Albania, arriving
Emerging as a travel destination, the country offers plenty beyond its riviera, from pristine mountain peaks to ancient heritage sites
Our first glimpse of Albania, as it is for most tourists, is the salt of the shimmering coastline that lies just beyond the jumbled beach towns proliferating beside the sapphire sea. On this vacation, however, our ultimate destination is not the ocean but the remote, mountainous north.
When my husband and I, along with our two-year-old son, land at Albania’s international airport, we immediately hire a driver to navigate the tangled, narrow road to the country’s rugged peaks.
The route takes us along the western coastline, and after the tortoise-like navigation of the traffic jams at the exits leading to these wildly popular seaside retreats, we welcome the solitude of the Accursed Mountains like a benediction.
Until recently, the road that winds up to the vertiginous pass — the gateway to these silvery summits of the Balkans — was a rutted-out dirt path. Now perfectly paved, it’s our first indication of the country’s investment in tourism through the upgrading of its rustic infrastructure.
Indeed, Albania seems determined to move on from its communist past and promote itself as an ideal rural tourism destination, with more to offer than just its coastline.
Although the area nicknamed the Albanian Riviera has attracted the most traveller attention in recent years, a key part of the government’s sustainable tourism strategy entails encouraging people to explore further into the country’s pristine natural landscape.
And exploring further is easy to do in a country where you can day-trip from beautiful beaches to snow-capped mountain spires, something we experience as we spiral towards the bucolic hamlet of Theth, where pastoral family-run guest houses provide refuge and sustenance for hikers tackling the approximately 15-kilometre thru-hike to Valbone the next day.
We spend the night in Theth at one such family-run guest house — there is no hint of cookie-cutter hotel chains here. And over heaping bowls of homemade tavë kosi (lamb with rice and yoghurt), we discover that it’s not just tourists who are discovering the rural delights of Albania.
We meet Ava Melkani, an Albanian-Canadian who left this country in the 1990s to seek a better life. She had just finished the arduous hike from Valbone to Theth with her 20-year-old daughter. When she was growing up, even if Melkani had wanted to explore the mountains, she would have had no way of getting there. Under communist rule, few people owned a car, and many families couldn’t even afford the cost of a bicycle, let alone a trip across the country.
“Even now, my friend (in the south) told me that hiking here would be impossible, that there is nothing worth travelling north for,” Melkani tells me. “It’s so much more beautiful and established than I was led to believe.”
The next day, when we trade the car for hiking boots and undertake the strenuous task of hauling a toddler over the Valbone Pass, it’s our turn to marvel at how worthwhile it is to explore the lesser-known north.
Leaving the rustic farms and teetering tea houses behind, we take a pine-scented trail that winds up a heavily treed hillside, soaking in sweeping views of the pearly hued peaks hugging the valley below.
We then float through a meandering emerald gorge before renting a car and making our way to the southern coastline, taking our time to explore the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Berat and Gjirokaster along the way. These quaint cities hold town centres that feel like an Ottoman oasis.
Later, we wander along the plasticine-blue water of the Adriatic while waiting to be ferried over to Butrint, an archeological site of several ancient civilizations that are layered like a cobblestoned cake, perfectly preserved in concrete and brick fondant.
We slice our way along the southern coastline, skipping larger cities for smaller villages, and guest houses set among once-abandoned cottages. We breathe in the revitalization, relax into the rugged charm of the slapdash architecture and inhale baked feta cheese on petulla — deep-fried bread that is rich enough to fuel a full day of swimming, paddling and snorkelling in the pristine waters off the coast.
We end our time in Albania in the half-abandoned village of Qeparo, which is beginning to thrive again. As we watch Manuel, the son of our guest house owner, envelop our son in an encompassing hug to welcome him to breakfast, we can only hope that when we return one day, the country will still feel like this: full of life, character and family.