Accursed Mountains!

When I first started considering a visit to Albania five or six years previously, I'd envisioned it to be the last untouristed spot in Europe.  The Balkan Tajikistan, or something similar at least. While that may have been (in fact probably was) the case in 2013, things have changed in the intervening years.  The popularity of southern Albania's beautiful beaches has exploded and tourism has come to the rest of the country as well.

So it was that we showed up in Shkoder, the country's fourth largest city, just across the border from Montenegro, with a reservation for a hostel that would have stacked up with NZ's best.  Except for the fact that beds cost €6 per night. We set about trying to plan a circuit through Albania's northeastern mountains, which has historically required a bit of logistical work, as it involves three different minibuses, a 3 hour lake ferry, a 23km walk and spending nights in small mountain villages.

But this journey is now firmly on the tourist trail, so the woman at reception made a few phone calls and produced integrated tickets which set us up for the first three legs of the journey to the town of Valbona.  "The bus will pick you up around 06:30 at our other building around the corner. You can have breakfast there first".

Lake Komen is an artificial lake, the result of a hydroelectric dam, but its construction created another convenient navigation route through the rugged mountains of northeastern Albania.  We were amongst the last to board, but this just meant that we were amongst the first to plop ourselves down at the bow of the boat as soon as it left the dock. The weather was actually sort of mediocre for our trip, mostly cloudy (though at least it was high cloud).  Nonetheless, it was a really lovely trip. So much so that we even considered making the trip again in reverse on our way back.

Indeed, our plans changed a number of times while on this trip.  Insofar as we actually had plans. Valbona isn't so much a town as a long stretch of farmhouses along the floor of a valley (which, I am going to here and now christen a Valllage).   When we arrived in Valbona we really had no idea what we'd be doing or where we'd be staying. So we just stayed on the minibus most of the way up the valley and hopped off at a place where we saw one guesthouse and where the map showed a few others in the near proximity.

Valbona and its surrounding mountains are one of the best hiking destinations I've ever been to.  The mountains are big, rugged and in early June, still snowcapped. So rugged, in fact, that the most obvious comparison that popped into my mind was to the famous Torres del Paine in southern Chile.

The major peaks of the Accursed mountains are all around 2500m in elevation.  On our second day Sarah and I climbed up to one of several passes that separate Albania from Montenegro.  Sarah sat and waited for me there while I climbed up to the 2525m summit of Maja e Rosit.

As I climbed clouds started to swirl around the peaks but this did almost nothing to blunt the awesomeness of the scenery.  As I got higher,. more and more spectacular peaks and verdant valleys came into view, culminating with a breathtaking look over a cliffside into the adjacent hanging valley, almost 1000m below.

I'm pretty sure I was the only one to reach the summit that day, as I didn't see another soul until I was on my somewhat steep, slightly slippery way back down and met a Swedish couple and their guide who had just turned back.  When we reached the pass again and the trail levelled out a bit I ran back down to meet Sarah and we had a lovely wee picnic in a beflowered alpine meadow, followed by dessert of wild strawberries plucked from the trailside on our walk home.  (Wild strawberries are an amazing experience… They're tiny, five or ten to make an average sized one that you buy in a plastic punnet at the supermarket, but each one of those is so dense in flavour that it probably has as much strawberryness to it as its much larger, blander cultivated cousins).

Back down at our guesthouse we had simple but yummy Albanian meals, which included oven baked cheese (rather like an Edam) and a mystery mountain vegetable (might have been nettle?) byrek.  Byrek is a baked pie made with filo pastry and is pretty much the national dish of every country in the southern Balkans. We had a few beers as well, though I'm sad to report that Albanian macro lager is not up to much.  Of the two big national brands, both were a bit too sweet, one had a healthy dose of DMS and one had light, but clearly noticeable diacetyl.  

Tourism is clearly a big and growing part of the local economy.  As we walked along the main road through the valley the next generation of guesthouse owners (quite cute and with surprisingly good English skills to a one) would invite us back to their parents place.  And each afternoon following our walks, we'd sit and enjoy (or not) the aforementioned beers or coffees and counting the dozens (small single digit numbers of dozens, but multiple dozens still) of other tourists passing by.  Valbona in 2019 seems to be at a sweet spot in its development where it's easy to visit, but still a looooong way from overcrowded with visitors. And while tourism is a big part of the economy, so too is agriculture still. In addition to the tourists and local kids walking up the road, every day at 17:00 or so a parade of cows would stroll by, entirely unattended but also entirely certain about where they were headed home to (if occasionally distracted by nice grass to munch on at neighbours' places along the way).  Sarah was a particularly big fan of group of three that we saw each day who always walked in order from biggest and shortest-haired in the front to smallest and floofiest in the rear.

On our second day I heaved myself up the very steep (but still very well marked) trail into the hanging valley I'd looked down on from Mara e Rosit.  This trail was proper New Zealand steep, climbing perhaps 600m in less than 3km. The end of the valley felt fabulously wild and remote. Except for the irritating dumbass who had camped right up at the top of the pass and who was flying a drone around, seemingly (to my engrumpened mind) with actual intent to spoil the sense of solitude and wonder of the place.  I usually like talking to other trampers out in the wild, but I pointedly avoided getting anywhere near this guy. Grrr.

I could have spent several more days like this in Valbona, but both available cash and available time in Albania were starting to run short.  Fortunately, our final day in the Accursed Mountains was one more gorgeous hike. We set out eaaaaarly, out the door at 05:15 in an effort to get our 900m of climbing done before the day got hot, and to try and catch the noon minibus back to Shkoder from the valllage of Thethi, 23km away.  Part one was easily accomplished, despite wandering up a pathway towards someone's stables around 07:30 and stopping to take lots and lots of photos.  

I'd thought that Thethi and it's valley couldn't possibly be prettier or more spectacular than Valbona, but it certainly gave it the old college try.  

The route down from the top of the pass had glorious views, but was steep in places and as the hours ticked by, I (very unfairly) started to get grumpy with Sarah's slow, careful pace and the prospect of missing the bus.  While it's true that Thethi is a relatively expensive place to stay (by Albainian standards) as all the guesthouse owners have settled on a fixed rate of 25€ per person per night for room and board, I realize that I was being very silly, as the absolute worst case scenario there was that we'd have to spend a night in another gorgeous mountain village.

As it turned out "noon departure" is meant pretty casually and Sarah and I snagged the last two seats on the minibus heading to Shkoder.

The road to Valbona had been pretty decent.  Not so the road out of Thethi. The first 20km bumped and wound and climbed its way up, up, up out of the valley.  When we reached the top after forty five minutes the view was stupendous, with Thethi clearly visible down at the bottom.  I checked the GPS on my phone and discovered that, as the crow flew, we'd covered a mere 2.5km in three quarters of an hour.

If you're ever in the region and are considering driving out to Thethi, I'd advise you to think again.  Even after we'd reached the top of valley there were still a further 10km or so of very bumpy, narrow, rocky road with 1000m drops and no guardrails.  Over this we passed a few tourists in regular (non 4WD) cars who looked decidedly out of place and uncomfortable.

Back in Shkoder we might well have had time to continue our travels further south, at least as far as Albania's capital, Tirana, but so pleasant was the Our Way hostel/guesthouse that we decided to spend one more well deserved rest afternoon there, making it a nice breakpoint in our travels and my writing.