Albanian flag flies high at Rozafa Fortress

Shkodra, Albania

Ladies on their way to church, Albania

And the fellows eat and drink Albania

Blue Car and Orange Car with no room to move. Albania

Just when we thought we were in to the easy bit of the drive we hit the narrow, steep, pot hole filled roads of Albania. A real challenge for the drivers. With Albanian drivers who knew no boundaries or ordered direction and every car an old, diesel Mercedes speeding along the narrow, mountainous roads with the flimsiest protection barriers imaginable, it was quite a hair raising experience. Two of the cars reported near misses on the “S” bends and one unnamed, and usually calm and composed passenger, alighted from her car clearly shaken and not happy with the drive.

The roads were consistently worse than anything we had encountered elsewhere because when we hit poor roads in China or The Stans there seemed to be a sense of an unmade section road for x kilometres which was in the process of being developed. Here it was just roads which were neglected, poorly positioned and constructed with no sense that anything, apart from filling the pot holes, could or would improve them.

Like The Stans countries, livestock, donkey carts and in some places bikes are a hazard. We saw one lady, dressed in a grey skirt, floral blouse, white head scarf and carrying a black bag, herding her milkers down the middle of the road in a main town. Around Lake Ohrid young lads, selling fish stood on the side of the road waving eels and their freshly caught catch at the passing motorists.

Roadside memorials complete with inlayed photographs of the deceased and flowers punctuate the roadside boundaries of the Skanderbauf Mountains, a grim reminder of those who had met a sad end.

On our drive out of Shkodra, as last car in the convoy, we were stopped at traffic lights and an old Merc ran into the back of us. Thud, but nothing as bad as the hot air balloon landing. We hopped out and the guy drove off. The result is that the car has a slight indentation in the rear and the back mud guard is very tight.  Ian M joked the reduced size of Red Car   will make it easier to fit three MGBGTs in one container to transport back to Australia.

A Sunday morning coffee break in a small town was a real eye opener. All the women and girls were making their way to the church while the men, and hundreds of them, stood on the side walk or sat in cafes eating and drinking coffee or beer and watching the world go by.

In one section of the journey hoses a bit like shower heads were spilling water on to the road  everywhere. We worked out that they were for a quick, roadside, car wash but the water waste was something very foreign to the “water wise” Aussies.

Albania seems to be a land with a conflicted past and many contradictions. We saw some children begging and many of the buildings were neglected. Our hotel served crème caramel as one of the breakfast offerings and yes it was good. Dotted through  the fields were enormous concrete bunkers built as protection against the Russians. The country has run the full political gaunlet and aligned itself with all the major superpowers at some stage in its recent past.

The drive to Montenegro with Yellow Car in the lead had lots of diversions and asking for directions. Orange Car’s driver said this part of the drive was “beyond his wildest dreams” and Yellow Car’s navigator said it was  “the best scenic drive they had ever driven”

We followed a tight, winding road into Podgorica and then after lunch at a beachside cafe we drove the narrowest road, almost  a one way road  around the villages and towns of the  coastal inlets. As we climbed to over 1500 metres we looked back a saw the most spectacular sight. Huge mountains surrounded the inlets, the sky was a brilliant blue and the stone houses with their red tiled roofs were such a contrast to the grandeur of the natural environment.

We finished our drive in Dubrovnik, Croatia. We have spent the last two nights here. Very nice, but for most of us, too many tourists and much too commercial after the unspoilt magnificence of Montenegro its neighbour.

White Car on the road in Montenegro

Beautiful Montenegro

Cherry Car is behind. Montenegro

Montenegro