Starting Out Again

Our journey begins in the Balkans

Greetings.

It just seems like yesterday that I was closing my travelogue with a post to finish off our last trip and getting on with my summer. It is time to reactivate it. I have to say that I have a completly different attitude to this blog - don't know if I like that word - this time around. My anxieties of posting to the world, although still in the background, are really not an issue. I think it's important for me to keep communicating.

Babette and I are now in Europe - Albania to be exact. My intention was to send out a note a week or so ago to warm everyone up to the idea that you can expect irregular accounts of our travels again. Obviously that didn't happen.

We will be away six months. Yeah, I know that's a lot. I'm not sure we ever intended that it would be that long, but when we started to map out the different places we wanted to visit along our route, we came to the realization that this would take most of the winter.

I thought that this undertaking was too overwhelming at first, because I do the bulk of the planning. It was June and I was faced with booking much of the accomodation, travel, and other related logistics for six months in a fairly tight time frame. There was also a share of some fairly complicated arrangements. However, my suggestion of staying home to ski didn't go over very well.

Once I started, got into a couple of guide books, and looked at different options for treks (and beaches), I definitely got more excited about “starting out again”. It's funny though. Not until I actually leave the ground on a plane, does it often sink in that we are actually going somewhere.

So here we are. Babette and I flew to Germany, spent some time with Gaby, Babette's mom in the southwest, mostly got over our jet lag, and flew to Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro a couple of days ago. We were met at the airport by our guide to be driven a couple of hours into the hills of Albania.

It is from here that our adventures start. We have a 10 day guided hiking tour booked that will take us into the mountains that are shared with Montenegro, Kosovo, and Albania. We are traveling with Louis and Rob, two friends from Whitehorse who joined us in Frankfurt for the flight to the Balkans.

Our guide is Donika, a young woman from Kosovo who knows these mountains well. One of the more interesting parts of this trek will be traveling through the high seasonal villages of the local shepherds and cow herders of all three countries.

The countryside we will be traveling in is known as the “Accursed Mountains”. Wish us luck! Till next time …

Early morning in the village of Lepushe, before we start out on the first day.

Dinner in our first guest house in the mountains of Albania (evening before the previous photo). That's Rob, Louis and Donika beside me. Babette is obviously taking the picture.

Big snails here!

We're off.