Ksamili Beach - Albania

Trip Start Oct 30, 2007

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Trip End Nov 20, 2009

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Flag of Albania Ksamili, Albania
Monday, June 30, 2008

Continuing south along the "treacherous road" which mainly hugged the coast (that's hugged as in "precariously overhung"), this was the worst conditions we'd seen. 1st and 2nd gear for hours, over and round boulders and holes, as well as diggers which seemed to be breaking up what little track left there was driveable. The 81km to Saranda took 3 � very, very tiring hrs and we were shattered (but at least we and the van were still in one piece).

Another thing about Albania - do they own the Mercedes company or what? At least 60-70% of the cars were straight off their showroom floor. For a relatively undeveloped country this looked slightly suspicious (no, really?). It transpired so we found out that 80% are stolen from Western Europe and re-plated in Albania (some still even had the country stickers on the boots "D" for Germany, "CH" for Switzerland etc!!! Can you believe it?) So between this and the large Mafia presence, Albania did look slightly dodgy in parts, but we weren't about to bring it up. Everyone we met was really friendly.......no one showed us any concrete boots or anything!

20km south of Saranda was the beautiful Ksamili beach, which is now starting to be developed. Still lovely now, but will be a sea of Soviet style high-rises in 2-3 years time. Lovely low key little coves with a smattering of beach bars and restaurants, overlooking four little islands you can swim to. Got to love their attention to aesthetics, and their lack of forward thinking, as they are using part of one island to quarry rock into sand to make new beaches......but the part of the island directly facing the shore! As we lay on the beach one day, we could see in the distance a rock breaker breaking up the limestone rocky shore to physically make more beach area - unbelievable! Lovely cheap seafood though - heaps of calamaris, mussels and fish, salad, beers and local wine, all for about $30.

Near Ksamili was Butrint, a Greek trading city from 6th century BC, which later became a large Roman outpost. It wasn't abandoned until the early 20th century, and has a Greek amphitheatre, a baptistry with intact Roman mosaics under the sand (which you can peek at), an acropolis and castle. It is still being excavated (while we were there) and as recently as two years ago they uncovered a life-size Roman marble statue. We wandered around for hours and had ourselves a picnic at the amphitheatre - very civilised.