Jimsim65

Hiking in South Albania is all I could have wanted. It was thoroughly wonderful, with beautiful sights and very friendly people – and brilliant, homegrown, home cooked food.
I’ve always been fascinated by Albania, ever since it was briefly mentioned in My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, which I re-read many times as a kid. It was there, across the water, when we went on holiday in Corfu and it had such a weird reputation: gangsters, a Norman Wisdom fanbase, a former king called Zog and its own communist dictator who made Stalin look a wuss. And a language unlike any other.
So a trip with our own Albanian guide was the natural choice and it proved perfect in so many ways. Not only was Mario thoroughly fluent in English but he was also very well-read and informative. The back-office support was also very good indeed so that even when he left us we were met by friendly taxi-drivers who took us to our next hotel without any fuss or worry. Zbulo! even sorted out a fresh taxi to the airport when the first got stuck in traffic.
Travelling in the Albanian mountains is a tricky affair – you need four wheel drive vehicles and, in our case, pack animals. This was all arranged without any fuss – Mario had it all sorted. If you’re looking for an unspoilt wilderness, then this is it. I saw more varieties of flowers, birds and insects than I thought possible and this can only be because there are no pesticides. And yes, there are wolves, bears, jackals and lynx. It’s not just a claim – every single night every single four-legged beast has to come inside a paddock protected with a thorn fence.
Coming down to Gyrokastra was extraordinary. We were taken around one of the main sites of this UNESCO heritage site – a massive house that had been in the same family since the 18th century. And our guide was the owner, who only got it back from the Communists in the 1990s.
And, just in case we hadn’t had enough culture, we came down the coast to Butrint, the internationally recognised archeological site, complete with extraordinary fortifications, an amphitheatre and superb museum.
And then we hit the beach. I mean, this holiday really did tick all the boxes. Wonderful. And I’m going back.