Hot Day in Albania
I am crossing the border into Albania at Kakavia just north of Ioannina, Greece. Travelers line the road walking to and from the border gate—young men mostly many wearing hooded sweatshirts and dark pants. I drive on into the vast Drinos Valley where the medieval city of Gjirokastra looms up ahead, topped by its famous castle, a dark silhouette high on a precipice.
In upper Gjirokastra, a World Heritage site, Ottoman houses hug the cliffs beneath the castle and back-packing youths crowd the tiny streets around the old bazaar. Down below in Gjorkastra city, chaos reigns. Cars double park with hazard lights on along the main avenues and men huddle in parking lots playing dominoes. The main street is lined with dress shops with mannequins in the windows modeling pre-1990s clothes. Just below them at street level, women wear head kerchiefs and sit on plastic milk crates surrounded by their wares—tomatoes, apples, potatoes—picked in the wee hours of the morning and transported from village gardens.
The deeper I drive into Albania the hotter it gets. Needing to withdraw some Lek, the local currency, I stop at an ATM machine in a village called Dragot. I insert my card and the screen goes blank. A man standing nearby says in broken English, “Ten minutes—wait.” He wears khaki pants and a smart black shirt, and sports a large, menacing rifle hung casually from his shoulder like a fashionable purse. I wait for 5 minutes then drive on.
The road follows the beautiful Ajose River, its waters like an aquamarine ribbon unfurling through the valley. These same waters flow eastward through the mountains into Epirus, Greece, joining with the Voidhomatos River which carves out the enchanting Vikos Gorge. Above the Ajose, the Dhembel Mountains loom with jagged, snow-covered peaks over 2000 meters high. Smaller mountains hem the road and in one rag-tag village a castle ruin atop a dark hill harkens back to a time of invasions when fortifications were a necessity.
The day grows still warmer. I stop at what appears to be a grocery store, a concrete structure with one faded advertisement in the window. I order a bottle of water by simply pointing and smiling. The proprietor smiles back and passes me a frosty bottle. It is icy cold, so sweet and delicious. I forget that summertime travel on the hot plains of Greece—Larissa, Ioannina or Bucharest, Romania and now Gjirokastra, Albania—all these torrid valleys are a challenge when the temperatures soar in early summer and I have only the open windows in my Jeep for ventilation. But by mid-afternoon, dark thunderheads gather, the sky turns black and within minutes, I am rescued as a torrential downpour brings relief to the parched land.