Komuna e Vergojës

We started our adventure along the rocky coastline back towards Kakoma Beach. We had two pre-packaged croissants filled with jam and a bottle of water between us. Kakoma Beach was the perfect-looking bay we couldn’t drive into the day before. The Trail seemingly followed along a series of paths formed by livestock. Cows, goats, sheep. From the day before we knew that herds were regularly brought this way along the rocky coastline. At first, it was hard to tell if there was a Hiking Trail at all. Or whether we were just blindly following a cow trail and telling ourselves it was a trail. Regardless, if we simply kept the water on our right side then surely we couldn't go too wrong haha. After about 4km of bare rocky terrain, we came to some thorny bracken, then entered thick undergrowth. We descended a gully and emerged on a stunning remote beach. With nothing but a rusted old jetty, we had the beach to ourselves. We swam in the stunningly blue water. Then, we walked to the next rocky headland where we found several abandoned bars.

The two beaches were basically the same but separated by a small rocky outcrop. Both beaches were only accessible by boat and had closed for the season. At the far end of this beach, we were faced with a massive cliff face. The issue was that Kakoma Beach, which we’d come this whole way for, was around this headland. Jessie had read an article that mentioned a 2-hour hike over the top of the headland but neither of us was that keen. Kinda out of nowhere, Jessie mentioned that we could swim around the headland. So we dumped our gear on the beach and started a slow breaststroke paddle around the head. After 25 minutes, and only one minor hyperventilation issue (where Jessie freaked out at the splash caused by her foot kicking the surface 😂) we made it to the Bay. It was completely isolated and abandoned once again. There was nothing to do apart from resting until swimming back.

Eventually, we made it back to our bags and treated ourselves to our croissants for lunch. Then started the long hot walk back to the car. Arriving back at about 4 pm we found our car had a flat battery so needed to jump-start it. Then we drove into Himare to find some dinner.

Hoping to find somewhere similar to our last night’s accommodation we had a simple dinner at the tavern and drove along the next couple beaches. Jale Beach looked amazing on the map. And some other beaches nearby appeared to be on smaller dirt tracks. Jale turned out to be a bit too built up so we explored along the coast dirt track which got within about 100m before the track got too rough for the hire car. We decided no more cars would come that evening so set up our sleeping mats on a lookout platform. Finally, we settled in for another night under the stars. Magical 🙌Baca lagi