Albania - heading south

Leaving Fushe Stude on a grey and rainy day we headed towards Lake Ohrid, on the Macedonian border. A long road with no passing lanes wound up a looooong hill with slow international trucks crawling along holding everyone up. At one stage we passed a whole town that seemed to be a car- and truck-wash town! They advertised by pointing hoses upwards so they shot water into the air. So weird!

We skirted along Lake Ohrid and marvelled at the fact that we were there on the Macedonian side of this lake last year and had stood at the border wondering what it would be like to go to Albania!

Sadly, in the period of half an hour we saw five accidents! We have no idea why there were so many there. Maybe people became impatient with all the slow trucks and tried to pass where they shouldn't.

We arrived at our destination of Korce and found our lovely little apartment on a cobblestoned street. Google maps had no clue which roads were one-way though and we found ourselves having to constantly change which roads to go up! We found a great Italian restaurant and ate there both nights that we were there. Albanian food is wonderful but it was good to have a change. John had his hair cut by a really lovely barber who threw in a taste of his home-made yoghourt for good measure. A good haircut, beard trim and yoghourt, all for about $5! 

Weirdly, there were bags of rubbish hanging on the walls along the streets. We realised this must be the way they put out rubbish for collection!

The next day we did a hike. We started by climbing up heaps of steps to a monument commemorating soldiers who lost their lives for their country - at least we think that's what it was. The huge statue stood looking over the town. It would have been grand in its day but now everything was run down - the steps were broken and weeds grew everywhere.

He looked just as impressive from behind with the city in front of him.

Sadly, there were hundreds of graves, or maybe simply memorials, of people who had died during World War 2. About 90% of the names I looked at had died aged in their early 20's. A few were only 18 or 19. Such a waste of young lives.

We hiked up to a huge cross on a hill above the town.

View from the top.

Powerline repairs, Albanian style!

Leaving Korce we stopped to see the Tumulus of Kamenica. This ancient burial ground dates from the 11th or 12th Century BC! It's an ancient "barrow" where bodies are buried under mounds of dirt. It was added to over many centuries and over 400 bodies have been found in the main section so far. We thought it was hilarious that as soon as we pulled up outside the complex, we saw a man wheeling a barrow! John declared that we had already seen the barrow and there was no need to go in! Of course, we did go in. It was interesting but the main burial site had been excavated and there wasn't a lot to see. A small museum held pottery and jewellery that had been found there though. There was also the skeleton of a woman who was found with an 8-month old foetus still inside her.

We often passed horse-drawn vehicles on the roads.

Still within cooee of the Macedonian border we made our way south to a tiny village called Rehove. Our guide book recommended this village as being a great base for hiking and I had found an amazing little guest house on booking.com. Well, the best laid plans sometimes go astray! It turned out that the owners of the guest house were away and the lady across the road, who spoke no English, was in charge. We arrived to find that nobody else was staying there, we had been given the smallest room and all the bedding on our bed was very damp. The single bed-sized doona cover had a folded up queen-sized doona inside and a single bed sheet sat on the bottom of the double bed. The pièce de résistance was the electric blanket that was laid on top of the damp bottom sheet! We got it all sorted eventually.

It was around here that we first started seeing horses, mules and donkeys tethered in paddocks with their pack saddles on. We have no idea if they were going to be used any time soon but this sight became common right through the region. Strange.....

There are so many walnut trees in this part of the world and the walnuts were wonderful! Eaten straight from the shell they were far better than any walnuts I've eaten from packs in supermarkets.

The old stone village of Rehove was interesting.

We soon realised that there was really only one main hike so we did different sections of it over a couple of days. It was ok. Every hike we do is so steep!

Fat cows with cowbells were very tame.

Big views.

The best part was that the family dog loved to walk and came with us both times. John was definitely his favourite. He was lovely!

Back in our accommodation we found a scorpion on the floor!

We didn't feel at home in the guesthouse and it was a relief when the time came to leave. We continued to head south, then north-west to a town called Permet. Along the way we passed so close to the Greek border that we could have just waded across a shallow river and been there. The close proximity of Greece started us wishing we could get back there soon. (We can't - I'm at the limit of how long I can spend in Europe in a six-month period.)

The scenery along the entire route was spectacular. Green hills and mountains looked amazing. As we left the Greek border and headed north-west, we began to approach a twin range of mountains. These were the mountains that we had seen from our plane on the flight from Athens about a month ago. They were just as spectacular from the ground as they were from the air. The scenery all along this drive looked incredible in brilliant sunshine.

We saw a Greek-style shrine on the side of the road.

We arrived in Permet and were greeted by this sign. Read the last line. Classic!

