I said goodbye to Macedonia early and hopped on a bus for one of the only fully open countries on earth, Albania. My bus took me as far as the capital, Tirana, then I immediately jumped on another bus to Shkoder. Tirana is where I’ll end my adventure, so we’ll get to that later. Shkoder is a really pleasant city in the northwest of the country and the jumping off point for one of the premier outdoor excursions in the world. First, as with most cities in Europe, there’s a castle, Rozafa castle. Rozafa was a woman who supposedly volunteered to be walled up in the castle when it was built for good luck, the castles, not hers.

Most of the interior of the castle is just wide open space, but the cathedral is in really good shape. Originally this was a Venetian castle, so there’s also the extremely large Venetian palace, which was turned into a museum and cafe.

The views of Shkoder and Shkoder Lake from the towers were pretty spectacular too. The weather turned a bit cooler too, high 70’s. It’s awesome to go out and explore without melting for a change!

The best part about my arrival in Albania was not needing a vaccine cert for anything. I can go eat in proper restaurants again and I’m once again allowed in the museums. Albanians apparently aren’t buying into the hype. The most interesting museum was the former Ministry of the Interior headquarters and prison. Albania’s communist era was particularly harsh. The MOI building was a creepy and haunting place to visit, but I learned a ton about the history of this country that I knew almost nothing about before this trip. The next day I took a quick day trip a bit south to Lezhe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea.

I started at the Skanderbeg Monument. Skanderbeg is one of Albania’s most famous national heroes from the 15th century. This guy successfully defended Albania against the Ottomans in 25 battles, he never lost. It wasn’t until he died that the Turks finally were able to come in and rule the area for around 400 years. They’ve confirmed he was buried at St Nikolas Cathedral in Lezhe. What’s left of the cathedral now stands amongst the ruins of the ancient city, surrounded by a huge protective monument, with a cool tribute inside. The doors were locked, but the gap in the doors was huge, so I was able to get a pretty good pic.

After taking in the Skanderbeg Monument I took a hike up the hill to see Lezhe Fortress. I liked this one even better. The ruins seemed better preserved and the views of Lezhe and the Adriatic Sea were fantastic.

As I mentioned before, Shkoder is the jumping off point to a phenomenal excursion through the Accursed Mountains. It’s not exactly an “adventure” as this route sees tons of tourists and every step of the journey is highly organized, but what a trip! First, a bus ride to Koman where I jumped on the Komani ferry for a three hour tour up Komani Lake. It reminded me a bit of sailing through the fjords in Norway. My only complaint is that Albania really needs to step up and clean up the garbage. The plastic bottles were pretty thick in some parts.

The ferry sailed as far as Fierze, where a giant minivan was waiting to take us to Valbone way up north. Valbone is really just a road through the mountains with guest houses dotted along the way, there’s only a couple of rough restaurants and one small shop in a tool shed sized building, but those mountains towering on all sides, holy crap! I checked into my guest house and got ready for a few days of heavy duty hiking.

Most people just stop for one night in Valbone before moving on, but I wanted to hike up Rosni Peak, which shares the border with Montenegro, in fact, the last half a mile or so of the trail is actually in Montenegro. Some signs labeled the peak Rosit, not sure what the difference is, but it’s the same peak.

About three miles into the hike you reach this unbelievable hanging canyon surrounded on all sides by some of the most towering mountains I’ve seen anywhere. I mean it, this place easily rivals places like Yosemite or Torres del Paine. It was breathtaking! There’s a small coffee hut right in the middle of it selling coffee and sodas where I took a nice break before making the very challenging climb the rest of the way up.

The whole hike was about five and a half miles one way and about 4500ft of elevation gain, most of which was in the last two miles or so. The peak didn’t come into view until I was almost on top of it. Actually, it never really came into view because it was in the clouds. The clouds sort of moved aside for a few seconds once but that was the only view I got. I had just enough time for my selfie before the view was obscured again.

Given the lack of views and because it was extremely cold at the top, I didn’t linger too long. Even though there was no view at the summit, luckily there was plenty of amazing views just below it and the clouds, so that’s where I broke out the jacket and took a long break. And now I also have a story about that time I hiked to Montenegro for lunch.

Next came the brutal knee pounding descent. The whole way down the thought that kept running through my mind was, “You have to hike eleven miles on these knees tomorrow.” Ouch!

The next leg of the journey is the one everyone comes here to do, the spectacular hike up and over Valbone Pass to Theth. For me, it was fog and rain all day long. I was pissed. Whatever! The fog lifted once for about two minutes before making the final push up to the pass and then dropped right back down obscuring everything, and that was that. Mostly I just tried to get to Theth as quickly as possible so I could get dry and warm again.

I arrived in Theth just as the rain was letting up. Of course! I cleaned up and had a fantastic dinner, and then rested up for the next day, which would hopefully be less humid. Theth is a bit more developed than Valbone, but that’s not saying much, it’s still pretty rugged and remote. And once again those towering, jagged mountains!

I planned to spend my day in Theth taking it easy and just doing some short walks to waterfalls and viewpoints, buuuuut, I’m me. Once I started walking, I figured why not just hike the six miles to the Blue Eye.

The Blue Eye is up in a neighboring canyon from Theth. Here the river has cut some really crazy paths through the rock. There’s lots of little waterfalls and rapids and the water is just ridiculously blue.

I’m not sure how deep the Blue Eye is, but it looked REALLY deep. It was fairly crowded and I still had a six mile walk back to Theth, so I just took a short break before heading back.

Almost back to Theth, I took the half mile detour to Grunas Waterfall. It was a great way to end the day! My body hates me, though. I’ve logged about forty miles and who knows how much elevation over the last three days. I’m toast!

After a good nights sleep and a hearty breakfast I caught the minivan for my ride back to Shkoder. I spent the whole trip just gazing out the window at those Accursed Mountains that I still think should be called Astounding. I’ll spend one night in Shkoder at the same hostel where I started, and then move on to the next stop tomorrow.