When the alarm clock rings at 5.30 am you feel like leaving the trip for the next day , but being lazy can´t exist when travelling, the best thing is not to think, stand up and get ready to leave.

After the two hour bus ride I arrived at the ferry. A ferry not for tourists but for the locals to move around. Everybody seemed to try to get in and out at the same time while the rain, that had not stopped all morning, was making them wet. I jump onto the ferry and while avoiding sacks, bags and kids I find my window with views.  I didn´t ask for the seventh time what time was the ferry returning.

When I paid the guy that seemed to control all is when he informed that I was sleeping in Fireza that night, he took it for granted as when giving the multiplying board results. I asked and it was confirmed, there was no ferry back.

I had money to eat and sleep so it was not that bad staying, the only thing is that I had no idea how Fireza was, my immediate future was uncertain.

The boss invited me to go to the upper compartment where he was giving orders to the captain and chatting with his friends while having a feast eating raw sausages and Jonnie Walker, they offered me both things and for not rejecting their hospitability I had some Jonnie Walker from the bottle, but at 10am It doesn’t go down very well. In Albania people drink home made raki, the local alcohol so the whisky is quite extraordinary, these were the wealthy people of the village. Two women were talking non stop in a corner, Albanians talk a lot.

I don’t know how many people grabbed my cheeks to say hello on the way, I was just trying to simile while my face was being moved with hospitality.

In the 66km the boat was making a few stops in places where you couldn´t see anything, just a man with a donkey waiting for family and goods.

When it stopped raining I went for a walk. A man called me from a bar to invite me for some coffee and raki with his friends, they didn’t talk any English or Italian, nor me any Albanian but we were communicating with a mix of words, some made up. They didn’t wanted to let me go, we talked about our work, the raki, Albania, Spain… and many other things. The most talkative one(in the picture his friend), was Muslim , the other ones to make the easy joke were saying “Bin Laden”, he was saying that Albanian Muslims are not like that. I think they also introduced me to the mayor.

The valley school, one of the very few good Enver Hoxam legacies, 98% of the people are schooled.

“Hello, how are you?” They love coming up to you to see if you reply back.

I haven’t see any foreigner in a few days, in Fireza I’m the only foreigner.

Next day in the port, waiting for the ferry a man came to me, he was the owner of the port and had a great english so we talked for a while until the ferry departed 30 minutes late.

On the way back I got straight into the VIP area with the captain and his friends, there was the Jonnie Walker left over, not too much, they offered me some but at 7 a.m… I don´t feel like it even if I´ve been partying all night.

Leaving the gorge.

Very little rain today.

They come  to say hello and with some conversation if language permits.

I came back to Shkodra with the feeling of having been much further than what the map said and wanting more so I went to Theth, the most remote valley in Albania. The video is nearly ready and I hope to have it for tomorrow.

See you soon.
Fernando

“It’s the poorest country in Europe”, “Be careful”, “don’t stay too long in the same place or they’ll arrange to mug you”, “It’s a Muslim country, you may not even be able to have a beer”, “It’s very rural, there’s nothing”, “It is like Spain 60 or 70 years ago”, “To Albania?”, “In Albania there were tourists who were mugged and left in their underwear, I’ve read about it”.

This is how you get into the country handing your passport to the policeman not being very clear if you want him to stamp it with all those impressions in your head.

In the bus the music has a clear Turkish influence not loosing the sound of the rest of the Balkan countries, it has rhythm that get’s stuck in your head, it’s impossible to read, the road is full of bumps, suicidal overtaking and turns, moreover the driver saves a second in each turn to reach his destination more quickly. The spring has arrived, million of flowers decorate the fields. I’m happy, Albania is a place I’ve wanted to visit for a long time.

The first thing I usually do when I arrive in a place is having a seat in a bar or restaurant and ask for a local beer, usually saying “local birra” works. From the names they say I pick the one that sounds better, in this case I got the best first time round. Tirana is the one I’ve liked the most. When travelling for a long time it is difficult to remember each story, list of places to see and each itinerary so I have a seat, review my notes, re-read the books and make a plan that will change every two hours until I complete a version of it.

