The South of Albania

Deeply relaxed, we decide to continue exploring the south of Albania. The following are on our list for the next few days:

• Gjirokaster, beautiful old town with an impressive castle (and of course a nice bazaar),
• Blue Eye, river source, deep blue, from which water gushes out in enormous quantities
• Perhaps a detour to Greece - it's only 8km from there to the border 🤔
• Vjosa, the last wild river in Europe
• On the way back, Berat with its lovely old town
• And then quickly onwards to Bosnia towards home

We are proud, we rarely have a plan so far in advance. Yes, it was also counted on our fingers.. 😁

We say goodbye to all our new friends at the Eco Camp and head to Gjirokaster. It's beautiful and charming here. We drink freshly squeezed orange juice, manage not to buy another carpet, and find a slightly cooler place in the castle (indoors) and a much hotter place (outdoors, which unfortunately is the main part of such a castle) for Heidi's nap in the carrier. But as often happens, the city visit is ticked off faster than expected and we move on.

Greece is a bit ambitious for today, so we continue directly to Blue Eye to visit it the next morning. Hm, since we're already here, we take a walk there in the evening hours, we can sleep there and maybe visit the river source again the next day if it's so beautiful there, we consider.

Other travelers have said that Blue Eye is a bit like Neuschwanstein and we quickly realize they're unfortunately right 🙈 at this time of day, there's not much going on, but a completely paved road leads us to the source (so there's not much untouched nature), which is smaller than in the photos and also much less spectacular (we somehow imagined it more impressive) and there are only the obligatory tourist restaurants.

It's all very nice, but we definitely won't come back tomorrow 😅 we're considering what's best, sleeping here is also somehow silly. And already we're back in the car and driving to the stop at the Vjosa River, which was recommended to us.

Oops - with that, we've probably made our 3-day plan in one day 😅 but with that, we have officially reached our southernmost point and the summit of our journey and are now heading back home!

We arrive at the river late, I (Ari) coach Heidi to sleep and don't really realize where we actually are. Waking up the next day is very nice. We're really right by the river, where you can swim and float or play with Heidi on one of the beach beds with a canopy. There are also cats and horses galloping on the rocky shore - it's wonderful to spend the morning here!

We also take advantage of this stop to do a little general overhaul of our van (a light has been broken since yesterday and the parking sensor has been out of order for ages). A mechanic comes directly to our campsite and quickly changes our light, but we don't get far with the parking sensor. It's mainly due to communication problems: our car beeps as a warning signal when reversing. The mechanic says he has fixed everything (opened the fuse box), because it's beeping after all. We can't explain to him...

In any case, the conclusion is that they probably think we don't know how the car works - well 😄 As a special treat, we have the van cleaned in the car wash (they have them everywhere here) for €5, as beautifully as never before.

(The local pressure washers are a bit stronger, so afterwards not only all the dirt is gone but also parts of the lettering 😅)

Wonderful! We continue to Berat.

In Berat, we accidentally meet our friends from the eco camp again - how nice, Heidi has really made friends with little Malin (13 months) 😊. In the evening hours, we visit the city, it's cooler, but still exhausting. The city is beautiful, but we can't really enjoy it, here it's hotter than it has been on our entire trip so far.

Our new friends tell us about a campsite by the sea, with its own little island - interesting... wouldn't be the first time we've changed plans.