Serenading Saranda

As the bus to Himara was apparently not an option for us, we set off on the open road at 2pm, fairly late for such an ambitious venture.  Luckily, Albanians are the few Europeans left not jaded by the sight of North Americans with backpacks and impish, hopeful and naïve faces.  The first to pick us up was a truck driver delivering water dispensing accessories, so we earned our keep by helping him delivery a large amount of plastic water nozzles to a warehouse about 1km along the road.  He dropped us off in what I believe was Himara (I seem to recall a story about how the Soviets developed a naval base there and then the Albanians kicked them out and kept all the military technology—hence Albania’s naval prowess today—but that also happened in Somalia, so quite possibly it didn’t happen in Albania or it was a common theme in the Soviet Union’s hegemonic expansionist policy) where we caught sight of a bus in the distance.  Two old men picked us up and drove us another stretch which somehow placed us in front of the bus and it stopped to pick us up.

The big problem with this bus is that it was very local and it only took us to the foothills of the mountains before turning to service the villages in the foothills.  We overpaid and were back on the open road on our feet.  After half an hour, a couple picked us up and drove us as far as their car would let them, which sadly left us stranded halfway up the mountain while they tried to fix their car.  Our next ride was with two guys delivering a refrigerator/on their way to repair a refrigerator at a restaurant at the summit overlooking the sea.  While there was a tour bus there full of people, none were interested in letting us join for any leg of the journey. 

Driver #5 was an Albanian-Greek biznez-man, and he let us know it.  He drove a Mercedes, or at least had the kind of air about him that made me believe we were in a Mercedes and his new-money suaveness was especially evident when he took a swig of water from a bottle, decided it was no good and then spat it out the window where it then found it’s way back into the car via the back window and onto me.  So that was nice.

After #5 stopped at a café, we were picked up by about 7 people crammed into a tiny car that apparently had room for two more people and their backpacks.  They took us as far as Himara, evidently (this time it really was Himara) and let us off at the entrance to the city.  I believe there was an awkward should-we-pay? moment, but we somehow got away without any awkward confrontations.  In any case, as no ride is truly free, as soon as I got out of the car the entire side of my shoe burst open (see Exhibit A) and I was left on the side of the road in Albania, without shoe.  This is the last time I buy anything for 6 euros from a man with random things he presumably stole on a blanket on the sidewalk in Barcelona.  Live and learn.

Getting dropped off on the outskirts of Himara meant having to walk into, through and out of Himara itself.  Luckily there was a fisherman who drove us a short stretch out of town towards what looked like another, though more medieval, naval base.  Then two young guys (definitely in an old Mercedes) drove us as far as the next town, Borsh, where we began a long climb uphill, past olive groves, randomly-placed restaurants and concrete structures that I contemplated sleeping in, passing the rapidly-approaching rain storm under. 

Then finally, after what felt like an eternity, we were picked up by a young couple going to Saranda.  Between the two of them they spoke Albanian, German, Italian, French, and Russian but no English.  They drove us all the way to Ksamil because they were so friendly and wonderful, and we arrived at 8pm, ready for food and sleep.  In all I can count this as the most successful hitchhiking adventure Garrett and I have ever embarked on, the least successful being when we went to Durres for the afternoon to play beach volleyball with the Peace Corps workers and then were left in the city after the last bus went back to Tirana so we had to walk for three hours along the highway where stray dogs eyes us hungrily and Garrett wanted to kill me for getting a crepe and causing us to miss the last bus.