My Albanian trip starts in Shkoder, a great place to base a visit in the north. I expected a crappy village and I found a proper city; 80.000 people, thousands of terraces, secondhand mercedes, restaurants with good food and… people that I didn’t know how they would react to me. Still repeating in my head “’they mug you and leave you in underwear”, and I thought, if I have Calvin Klein, maybe they will even rob them.

On top of the five star Europe Grand hotel having a great view of the city with a mosque and a church in the background.

Even better in the sunset with a mosque and Skadar lake in the background, what you see on the right is Montenegro where we met the orthodox nun a few weeks earlier with Silvia and Aitor. There are two videos in which she appears this one and this other one.

I expected a village, where finding internet wouldn’t be that easy but I found this real city even with high speed internet(for the geeks, I uploaded a video from an internet café at 3.6mb per second)

In the bus to Albania I meet a Canadian that had crossed from Europe to Asia in  76 with the first Lonely Planet, with no problems of borders in Iran, Afghanistan or Pakistan. Isn’t it great now that we have the electronic passport to get everywhere?

Even though I didn’t find such an under developed country as is said but it’s true that it is less advanced, more comparing it with a  country of western Europe that usually is between the most developed in the world.

Spring is coming strongly, and as I’m all day outside i can see it day by day.

Part of it may be the lack of knowing that they are just nice people, just stick your head into the reception of this Francikan monastery and a new monk shows us(Amy, an American friend I met in Montenegro came with me) around in great detail.

A local speciality, aubergines filled with cheese cooked in the oven. I have to get better getting this kind of pictures to make them look as good as they are.

I have soon began to feel good here, maybe it was a trick to rob me later, hahaha, no, it wasen´t that much, but I had the feeling of needing to be alert but I really couldn´t find a reason why.

During the next posts I’ll tell you what I’m learning about Albania, a country with a curious recent history, well, more squalid and Isolated from the outside with a dictatorial communist regime that was aligned to, of course Yugoslavia, but also Russia and China. After opening up it has become a lovely country lacking in tourists and looking forward to know it.

We asked Samel about a bus in his travel agency, he invited us for coffee and told us a lot of stories about his family, the city and the Albanian culture. I had already seen the churches and mosques and had read about the peaceful coexistence but it’s always interesting to hear it from a local, as an example his Christians friends invite him(Muslim) to celebrate Christmas in their houses, and he goes.

Shkoder has been a good starting point but I wanted to see some countryside, so my first visit was Koman lake. Adam that creates an artificial lake that snakes for 66km through a rocky gorge in which a ferry takes you along quietly while enjoying the landscape.

I informed myself very well, my technique of crosschecking the information usually works. The four trustable information sources were saying that I could get a bus to the beginning of the lake, get the ferry one way, come back and get a bus back to sleep in Shkoder. The only thing they didn’t agree on is that if the first bus was at 6 or 7 am so my alarm clock sounded at 5.30.

The writing and pictures of Koman lake are nearly ready.
See you soon.
Fernando

A little selection of pictures that are not shown in the video.

Endemic flowers of the country.

Maybe they could be anywhere but I liked them.

Kotor fortress, you can climb up the 1200 steps to the top.

Kotor bay view.

Our lamb slow cooked in milk.

Maybe the most beautiful canyon in the country.

Amazing this waterfall, coming from the wall.

Tara river once more.

Durmitor National Park, one of the highlights of the trip.

Amazing what some chocolate and the deformation of the wide angle lense can do.

Tara color. With trout like the ones I used to eat when I was a child that my dad caught on Sundays.

A bit macabre, but this is the way they publish death notices.

Going up to the Ostrog monastery.

Ostrog monastery.

Fog in the Piva canyon. It had the kind of road that my Mum loved,  tons of curves and tunnels excavated in the rock.

Grey sand from the Ulcinj beach, the color I like on beaches. 14 kilometers just for me.

Chinesse fishing nets like the ones you can see in Kerala in south India.

