Albania

From Greece, we drove to Albania, a country that had been under communist rule until about 15 years ago. That meant that nobody could visit the country, and nobody could leave it. Now that Albania is democratic (which means that the people can vote for a government), it also means that tourists can visit. Albania was a very interesting country to visit. It is developing very fast, as better roads are being built, and people are changing the sorts of jobs they do. It has a very beautiful coastline with amazing beaches, that are just starting to get set up for people to come and stay. Some of the roads are still terrible, with large potholes, and slips which have not been cleared away. This made interesting driving for us!

The methods of transport were amazing. Some country people still used a donkey and cart as their main transport, and they would drive this in to town to buy things. The next group of people had tractors, and they would take these into town, and some people had cars – Mercedes mostly! Not many people were allowed to have cars when Albania was under communist rule. So in towns, it was not unusual to see tractors, donkeys, cars, horses all tied up on the sides of the roads! They all shared the roads together. Most country people also had a cow or a small herd of sheep or goats, but because they had no fences, one person in the family had to take the animal/s out to graze each day and sit and watch them so they didn’t run away. The sheep looked much better trained than most sheep I see in New Zealand!

This lady was right in town. She has her little donkey with a very big cart, and her cow tied on the back, going out to work in the fields for the day.

The landscape was quite changing, from flat to hilly to rocky, but right through Albania there were round concrete bunkers – safe places where people could hide if they were under attack from other countries. The man who designed the bunkers was asked if they would be strong enough to keep people safe from bombing shells, and he said yes, so he was made to go inside one while they bombed it, and when he survived, the communist party bought lots and put them all over the country!

Montenegro

In the 1990’s, the country that used to be known as Yugoslavia, had many changes, including wars, and now forms many new countries – including Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, and Slovenia. From Albania we went to Montenegro, the country with the wolves! We drove up a huge mountain in a national park, right to the snow, as at the top of the mountain was a mausoleum – a burial place/tomb for one of the important founding people of Montenegro. Montenegro means black mountain, which is the mountain we were on, that the country took its name from. Unfortunately, about 1.5 km from the summit, the road was undrivable, because snow covered it, so we had to (very carefully) turn the camper around, and park for a while, and walk the rest of the way. We saw no sign of wolves (or bears), but I imagine they come out more at the night time, rather than during the day.

This GPS photo shows one of the VERY windy zig zag roads we had to go on to get down an enormous mountain. Here is the view from the top:

We also visited a spectacular lake in Montenegro called Skadar – a lake that has water that reaches 30 degrees celcius in the summer, while the air temperature is 40 degrees. I was very pleased we were there in the spring time!