Day three is when we started the hike. Basically, it’s a 9-mile through-hike from one town to another, Valbone to Theth. You end in Theth, which is only a few hours away from Shkoder in the Albania Alps. We set everything up through our hostel (Wanderer’s Hostel). They booked us transportation to a guesthouse in the mountains and the one night in the guesthouse.
At 7:30 am, we started our journey from Shkoder to Valbone. First, you take a 2 hour bus ride north where you change over to a ferry. The ferry took us 3 hours up a big river. When we got off the ferry, we took another small bus one more hour up the road where they dropped us off seemingly in the middle of nowhere. I guess the bus drivers are pretty familiar with the area because once we looked around, we found a small sign that pointed up a trail with the name of our guest house on it. We followed it and came up to an incredibly beautiful guesthouse that sits next to a shallow creek.
It’s a long journey to the guesthouse but every step of the way is full of beautiful views. If you end up chatting with a local, you won’t regret the time spent en route.
We arrived in the afternoon so we had time to take a long walk from the property to explore the area. We came across a little lake along a small trail. The whole place was breathtaking with giant mountains all around.
The guest house fed us dinner, breakfast the next morning, and gave us a little food for the hike. It was such a beautiful spot, we thought about staying an extra night but we only brought one day’s worth of clothes, so alas, we went on our way the next morning.
We began our hike before the sun fully came up. The trail starts along an older river bed and makes its way up one of the mountains at the end of the valley. Once you summit the peak, you come down the other side and follow it all the way down to Teth. The hike took us just less than 6.5 hours and we walked a total of about 9.5 mile. It was glorious. I really love hiking so this experience was incredible. The views never disappointed and knowing we were in the middle of nowhere in the Albanian Alps was such a cool feeling. The trail was very easy to follow and there were a few sparse cafes along the way where we could fill up our water bottles, use the restroom, and buy other drinks, food, snacks, and most important, beer (which is required when celebrating a good hike). This made the hike quite enjoyable.
When you set up the logistics of the hike, you don’t prebook your way back because people’s plans change too much. It’s possible to stay an extra night in Theth after you arrive or before you start, and there are multiple trails in the area which you can take, so you are supposed to book your way back whenever you get there. We heard it was really easy to do this and the last bus would leave for Shkoder at 4 pm. Well, it wasn’t so easy.
Right at the end of the trail, you come across a large parking lot where buses take off from and a big outdoor cafe with lots of seating to refuel after the hike. As soon as we arrived we started asking around but nobody seemed to know what we were talking about. The tourism office sent us right back when we went to ask them for instructions after exhausting the locals in the cafe. I’m still perplexed about the situation years later— surely enough people do this hike that the staff know just what to do when people show up…
Luckily, we met some other travelers in the same position and a local offered us a taxi ride back to town for a decent rate. We took it and got back to Shkoder that day. I’m guessing this is just as common— just find someone willing to taxi you back.
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