As usual on these trips we begin to feel a little pressed for time so we made the decision to leave Montenegro and head into Albania. We have been lazy lately driving mostly using tollways for long trips, but today we did not have a choice. The first 50km’s in Montenegro was on a road that had fair asphalt but was not quite wide enough for us to pass a car without slowing down almost to a halt and squeezing by with one set of wheels hugging the edge of the road, as there often was not much room off the road because of walls or ditches. Fortunately for us we met a Luxury Bus from Slovenia about 10km’s into the trip and used him for a “blocker” for the drive, if he could squeeze thru we new we could. Eventually the road widened out to two solid lanes and we could relax a bit.
The border crossing into Albania was simple. Albania is the poorest country in western Europe with a per capita income of only $5300. During the communist era the country was basically isolated from the rest of the world by its communist leadership. When the communist government fell the new non-communist governments had and still have a huge deficit in infrastructure and education to overcome to come up to the standard of the rest of Europe.
Having said that there are signs of progress and the main roads are decent if not particularly fast due to the variety of vehicles using it. Intermixed with the modern cars trying to move along at 90kph were tractors, old soviet era trucks, and the occasional three wheeled contraption made from an old motorcycle with a work platform attached to it, that was only capable of about 15kph. It made for a lot of speeding up and slowing down. The interesting thing about the roads was the number of gas stations. Albania easily wins the gas station per mile density contest over any country we have seen in the world. There is no excuse at all for running out of gas here. I’m sure there is an interesting story behind why there are so many gas stations but a quick google search doesn’t show it.
Eventually we made it to Durres which is an ancient port city that we plan to explore tomorrow. I told Ton that this place had rave reviews on Park4night but only had 4 spots so we had a back up plan tomove on to a back up site further away from town if they were full. When we arrived Greta had us one block off location in a block of beach front hotels and apartments with fairly narrow roads. We were in a good place to get turned around so I told her I was going to go off on foot to find the place and see if they had room for us. Ton decided to come along. We weren’t exactly legally parked but were following the example of the locals. Just as we were walking away a police car drove up and honked his horn at us but then carried on. I found the place tucked up next to the beach, but saw a sign saying full. I told Ton looks like they are full when I heard a Scottish voice asking what we needed. I told him a spot and electricity. He said we can accommodate that.
The owners are a Scottish/Turkish couple, the other guests are a Swedish couple whose daughter is competing in a European weight lifting completion, a German couple who don’t speak much English but love Southern Rock and Roll, and surprisingly an American couple traveling in a Winnebago Revel with Massachusetts plates. So the owners were surprised when we turned out to be American also. It seems like an interesting place.