Bikepacking Albania – Part 2

Continuing on from Part 1 of our adventures through the Balkans, this leg of our journey had us bikepacking from the southern end of Macedonia, and back through Albania via Lake Ohrid, a football game in Elbasan and the charming town of Berat.

A few days cycling through Macedonia from Demir Kapija to Lake Ohrid reminded us that winter is coming! Crisp, blue skies during the day, minus degrees and sleeping in puffer jackets at night 🥶. After a year on the road chasing summer, this change in the seasons was quite a shock to the system.

The impending winter even had us spending a -4°C night camped in a half-built church. We made the most of the completed fireplace, and a couple of friendly dogs helped us finish our BBQ dinner. One of our favourite finds from our time in the Balkans has been Ćevapi. These are small minced meat sausages usually served with flat bread and raw onions. We were able to utilise a stray terracotta roof tile as a grill plate to make our own campfire version. There’s a life hack for ya!

As we rolled through the back roads, my temperamental freehub decided that it would be a great time to start up with its squeak again. I’m sure anyone with a noisy freehub knows that it’s one of the fastest way to instigate a mental breakdown. Thinking only of our sanity in the moment, we found a bike mechanic in Bitola that agreed to take a look at it … and promptly started attacking it with a hammer 🫨. All we could do was trust the process.

Fortunately a boy on a bicycle stuck around to act as translator. Albanian children are always keen to practice their English with us. He got a bit of a lesson too, and rode away with some new English words up his sleeve, namely “buggered”, “cheap piece of crap” and “belongs in the bin”.

The bill for rebuilding my hub? $10NZD! 

Being able to ride my bike without the psychological torture of a rhythmic squeak? Priceless.

Bitola itself was a cute wee colourful town. We were kinda disappointed we had to keep moving as we would have loved to spend more time exploring here. 

We made it to the major climb over to Lake Ohrid – a 14km, 700m ascent (taking us up to 1500m). It took us on a ride through changing autumn colours with some epic views. Tom decided to turn this climb into a handicap race. He gave me a head-start while he explored another abandoned communist hotel on the shore of Lake Prespa’s – Hotel Evropa. Like other abandoned hotels of this time, it is not “under new management” or “scheduled for demolition” or under any sort of protection. It’s simply there, completely deserted, slowly rotting away.

After almost 2 hours, I almost had Tom beat up the climb, but 500 metres from the top he finally caught me! I may have let out a few swear words as he passed me with a smug grin. You would have thought he would have let his girlfriend have this one, but no mercy!

We had a well deserved lunch perched on a rock high above Lake Ohrid. As we started descending, we wondered why we hadn’t seen a single car the whole day. Turns out that Galicica National Park is closed to cars at this time of year – we had this amazing, winding road to ourselves.

Ohrid Town – first of all, is BEAUTIFUL. However, it felt like a lot of the other touristy towns we had already explored in the Balkans. Same old town, same gelatarias, souvenir shops & expensive coffees. We made the most of the rest, and the heater in our apartment before crossing the border into Albania once again.

By the way – shout out to Elbasan Backpacker Hostel for letting cycle tourists camp on their lawn FOR FREE! The breakfast they provide, with homemade bread and marmalade jam, and fresh eggs from the free-range chooks was so nice to wake up to.

Near Elbasan, there is a natural hot spring where you can visit one of the surrounding hotels and pay to use their thermal baths and soak in the mineral water. We convinced Eduart, the owner of the hostel to come with us for a spa day. We had images of soft lighting, fluffy white towels and burning incense.

What our $20NZD in fact got us was 10 minutes with an electroshock machine, a massage with some of the burly, no-nonsense Macedonian woman, mud being aggressively smeared IN ALL PLACES, and a quick dip in some smelly, green water. 5 outta 5 stars.

Eduart took lots of photos of a naked Tom, smothered in mud. It was funny at the time, but to this day, even after repeatedly asking, we haven’t been able to get any of those photos from him. They probably exist in some weird corner of the internet if anyone cares to search for them…

Scrubbed, steamed and smelling of rotten eggs, we headed back to our hostel. We got talking to another cyclist Ryan (from the UK), who has since come to be one of our good friends in our wee network of cycle touring connections.

We got stuck into a few beers, tinkered with bikes and talked shit into the evening. When a Czech backpacker offered us some of his whisky before going off to bed and leaving the bottle on the table, we thought it would be rude to not finish it. Sorry dude …

As always, Ryan was cycling one way, and we were going another. So we said our goodbyes and it was on to an easy downhill day to Berat for us!

The Christmas market and the big tree being built in the main square reminded us of the time of year – how is it almost the end of 2024 already? This marks almost one year on the road for us!

Undeterred by reports of bad weather, we had found a potential cool little camp spot about a day’s ride from Berat. We left town and got off the tourist path. The small towns we passed through quickly became more “rustic”, with old babushka woman watching us pass from their stoops, and farmers getting around on donkey-drawn carts.

As it started lightly drizzling, we finally found our camp, next to “Vokopole Bridge“. This is an old Ottoman bridge down a dirt track in the absolute middle of nowhere. It was amazing to see that it had survived in such good condition. We were genuinely surprised that it wasn’t marked on any maps or signposted at all on the road!

The night was spent around a small campfire, listening to the trickling stream (with half an ear also out for any crazy wildlife). We never try to plan for out-and-back rides, but this wee detour here was totally worth it just to have an awesome piece of the world all to ourselves.

Well, as predicted, the skies completely opened up in the night 🌧️🌧️🌧️. We were suddenly faced with a wet tent pack up and a very muddy ride back to town. Someone ordered some real classic peanut butter mud too…

We sheltered out of the rain at a small town called Politican, and caught the attention of the local teenagers. When an Albanian kid asks if they can ride your bike around town, I guess the correct response is “sure thing!”? I watched as my bike sped off around a corner, ridden by a boy who looked like he was having the time of his life. This was when I suddenly remembered that all of my worldly possessions, passport and wallet were all going with it…

Hey Siri, play ‘Time to Say Goodbye‘ by Andrea Bocelli.

Luckily, he reappeared and insisted on cutting a few more laps. He really put my 11-tooth sprocket to work, we think to try and impress the uninterested looking girls hanging out in the park nearby. Some kids even took on the challenge of Tom’s nearly 60kg bike, we were impressed! This is also where we met ANTUAN THE ONE, an awesome 17 year old who spoke amazing English. He had some crazy stories to tell about life growing up in rural Albania.

We treated the bikes to a “Lavazho” – an Albanian car wash. Albanians really love their cars, and car washes are just as plentiful in this country as churches and kebab shops. We also turned our B&B into a laundromat as we aired everything out. This was to the absolute frustration of our elderly host – who didn’t grasp that she couldn’t just walk into our apartment and rearrange our things whenever she liked.

I’m guessing other cycle tourists out there can relate to booking cheap accommodation just to dry stuff out? Nothing worse than a sodden pannier bag!

Where to next for us on our Albanian journey? You’ll have to read Part 3 to find out!