About 300km or 6 and 1/2 hours (that is about 50km/hr or 30mph) from Durres, is Saranda, a small town of about 30,000. It is built on the hillside and spills down into the sea. Saranda is one of the cleanest cities we have seen in Albania and the water along the city is also very clean. The beaches are very different

from those around Durrës in that they are very rocky and deepen very quickly. Needless to say, Saranda is a summer tourist destination, but we have heard it has gotten too expensive for Albanians to go there and last year they had a 50 percent vacancy in the summer.While Saranda is very nice, getting there from Durrës is not. You can catch a bus from about 7am until noon. Because the buses leave from Tirane, the exact time of arrival in Durrës is impossible to know, so you go down to the beach bus stop and wait for the next bus. Criss had scoped the bus schedules the week before and there was an 11:30 bus, so we figured the approximate schedule is every hour around the 1/2 hour. Based on this extensive research, we arrived at the bus stop around 10am thinking we would catch a 10:30 bus. We did, but it did not arrive until 11:15.

The nice thing about this bus was seats in front of the rear wheel were available. If you are prone to motion sickness that is a small detail that you pay attention to as the ride towards the middle of the bus is smoother. Also, as we get on, there is another Peace Corp Volunteer on the bus, Andrew, returning from Thanksgiving. (These people are everywhere!) He was surprised to see us catching such a late bus for Saranda. He was getting off about half way and would be home around 3 or 4. That meant we would not be off the bus until 5 or 6. This time of year, sunset is about 4:30, so we have a bit of travel after dark, which we all try to avoid. And he was correct, as we did not arrive in Saranda until 6:15. You do get one 30-minute stop on this ride, so after 7 hours, we were ready to do something different.
Of course the ride down was very interesting. We when through Ballsht, the oil production center of the country, then through Tepelena where a large water bottling plant is located, then through Gjirokastra (a stop on our return trip) where we picked up a lot of students heading home for the weekend, and finally over a high mountain range and down to the sea. For the most of the trip, the landscape was a drier climate than Durrës as the valley we followed is in the rain shadow of the 1200m (approx 3600ft) mountains. Once we crested the mountain, the scenery changed to pine forest and mountain streams. One of the downsides of public transportation is they do not stop at the Kodak picture overlooks, so there is no evidence of this change in landscape.

Arriving in Saranda, we encountered our first brush with extremely pushy taxi drivers and hotel hustlers. Criss had very cleverly secured all items in his luggage, including the hotel directions, and therefore, we had no idea of where we were going, except to the beach. After making the mistake of asking for directions, we were swamped by aggressive vendors hawking taxi service and hotels. We finally walked away and made our way toward the sea. Down at the shore (2 blocks), we asked directions to the hotel at a local/fast food place and they did not know. We don’t know if they did not know the hotel was only a block away or if they just could not understand our accented Albanian. We accosted another merchant down the street who politely pointed across the street to the hotel. We checked in without a problem and then ventured back out to find a place for dinner, avoiding the taxi stands and bus station.

Our activities for the weekend included going to Butrint and exploring Saranda. Butrint was a good Saturday outing and Sunday was spent exploring Saranda. While Saranda may be popular in the summer, it closes up off-season, except for the more expensive restaurants and walking through the town took less than 3 hours. Aside from avoiding the taxi drivers or sitting in a locale along the boardwalk, there is not much to do in the town. While Corfu is just a 30-minute boat ride across the bay, we did not have our passports nor had we gotten permission from the country director to leave the country, so we will explore that island later.

On Monday, we headed to Gjirokastra by way of Delvine. Why? Because we know the volunteer there and we had the time. Delvine is not exactly on the beaten path as the pictures of the bus stop and Carol waiting for the bus indicate. But it does have snacks!