Tides: kayaking the Ionian coast

I’ve always favored the shorter, shyer siblings of extreme sports. I opt for tree-climbing, for example, over rock climbing, sledding over snowboarding, and bike commuting over serious cycling. So when the possibility of a 3-day sea kayaking trip presented itself, I paused. The intensity sounded like my level, but three days was pushing it. Luckily, I like pushing it. I signed up.

The first day, I met the rest of the group in Tirana. The other tourists were two American girls from New York. Danni was visiting her sister Molly in the Peace Corps here. The guide Armandi is from here, as well as his girlfriend Marcella. Everyone in the group was super athletic. Danni reminded me of my own sister Gina. They both have a collection of photos of themselves in advanced yoga poses all over the world. My arms were suddenly looking very twiggy.

We arrived to Queparoi, the starting point, after dark and spent the first of three nights camping on the beach under the stars. The next morning, we packed everything we had into the kayaks and took off. We paddled the calm waters for about 6 hours, stopping at some great little white pebble cove beaches. Boat access only, nobody else in sight. The coast’s rocky cliffs and translucent turquoise waters have a Balearic feel, minus the traces of mass tourism.

By day three, we had spent three nights sleeping under the stars on the beaches and we’d covered over 25 kilometers. Surprisingly, I had kept up with the athleticism of the group, but I was losing steam. The last few kilometers caught us off-guard with rough sea conditions. Turquoise turned dark blue with white caps. Those last few hours were the longest of the trip, made possible by Armandi’s mad guide skills and the large dose of adrenaline that I wasn’t sure would be included or not. Bottom line: living out of a kayak is the good life for exactly three days.






Me, Molly, and Danni





kayak fuel











Armandi, Marcella, me, and beach bonfire

Freewheeling: Shkoder Lake, Albania

On our way back from Vermosh and Tamara, we spent a day and a night in Shkoder. This small city is the gateway to the northern Albanian Alps. Our job here was to find a good bicycle route for OA to offer as a daytrip.

We had arranged bike rental from a hotel and restaurant that has a collection of retro-style bikes to lend. Then, using a rough diagram that the restaurant owner had drawn us, we mapped a route from the city center onto a beautiful little road that runs along Lake Shkoder. The mountain lake saddles the border between Montenegro and northern Albania, and it is so big that you only see more water on the horizon. What you won’t see is crowded docks, high-rise buildings, or much development at all.

Cycling down the road, the lake is to the right, a mountain landscape is ahead, and olive trees are all around. We cruised along the shoreline, where families from nearby were enjoying the sunshine and fresh water on sporadic little pebbled beaches. About 11 kilometers later, the pavement ended and we arrived at Zojag where we took a dip in the lake.

Zojag highlight: the fresh fish meal on the pebbled beach of Zojag, where the restaurant served us the daily catch along with some homemade cornbread. Perfect.

"Maxing it to the max"













My OA companions, Laura and Lieke

Authenticity: Vermosh, Albania

Albania’s northern highlands are known as the Albanian Alps, and this is where some of the most traditional village life and untouched scenery can be found. Over the weekend, my two OA co-workers and I traveled to the northernmost village of Vermosh, just short of the Montenegran border, to help put this remote region on the map.

For centuries, traditional village homes have been in the hospitality business by custom, receiving travelers who were moving through the Balkan region by caravan. Now, this tradition of hospitality means a little economic opportunity for these families to host today’s travelers who appreciate the local culture and unspoiled nature of the area more and more.

I’ve developed a major crush on World Hotel Link, an online booking system whose mission is to provide the IT platform necessary for locally-owned and smaller-scale accommodations to market themselves on the web. It focuses on parts of the world such as Albania where technological resources are lacking and whose local economies have the most to gain. Outdoor Albania has partnered with WHL to help these northern Albanian village guesthouses get online. Our job was to gather all the information necessary to make these truly authentic accommodations their own WHL-powered websites.

The first highlight of the trip was the village homestay in Vermosh where Flamur and his family received us in their guesthouse. We shared a home-cooked dinner with them and they told us how the guest home was vacant because six of Flamur’s siblings had immigrated to the United States. They poured us shots of Raki, the local brew, which serves as an extra blanket on cold alpine nights.

The second highlight was the Nature Hostel, where an Albanian carpenter has his guesthouse ready and has even built a tree-house bar where mountain spring water was pumped up into a bucket to keep the drinks cold. Brilliant! Now he’s just waiting for tourists to come and enjoy it. I’ll do everything I can to bring these people some business.

serious hay











mountains, even by my Colorado standards

Headquarters: Tirana, Albania

This is the first post from Tirana, the capital of Albania. The adventure began with a google map search of where on earth Albania is. This is a small country in the Balkan region of southeast Europe, just north of Greece and an overnight ferry ride east of Bari, Italy. I stumbled upon it because of a web internship opportunity with Outdoor Albania, where I’ll be working for the summer.

In the first few days of street-wandering in Tirana, I was surrounded by evidence that I wasn’t in the western Mediterranean euro zone anymore. Traffic is loud and chaotic; even the stoplights are confused. Sidewalk markets pop up each morning, offering everything from locally grown produce to mass-produced plastic wares to used shoes, and then vanish at sunset. The street food situation is promising: my favorite so far is the byrek, a pastry filled with surprises like spinach, yogurt and feta cheese. It might take awhile to get tired of these. Ubiquitous corn on the cob is another plus. The local currency is the Lek, and a US dollar buys around 108 of them. One byrek: 30 lek.

One of my favorite sites around the city is the Blloku district, whose access used to be limited to the communist ruling elite. Now it is the city’s fashionable bar and restaurant district, where anyone willing to pay too much for a drink can go to be seen. Another fun spot is Aquadrom, the city pool, where everyone goes to stay cool in the summer. The current OA intern and I spied on the VIP area, where 300 lek extra buys you a lounge chair near the pool that tries to be a daytime discotheque. No thanks. I prefer strolling in the city park for free. The lack of landscaping is endearing. Footpaths lead to a little man-made lake, where I have been meeting each day to work on my secret side project.

My “home” in Tirana (for now) is a backpacker hostel near the heart of the city. The local staff is good patio company, and it is a just a short walk to the OA office, where I’ll be working full time. The indoor hours with Outdoor Albania will be many, but the payoff is great: experience in the field of sustainable tourism plus enjoyment of the outdoor recreation that this beautiful country has to offer.

The meeting point: city park lake

McDonalds fail. The real thing hasn't made it here. Yet.