Athens to Gjirokaster | Day 3

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Big day — the day we would cross over to Albania, once the most isolated country in Europe. Much has changed over the past 35 years on the continent. In that time, stories of an impoverished enclave ruled by a brutal communist dictatorship have given way to tales of pristine waters, pebbled beaches and breathtaking snowcapped peaks rising as high as 2700m above the seas.

May our Balkan adventure truly begin.

Meteora to Gjirokaster

March 20th, the third day of our crossing. Our path that day took us pretty much straight west on the E92, across the northern portion of the Pindus Mountains before veering northwest and across the border towards Gjirokaster.

Yours truly, looking at Pindus Mountains. In Kastraki.

We started that day with a good breakfast and a couple minutes contemplating the here and now.

Unlike Kalabaka, the principal tourist enclave at the feet of the Meteora, there’s something calming and embracing about Kastraki. Only minutes away, the pace is slower and people look at you closely as they often do in small towns and closely knit neighborhoods.

The owner of the coffee shop, a woman in her mid thirties with a kind yet matter-of-fact demeanor, was curious about where we came from and where we were going. Min learned that her husband came from a village high up on the mountain in the photo above.

Bikes saddled, riders well caffeinated, we set out west at 9am.

Within minutes, and later confirmed over several hours, we realized that the monoliths of Meteora were the gates to the mountains.

Preceded by the much maligned plains the day before, the road ahead would twist, turn, ascend and descend repeatedly all the way to the city of Ioannina.

The first couple hours were quite fun and beautiful though a bit more austere than the mountains we crossed north of Delphi. The altitudes were higher, winds stronger, clouds more plentiful.

Somewhere along the way we came across our Austrian doppelgangers. Riding a pair of BMWs — he a 1250, she a 750, both set up with street wheels and tires — they whizzed on by but somehow stayed only a turn ahead of us for the next 45 minutes. Fun to see yourself in a mirror that way.

Ioannina from above. Setting much more enticing than the outskirts.

Eager to reach the border and unimpressed with the outskirts of Ioannina we paused for short roadside breaks, but continued on until the border without a longer pit-stop.

E853 which took us all the way to the border was fairly wide and not busy. Min was particularly taken by the surrounding us mountains. Round and not too tall. Sweet, she called them.

We reached the border mid-day. This was our first crossing out of Schengen, a customs union including all of EU and a few non-affiliated European countries such as Switzerland, UK and Norway. Having had many a border adventure in Mexico over the past 30 years, I braced for impact given that we were bringing two foreign-plated vehicles into the country, a highly regulated matter on America’s southern border. All for naught. We were through in minutes.

On the Greek side, Min had her non-EU citizen finger scans taken in the passport control section and moments later we showed our bike registrations and proofs of ownership to the customs. On the Albanian side we presented our passports and vehicle docs at the same kiosk.

No one asked for our Green Card Insurance so I was glad that the guys at Mototouring in Milan, where we picked up the bikes, told us to buy it at the border. The insurance we’ve been using thus far works everywhere within the EU and even some non-EU Balkan countries but NOT in Albania.

Finding an insurance agent at the border wasn’t difficult at all. There are several booths offering such services on the way out past all the checkpoints. The guy who sold us our Green Card insurance was a little surprised that we were heading to Gjirokaster rather than Sarande, the beach town. He spoke a mix of English and Italian but anyone trying to purchase from him could get away with either. 15 minutes later we were on our way.

Albania, just across the border from Greece.

Entering a new country can be a little disorienting at first. The street sign alphabet was no longer partially illegible, the way it was for us in Greece, but as Albanian is its own unique branch of Indo-European it has nothing in common with the Romance and Slavic languages that we are familiar with. In other words, back to square one. Fortunately for us, as we’d soon learn, English and/or Italian do work in many situations. It’s said that Albanians are particularly fond of Italians so the plates on the back of our bikes would help, too.

Long story short, we reached our destination some 40 mintues later. The ride from the border north takes one through a valley between two mountain ranges and can seem a little boring at first, but the boring part goes out the window upon arrival in Gjirokaster itself.

The town is nothing like anything either one of us has seen before. The architecture is difficult to compare to any other in Europe, but eastern, Ottoman influences are very discernible. Min later described walking the streets of the old town like being in some exotic stan in southcentral Asia. The beauty of the town is hard to capture on large scale panoramic photos, but its charm is undeniable.

We parked the beasts right by our Airbnb just a couple streets north of the old town center and called it a day as far as riding. Doing so required considerable care — the beautiful cobblestoned streets are not only narrow and slippery, but very steep. A day or two later a German couple who struck up a conversation with us as they passed by referred to the act of riding and parking there as brave. I thought it was fun, but Min agreed.

We spent the rest of the day unpacking and exploring our new base on foot. We enjoyed it quite a bit. It couldn’t have been any more different than Athens before it.

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