The last two pictures are from Ulcinj, the place that gave the name to Dulcinea(a character from the book “El quijote”), if you read the “j” as “i” it looks more similar. Cervantes was in a jail here for three years before writting the book.

Another bus and to Albania.

Fernando

When you get into Montenegro you soon realize why here the deepest canyon in Europe can be found, huge mountains surround you just after crossing the border. As a kayaker going through Montenegro and not going down the Tara river made no sense.

The video is in memory of David, who lost his life paddling two months ago in the Vez river. I know he’d enjoyed the descent and that he’d laugh at the video so here it is.

If the video downloads slow click over HD to deactivate high definition video.

Fortunately the Tara is protected by Durmitor National Park. Apart from the river you can find a beautiful steep, forest where you feel like getting lost and brutal mountains where you can even go skiing…

Saying that the Tara is the deepest canyon in Europe may not mean much to many people so here are some numbers to give you an idea.
The canyon is 1300m deep, the bridge from where I recorded is 150m high.
Probably the best canyon to compare in depth is the Colorado. The Colorado is 1300m deep on the south shore and 1600m on the north shore, the difference is that the Colorado canyon is much longer 375km in the park and the Tara is 60km.
Even though they are not the deepest canyons in the world, the deepest is in Colca in Peru which is 4160m deep.

We left the Tara and went to eat the country’s specialty, lamb cooked slowly in milk, even that it sounds good it doesn’t look or taste that good.

Despite the fact that I said I’d only post a video from Montenegro I’m going to post some pictures before telling you how things are going in Albania. There are things and I haven’t captured on Video properly as I´m not very experienced with it, but I’m learning a lot, for example I’ve learned that if Aitor is having fun driving you can’t try to record steady from the car.

See you soon
Fernando

Moraça is more than a river for Montenegrins, here there was a great battle against the Ottoman empire where Montenegro became famous for having brave people while defeating the Turks. Also nationalism and independent identity grew in the region making it become an independent country with just 600.000 people. Me as a kayaker enjoyed what Moraça means today and I’ve  produced a video for you to see it.

No to the Moraca Dam!
This place is so pretty and it may be destroyed by several dams to produce electricity. Not being an expert I don’t understand the need too well, in Montenegro an aluminium process plant exists consuming 40% of the electricity. This plant is closing in 4 years and the first dam is supposed to be completed in 7.

The soundtrack is totally local. The first song. similar to the previous video, I don’t know who its from. When we stopped to look at the river Aitor found the CD on the side of the road, somebody has probably thrown it away, it said “MIX”, we tried to play it and it worked so it’s been the soundtrack of our trip.

The second song is from Bozidar Djukic, the song tells the true story of Montenegro 30 years ago when two men killed a little girl. The day the judge found the two men guilty the father took a gun from his jacket and killed them in court. Vladam gave me the song, the barman from a bar who I became friendly with and apart from swapping some Montenegrin and Spanish music he listed out all the tennis and football players from around the world.

See you in the next video in Durmitor national park.

Fernando

Here is the first Montenegro video, yes, the first one as I have decided to only post videos of this country. It´s a general video of the places I´ve liked the most. As I don´t have comments for all the places, here is the list of what´s in the video in the order it appears.

• Podgorica, the capital that does not really have things to see and I´ve ended up showing the Pink Panter.
• The Skadar lake.
• An Ortodox church, with no benches as they attend mass standing up.
• Sveti Stefa, the little village by the sea.
• Kotor city its fortress and its bay.
• Snow covered Lovcen mountain,  I´ve spelt it incorrectly in the video but don´t tell anybody.
• Moracha and Tara canyons, they really deserve more so I´ve done a specific video for them.
• Durmitor National Park with its mountains and farmers.
• Ostrog monastery carved in the rock similar to Predjama castle in Slovenia.
• And finally  Piva canyon with its tunnels recorded from the car.

As I have had friends visiting I´ve been able to do some kayaking including the Tara canyon, the deepest in Europe, looking forward to seeing it.

See you in the next video.

Fernando