Day 18 – May 3 Tuesday
The mosque called us to prayer at 4.50am this morning. Our room at the Tirana International Hotel was on the 8th floor & about level with the speakers on the mosque about 300 metres away. It was that loud, it woke us both up & droned on for a few minutes. So, needless to say we where well & truly ready for breakfast at 7am for an 8am start. Today we left Tirana, the capital of Albania to drive to Ioannina in northern Greece. The road from Tirana down to Durres on the coast was OK, apart from the crazy Albanian drivers, then we turned south to Fier before turning off towards Gjirokaster near the Greek border. It’s amazing the number of unfinished houses in Albania to avoid paying tax, they are everywhere, mostly three story & brightly painted. There are also a lot of new retail outlets & light industry places being built, the number of petrol stations & car washing places is amazing, I don’t see how Albania can support them all. Another interesting thing is that every second car is a Mercedes, of all vintages. One story being espoused is that every Mercedes stolen in Europe ends up in Albania. For such a poor population & the sheer quantity of Mercedes, it does seem plausible. Drug trafficking, Mafia, bribery & corruption seems a way of life in Albania
As we progressed higher into the Albanian mountains towards the border the road got worse, down to a one lane badly potholed & washed out country back road. It was very slow going, then throw in some impatient crazy Albanian drivers & it made for an interesting drive in the rain. While in Albania we had a security car trailing us & a woman constantly accompanying us & telling us the history of the place – very sad. One interesting thing that while they were under the communist regime they were brain washed that they had a wonderful life so they weren’t allowed to leave & to keep the enemy/rest of the world out they made 600,000 (yes six hundred thousand) bunkers all over Albania –they have fields of them in some places. The hotel, the food & the few people we had a little contact with were good. The countryside looks beautiful, the fields & farms look great, the mountains & rivers are beautiful, except for the rubbish.
And I should mention the rubbish strewn haphazardly all over the country, Albania looks like one big rubbish tip, it is everywhere & in large quantities. They seem to gather their rubbish & leave it in large piles on the side of the road, or better yet, over a creek or river bank, so that it can be distributed all the way downstream. There are plastic bags & lots of other rubbish caught in trees & laying along the full length of the rivers. Then there are the abandoned oil wells from the communist days, a terrible smell of oil & the lake shores are black & there is oil scum on the water. This is pollution taken to a new extreme. It was good to leave all those hodge- podge unfinished buildings & chaotic traffic & rubbish when we crossed the border to Greece. We appreciate the good life we have at home.
We arrived in Ioannina around 4 pm but it was 5pm local time. Hotel Du Lac is another very good hotel, our room has a veranda overlooking the lake. The weather was pleasant so we went for about a 3 km walk on the shore of the lake watching the waterbirds with their young ones. There is a city wall around here too, cafes & stalls but we had to hurry back for dinner. Mousaka & Greek salad (very yummy) for first course (at home that would have been our dinner), main course was chicken souvlaki & vegetables, for desert baklava, glapo bureko & ice cream.
It is amazing how tired we get from doing nothing I decided to have a bath as I am coughing & splattering while Ron checked Email etc. A special treat, I talked on Skype to my cousin Klarika in Serbia, she & another cousin will pick us up from Belgrade Airport when we get there. It is getting late, Ron is fast asleep & tomorrow another early start.
Trekkin 