17th September Drymades to Berat (via the Llogaraja pass)

After a restful day we headed up over the Llogaraja pass, the highest point is 1027m which is quite low in comparison to many passes we have been over. However this route had sheer drops several inches from the road with missing barriers along many sections, there were also numerous memorials to commemorate the death of previously unfortunate drivers. Cass was driving and thought Bek was being surprisingly quiet, when she commented on the great view Beks response was a “ yepp “. Cass thought this was strange and then asked Bek if she was okay Bek said “These sheer drops keep giving me vertigo, the road is so narrow don’t take your eyes off it!”.When we arrived in Berat we couldn’t find the YHA hostel we were supposed to be staying at, we had the right road but drove up and down trying to find it and couldn’t find a building which even resembled a hostel. We eventually asked for directions in a car repair place, the man in the car place then rang someone on his mobile and nodded for us to wait in our camper someone else translated and said the hostel manager would be along to collect us shortly. We weren’t sure if this was a con and his friend would arrive and try and rent us a room in his house. Anyway after 10 minutes a man with a young guy approached us, they asked if we had a reservation and how many nights we planned to stay. We said we didn’t have a reservation and planned to stay for two nights, they looked at each other and the older man gave a kind of shrug, sigh and a doubtful look and then made a very long loud phone conversation, he hung up and then had another long and loud conversation in Albanian with the younger guy and then he said “okay you can stay?!?”. We thought maybe they were full (or would be the next night as it would be Saturday) but they said to follow them to the hostel. We then reached a building with locked gates which we thought was strange for a YHA, when we got out of our vehicle the older man (translated through the younger boy) started asking us loads of questions such as ‘were we going out tonight?’ ‘when would we be back the next night?’ etc etc. Once again they proceeded to speak to one another in Albanian, if we hadn’t seen the YHA sign on the window we would have done a runner but instead we checked in, our dormitory was empty and we weren’t sure what the fuss was all about. The hostel turned out to be the strangest YHA we had ever stayed in. As well as the previously described shenanigans there were black bags full of various medications on the stair well, there was no reception and the place was overrun with local kids during the day.