We found our apartment overlooking the town and were greeted by our elderly hosts. They spoke no English but were so sweet! Permet was quite modern and touristy compared to where we'd been. It had cake shops, ice-creams and nice restaurants. We couldn't believe it when we walked up to a restaurant on our first night and saw it was full of tourists and no locals. It was the most tourists we had seen since the start of our Albanian trip. 

We quickly learned that there is a lot of Greek influence here. We could buy moussaka in restaurants and people often spoke Greek. 

It was a really lovely town and we had a great couple of days here hiking and exploring the town. There is a large rock that juts up abruptly right in the town. It had a few ruins on it and was lovely to scramble around. Yellow flowers dotted the top.

Looking back at our amazing apartment from the rock. Our apartment is on the second floor and the owners live underneath. The room on the very top floor is painted with a huge red and black Albanian flag.

The Vjosa river flows through the town.

There were old buildings, many newer, unattractive apartment blocks and plenty of ruined buildings in Permet. Some of the ruins really made me want to explore them.

We did a couple of hikes to the villages above us. One was to a village called Leusa. It was all dark stone walls and cobblestoned laneways. Everywhere smelled strongly of animals. It was authentic, a bit messy and a world away from Permet which was just two kilometres away. 

Home-made gates were so inviting.

In a couple of places people had used whatever they could to reinforce fences to keep stock in. It wasn't always attractive, that's for sure.

A famous old church sits below the village.

The interior and exterior were covered in frescoes but, incredibly, the outside ones had been badly graffitied. I find this astonishing. Graffitiing an ugly city building is one thing but this is just meaningless defacing of old art.

Inside, the frescoes weren't graffitied but they were getting old and faded. In some places, some of the plaster had fallen off, taking the paintings with it.

They found the remains of columns from a much earlier church under the current one so the site had had a church on it for many centuries.

The afternoon sun shone through the gate to the churchyard.

The steep dirt and rock road up to the village was rough, slippery and virtually non-drivable and people, mostly quite old people with walking sticks, walked that treacherous track regularly. I'd love to know if they live longer than average as they must be incredibly fit. We walked down the track in the rain once though and it was terribly slippery. I don't know how they manage in winter.

We got a bit lost on our second walk and had to do some bush-bashing in the rain. We had a few patches of sunshine though. The mist hung around the mountain tops in the distance.

There weren't many large trees where we had been walking but luckily we found some just as it started to rain again. We ate our lunch under a tree and admired this dam made of stones!

The rain stopped so we headed off. To our amazement, a horizontal rainbow appeared in the valley beneath us!

Haystacks and mountains peeping above the clouds.

Outside of the town, we explored the Langarica canyon. We drove up a rough road to a point where a walking track forked off it. We were in the middle of nowhere but there was a flash sign stating useless information about the canyon including advice like "Don't launch canoes from here" (we were maybe 300 metres above the water up a cliff!). We later saw the same sign in two other locations. Clearly the sign was meant for one place, not the other two. They were such a waste of government funds. Earlier, in another village, we saw a new three-tap public water stand. A big sign proudly told us it was built in 2023 and was funded by the people of Japan. Well I'm very sorry people of Japan but nobody was using it. The village's original pipe stand was still pumping out water at a great rate and that was the one that people were clearly using. So much money is wasted on projects like these. Plus, I think it must be humiliating to have a sign telling everyone that your village is so poor that it's the recipient of a charity that you've never heard of. So weird.

Our hike ran close to the edge of the top of the gorge and I thought we would have great views but it was quite forested and we couldn't see much. At our destination was a gorgeous Ottoman bridge though. It was built with intricate stonework and was really beautiful. 

We could see more of the gorge from here too.

We returned to our car and drove back to the start of the main canyon. There are a number of attractions here and quite a few people were around. I patted this very cute donkey and soon realised he had an empty tuna can stuck on his hoof! He was really quiet and let us get it off for him. I hate what our rubbish does to animals.

I'd like to think he was very grateful but he was just looking for a treat!

Another amazing Ottoman bridge was here. This one was much bigger and arched over the silty green-grey river. 

Nearby were half a dozen warm thermal pools. They were a bit sulphurous but people happily soaked themselves. They're supposed to help cure certain ailments. 

This pool looked lovely but it had been lined with plastic at some stage and the plastic was now disintegrating. People were still bathing in it though!

We weren't here for the pools though - we were here to walk up the canyon!

Hiking up the canyon was so much fun! The canyon floor was a mix of rocks, fine, silty mud and the cloudy river. We scrambled and waded our way up, admiring the steep sides and gorgeous views. It went for a long way so we just went as far as we wanted then returned. The water was cold but when we neared the hot springs it warmed up. 

We finished back at the bridge.

Permet really was a lovely place. It was very comfortable and modern with great walks on its doorstep. It has well and truly been "discovered' though.

I'll leave you with a sunrise pic taken from the balcony of our apartment.

Hooroo!
Heather and John