13th Lake Ohrid to Gjirokaster via Barmash pass

Some more quality roads, thank god we werent driving on it when it slid!

Cass thought that Albanians spoke Australian (it really means for sale)

Barmash Pass

Highway 1 Albanian style

Bed shop delivery man

In the morning we checked out of the campsite while the locals were sat in the restaurant having their breakfast of Raki, expresso and cigarettes (oh to be a local in my next life).
The drive to Gjirokaster took us over the Barmash pass which is 1759m high, we took the drive easy and stopped for lunch and coffee in various scenic spots. The drivers in Albania are crazy and they don’t even think twice about overtaking on mountainous blind bends where there are no barriers and sheer cliff drops, lets just say we had a few curt words here and there!
It’s also not uncommon to see roads where landslides have occurred and carried the road with it.
There are no campsites in Gjirokaster so we stayed in a hotel next to a lake just out of town, Bek was excited about the prospect of wallowing in a bath and as soon as we had eaten dinner in the hotel she went to run a bath. The water from the bathroom tap came out green and stank of stagnant water so that idea was soon forgotten.

12th September Lake Ohrid

The lake and some of the 60,000 bunkers

We woke up to sun and a bright blue sky ,Lake Ohrid is 34km long so we felt like we had woken up next to the sea. In the morning we tackled a 5kg pumpkin we had purchased from a roadside vendor the day before, this was a hard task with blunt knives and we narrowly avoided injury but it was worth it as the soup we made was delicious.
At one point we went to test the temperature of the clear water as we were contemplating going for a swim, we put our feet in and were sat relaxing on a step admiring the scenery when a snake came heading towards us. Bek who has a phobia of snakes saw it before Cass and jumped up yelling in a panic, Cass thought Bek had been bitten and in true Aussie style was watching the snake to identify it... that was before Bek grabbed her away lol and no we didn’t go swimming after that and the step we were on turned out to be on top of their nest! Apart from the snake incident the day was very relaxing. The campsite is also home to a trout farm (at least the fish isn’t caught from dynamite fishing which they practise in Albania and far north Australia) and at night we had dinner in the restaurant, we declined the endangered lake Ohrid Koran trout and instead opted for the run of the mill trout, the food was nicely washed down with a bottle of local wine.