Weekend Hiking Trip

This past weekend, my sitemate and I took a couple of kids from our Outdoor Ambassadors youth group camping. The area was absolutely beautiful and no one got injured, so it is going into the books as a great success. Camping is not very common at all in Albania, and since our youth group is environmentally focused, it made sense to take them camping, and it was a novelty for them.

We had to travel through Korce, which is a larger city, on the way to our hike/ camping site. As I was walking through the market in Korce, I saw a man casually leading a bear on a leash down the street. It was weird. Welcome to Albania. We then continued from Korce via public transportation (minibuses) to the village of Voskapoja. Voskapoja is a tiny village with a population of only around 200 people, but is known for its beautiful old churches.

From Voskapoja we headed out on a two hour hike into the wilderness and eventually found a good place to camp for the night. Most of you are probably wondering how I was able to manage to take a bunch of high school kids camping. I am not known for my practical skills, and my outdoor skills are essentially nonexistent. I am fairly certain that this was the first night of my life that had ever been spent in a tent that wasn't located in a backyard. Luckily, my sitemate, Mark, is well versed in camping and did all of the hard stuff (ie setting up the tent, starting the fire, cooking the food, and figuring out where the hell we were going.) Here we are hiking out to our campsite. The area of Albania where we went hiking is full of pine trees, which is not very common in Albania. The country is really small area- wise but has a lot of different looking physical landscapes. It makes for very interesting travel, and I'm lucky to have the opportunity to explore the different landscapes that Albania has to offer.