We went to the Rodonit Peninsula, which was about 100 km from where we were staying. It might seem close, but not in Albania. Here, traffic follows its own rules. Covering this distance took us 3h 15m, which gives an average of about 30km/h. And such a cruising speed must be taken as the norm in Albania.
In this country, traffic rules are generally not respected. For someone used to orderly traffic in other European countries, this is a kind of shock.
The most difficult were roundabouts and various types of intersections where there are no traffic lights or road signs. The traffic is chaotic, whoever was faster and braver had priority. It took us a while to figure out how to drive here and when we discovered that one rule applied – the bigger one had priority, driving became easier. And since we were traveling in a large van, we had priority over passenger cars, and we let vehicles larger than ours pass. Simple, right? The only thing you had to change in your head was that yielding was something you couldn’t expect from other drivers. And you have to watch out for lunatics who seemed to have gotten their driver’s license from a cereal box and drove straight into oncoming traffic, or cut across intersections in the shortest possible path. Traffic lanes — what’s the point if you can turn wherever there’s space?
We drove part of the route on the highway, and it might seem that the pace of driving should be faster. But not in Albania. There, the motorway, despite its name, had nothing in common with what we know from other European countries. We were not surprised that the highway exits were roundabouts, that there was no fence along the route, and there were fruit stalls on the side of the road. The only thing that made this route different from the others was the fact that it had two lanes in each direction.
Access to the Rodonit Peninsula was via local roads of poorer quality. We encountered potholes, gravel roads, and even cows walking along the road. At the very end of the road leading to the destination there was a barrier that was opened for a fee. We found a place to park in a clearing and went for a walk along the ridge of the peninsula.
The views were nice, in the distance you could see people swimming in the sea. After a while we reached the ruins of the castle. We walked for a while in the shade of the old walls and went out to the beach. Everything would have been fine, but suddenly the spell was broken by garbage — it looked like a landfill. We looked for crabs for a while, but you could forget about swimming.
Yes, it must be openly admitted that the ubiquitous garbage is a problem in Albania. The inability to deal with waste was visible everywhere. In places like the beach, it’s especially sad. There was a lack of awareness and proper habits among the residents. We saw people throwing food packaging out of the window while driving a car, there were no waste bins, no organization for recycling and garbage collection.
After returning home, we found out that the problem in Rodonit Bay was the garbage that got there from the Lumi and Matit rivers and settled on the castle side due to water currents. Apparently, on the other side of the peninsula, the beaches looked much better.
On our way back, to improve our mood, we shopped for fruit at a roadside stall.
We ended the day in Durrës at the Mali i Robit campsite. Durrës is a fairly large tourist city with a port. The seafront was lined with hotels that had private beaches. We went to one of the beaches for an evening swim. Thanks to the fact that the beaches were under the care of hotels, they were clean and there was no garbage. However, there were crowds of tourists, beach umbrellas and deckchairs.
