Balkans - Bulgaria to Bosnia

Plan was to take a 9am bus from prizren to gkakova and then catch a furgon (mini bus) to bajram curri in Albania and then another furgon to fierze for a 1pm ferry through the long, narrow canyon of lake komani. Supposed to be one of the best boat rides on the planet (Google komani ferry).

Anyways that whole plan went up in smoke when we woke up at 10:15 and arrived at bus station around 11. No way would we make those connections. Asked a taxi driver how much to bajram curri and he offered 60 euros. Giddyup. After a brief stop at the taxi drivers house so could put his garbage at the side of the road, we were on our way. I'm not making that up haha.

Did our best to sleep off the pounding headaches we earned from the prior night, until reaching the Albanian border. Arrived in bajram curri which is in the thick of the striking Albanian alps, and found a new taxi to get us to fierze. Who knew we had just hired a retired racecar driver. We barrelled down winding tight mountain roads at over 100km/h leaving fingernail imprints in the car upholstery.

Got to ferry landing and we had just missed it and no more ferries until the next morning. And we were in the middle of nowhere. Still frazzled from the white knuckle taxi ride and the effects of night prior, anxiety levels weren't so great heh.

Smelling opportunity, an Albanian offered to charter us a small motorboat for 100 euros. Putting our money together, we had about 110-115 euros. And we still needed transportation from the other end of lake komani to shkoder plus we hadn't eaten anything and this was a three hour boat ride. Got his price down to 90 euros, bought two bags of chips and were on our way.

Impossible to describe, and pics don't do it justice. One of the most beautiful rides ever. Huge mountains dropping straight down to waters edge as we winded slowly through the narrow water passages. About half way we noticed a storm coming over the mountain range but fortunately never hit us.

We were a bit concerned that in missing ferry, there wouldn't be any transportation at landing to get us to shkoder but fortunately there were furgons there waiting to go. 16 euros for our ride plus a few more for water leaving us with 2-3 euros in our pockets.

Shkoder wasn't anything special. We knew today it was all about the journey and not the destination. Nevertheless we found a nice area of restaurants for a good meal. Hotel was a bit of a disaster though. We had choice of private bathroom and no a/c or shared bathroom with a/c. Tried the former but it was too hot and shower didn't work. Then switched to latter but bathroom was on top floor and toilet didn't flush. Eventually arranged so we had both rooms at our disposal to cover all our needs. It was a very fitting end to the kind of day we had. And perhaps a summary of sorts to the organized chaos that is Albania :) -SPЧитать далее