Goodbye Albania! 8/4-2013

It's a weird season here, one day summer, the next autumn, winter or spring. Today I left Sarande by taxi to Syri Kalter, or it's English name, The Blue Eye. It's a underground spring with crystal clear, icy water from it's underground spring. I can imagine what a sight it would be in it's summer dress as it looked extremely beautiful this day in cloudy skies with a gentle rain.

I thought I'd cut the trip shorter since I already passed this road the other day after my crash. This time it took quite some time to get up and over the mountain roads, I took a break at the scene of the accident. Later this day I got an explanation to the hundreds of memorials that's been scattered along the roads in Albania and also in Greece. 

This memorial is from the road between Maliq and Gramshi, also known as the Road. It was shot as a movie of me biking the road and it was raining, that's why it's slightly blurry.

They are memorials of people who have died in roadside accidents, I imagined that might be the case but the sheer number of them made me wave that thought away, maybe because I didn't wanna become a memorial myself.

Anyway, once over the hill it was... wait for it... DOWNHILL! But it has to be the slowest decent ever, the road on the opposite side of the mountain of wich I had my crash was a lot more dangerous, more "straight of the cliffside"-like. I shot some video from it with my GoPro. So I paced myself extremely much.

Once I got closer to the border I decided to stop and eat in an attempt to void me of Albanian currency.

Regular roadside place, it was rice with peas and a chicken fillet rolled up in bacon stuffed with peppers, the chicken was  the most stringy thing ever.

After that I headed to the border and had a Cappuccino and a Red Bull just at the border crossing. A very friendly and welcoming Greek border guard waved me past all the cars and said I wouldn't be able to reach Monodendri, my goal in Greece, because it was late in the day and a lot of steep climbs during the last 30 k's.

He was right, I called the hotel I had booked a room at and mentioned I would't get there in time. They offered to come pick me up for 20 Euro and I took their offer. It was nice talking to someone speaking English for a change on my way up to the mountain village. Once there, after a hot shower, I sat in their restaurant near an open fireplace and ate a complimentary cheese pie made my the mother of this family owned hotel, Hotel Ladias.

Lovely warn fireplace and a cheese pie to die for!

Slept very well.