword. It provides much of their income but they have also become one of the most touristy countries in the world when you compare the number of tourists to citizens and tourism is an incredibly fickle thing to base a country’s income on.
Because we were visiting in peak travel season, we decided to get as far off the beaten track as possible for our final stop. We bussed to Split, then took a ferry to the furthest out island of Vis, and then took a bus across the island to a small beach town called Komiza. Somehow, having a beach with only a few people around wasn’t secluded enough for us, so on both of the two days we had on the island, we rented a kayak and kayaked to beaches only accessible by boat. Normally, there probably would have been other boats at these beaches but the waves were on the rough side so we were the only ones brave enough (stupid enough?) to get to them. Given we made it back from 14 miles of paddling in one piece and got our own private Croatian beaches out of the deal, I’d say it was very worth it.
So with stunning hiking, insane kayaking, quite a bit of amazing gelato, local wine and many, many hours of conversation added to our shared travel history, we said our goodbyes. Juliette flew home and I headed to rural Slovenia for several days of doing next to nothing to recover from an absolutely amazing trip.
