Experience doesn’t have to be good as long as it is strong.. This time no strawberries, but something better!

Day 10: This day will be easy.. Not!

Today we started late, because we wanted to rest after the yesterday's heroic act. We read in the "Bed" (sleeping bag) a bit and planned an easy walk for half a day.

Well, as it turned out, we are probably not as good at planning and the walk got pretty intense at one point. We had to climb to a high saddle point through another rocky field. The rocks didn’t support us and kept running down under the pressure of our feet. It was basically two steps up, and nearly the same down. In addition we had an argument and quite bad mood. In addition I took a wrong way which made the ascent even longer. In addition we once again ran out of water. All together made Hive account@hr1 want just to get to the valley and go home.

It was really pretty horrible day and there seemed to be no good ending to it. After the descent all the way to the valley I made Hive account@hr1 to go towards Valbona and not to the nearest town, because I didn’t want to end this trip in this manner. After few hundred meters we came across a beautiful place.

The good wizards of the woods and albanian coffee

First of all there was the so needed water but there was also a simple yet cozy shelter where two Albanian guys were selling the coffee, tea, beer, and other stuff.

Just the best dinner one could wish!

Advertisement for the cafe :)

We ordered the coffee and started talking to the guys, their English was actually really good which was just great, because Albanian language is very different to Czech (unlike the Montenegrin).
They both were very interesting. One of them travelled the whole world and the second was interested in psychology and studied for some time British-American studies.

Making religious people imagine that someone is an atheist.

We even touched a little bit religious questions where he couldn’t understand that we were both atheists. The discussion and good mood continued and we ordered some dinner (grilled sheep cheese, yoghurt and homemade bread - what a pleasure to cut it!) and they started a fire and we offered them our homemade mixture of dried fruits and nuts which in a cute way amazed them (They literally told me that it “proves my intelligence” that I was able to create such a good mix :) ). During the talks they told us a story that two years ago a wolf came to the mountains and took down 6 sheep from the shepherds. That made us quite anxious because I couldn’t understand what kind of animal could manage to do that over the crazy and rough dogs that each shepherd keeps over here. It was getting dark so we said goodbye and went to build our tent. When we were already falling asleep, we heard howling in the woods. I really hoped that no wolf would pay us a visit this night.

The wood-cafe inspiration:

Hive account@hr1 liked it there so much that he offered them help (anything - build something from the wood, help them prepare the bread, ...), so that we would stay there longer, but they didn’t need anything

Hive account@hr1: The tiredness combined with a big shot of rakija resulted in a feeling of completely clear head. I felt like doing something beautiful, like reading a book, which we didn’t have, or like writing something great.

Hive account@mor: In Albania hashish is everywhere! They’re hashing Europe (mainly Italy).. :) And they claim to have good tobacco which we can’t prove or disprove, because we don’t smoke.

Hive account@hr1: Peter, the one with American accent, travelled quite a lot. He went to Greece, Italy, France, then to the South America and spent there 3 years at his cousins’ in the US working as a construction worker. And all this had to be done on fake passports, because as an Albanian he wouldn’t get the visa

Your Hive account@hr1 and Hive account@mor

If you liked this post, you might also wanna see the Introduction post about our travel. Or see the previous day of the journey.