Albania - Country of steep roads !

While crossing the border the 15th of June, we saw the road sign “Shquipëria” the original name of Albania, which literally means “Country of Eagles”. For us, we haven’t seen any and we would rather call it “Country of steep roads”… In fact, even though the roads are all in a fairly good state, they were build following the natural reliefs, with no bridges, tunnels or any kind of works giving it a minimum of flatness.

We could also have called it: “the country of bunkers” because there are approx. 170,000 of them and we have seen quite a few!

But let’s continue the story where we left it in the last post… This 15th of June, after a very strong storm in Ohrid, we were soaked to skin, tired and powerless. We decided to push until the Albanian border and its city across the lake: Pogradec. Why is that? Well, one host met earlier in Mavrovo National park, North Macedonia, organized our stay at one of his very good friends place. Not exactly at his house, but in his very luxurious hotel overlooking the lake and the city. What a nice treat! We enjoyed every second of this stay, feeling like kings of the road, which offered us new giftsevery day.

After an excellent rest in the « Kooperativa Hotel », we continued our adventure in Albania’ inland. Worth to say that we entered the country by the center-east, meaning that all we will tell you is regarding the southern part of Albania.

Our first impression: the state of the roads was actually okay, some were even brand new. We heard a couple of times that the road network was terrible, not even once we noticed that the road was terrible (or only on very short portions).

On our way to Berat, fortified town of thousands windows, we experienced our first super-steep climbs. It was actually the nicest city we visited in Albania in terms of architecture and monuments. The old village on the top of a hill overlooking the valley and interesting spots as the water citerne, old mosque or a monastery. The Muslim and Christian neighborhoods, down in the valley, facing each other each side of the river are also a must-see.

We left our bikes in the city to do a small visit to a waterfall, 30km in a dead-end valley. But by the time we got there by bus we had only a few minutes before taking the last bus of the day to come back (So we couldn’t visit the waterfall). We were pretty disappointed and we sweared to ourselves to always use our bikes to get somewhere.

The adventure continued west, to reach the coast, to the city of Vlorë. The last time we were on the coast was back in Montenegro and we were so happy to smell the sea and feel the wind again!

An important point was the fact that water is not drinkable in Albania, we found it drinkable in all mountains areas though.

In coast cities, there were public taps where people - mostly elders- were filling 20L tanks for their homes. Using Maps.me we were able to always refill our bottles.

The hard part of Albania started in Vlorë: the scorching weather of approx. 35/38degrees in the afternoon- as well as the steep mountains were a very hard time for us. We spent three days to go from Vlorë to Ksamil, for a total of ~150km and ~+3000m of elevation. This was due to extremely steep roads, the steepest we seen in our lives. Even though the signs were all showing 10%, the steepest were close to 20%… With our bikes weighing around 45kg, it was anintense push on the way up and a very hard breaking session for the downhills. The weather was not helping at all and we had to make stops from 12h to 16h to avoid the heat.

Albania spoiled us with the encounters as well. Some locals invited us for a shower and a BBQ, a couple from Canada invited us to share a delicious-sea-food meal at the restaurant and we even met Manu again, the German cyclist we met 2 times already on our way!

After 4 days of going south on the coast, we turned east to reach Greece. We changed our mind eventually and did 2 daysmore in Albania.

Visiting the blue eye, a massive river coming out of a 50+m hole, the city of Gjirokaster and it’s secret bunker in case of nuclear attack, the city of Permet, the cleanest and greenest city in all Albania and finally a mandatory stop at the Benjë springs to cool down a bit.

The last evening we were hosted in a very rural village and met a lovely couple of farmers who made us taste their local products. Exchanging with them was a wonderful experience, ending our Albanian adventure. Those 10 days in Albania were not easy every day but were definitely worth it!