Blizzards, snow ploughs and potholes

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Trip Start Nov 28, 2010 Previous
Entry Trip End Sep 29, 2011 Next
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  Barbullush, Shkodër, Albania
Friday, February 25, 2011

I awoke, and after those first few moments of forgetfulness I remembered the snowy scene I had fallen asleep to. I quickly opened the blind by my pillow.  "Uh-oh" would best describe my thoughts in a child suitable manner.  The snow was still falling, rather heavily.  But worse, there was what looked like a foot of snow all around us.  Worse still, around our tires.  These were all-weather tires, a middle level between regular tires and winter tires.  I was not optimistic about how they would fare in a foot of snow.  I laid there for a while watching through the bedroom window.  Plenty of cars were driving past the car park, albeit fairly slowly, but driving nonetheless in everything from small cars, to delivery trucks, to buses.  This raised my hopes of getting out of this town, but the issue was the thirty yards or so of thick snow separating us from the road.

We began to discuss contingencies.  We had passed a hotel not far from the car park on our way here.  We agreed that we would have to pack some clothes and head there if we couldn't get out, since we were out of food and the van needed filling and emptying of the kind we can only do at campsites.  This was not an appetising prospect.  We were anxious not to get stuck for a prolonged period anywhere, but certainly not in this unexciting backwater up a mountain.  We were going to have a quick breakfast and then see if we could make it out, but as I looked out the windscreen and watched the snow tumbling down, I realised that every second’s delay was making our task that much harder.  So we warmed the engine up while we battened down the hatches and defogged the windscreen.  Then, with everyone in their seats and my expectations firmly lowered, wondering to myself where we could find a shovel, I put our house into gear and pressed gently down on the accelerator.  And without the slightest hiccup we glided out of the car park and onto the road as though there were no snow at all.  With great relief we drove on, slowly and carefully in the still falling snow, to the hotel we had passed on our way in.  Not wanting to mess around with wrong turns in these conditions we had decided to go and ask for directions to Budva, the town to the south of us on the sea, below the mountain, where we would be away from these wintry conditions.  I was yet more relieved at having escaped the car park and a potential night in the hotel once I had spent a few seconds inside it.  I felt like I was in a ghost story, or perhaps the hotel in The Shining.  There was no one around and it was as cold inside as it was out.  With some trepidation I approached the desk and called out.  After a while a door behind the desk opened and I prepared myself for the sight of Jack Nicholson emerging from behind it.  Not all that surprisingly it wasn’t Jack.  The man who did emerge fortunately had enough English at his disposal to understand my query, and through an elaborate charade was able to convey the direction I should take to get out of town.

Once back in the van we followed our new directions and sure enough found our way to the edge of town on the correct road for Budva.  We had decided to skip breakfast until we reached the bottom of the mountain and escaped the snow.  It was still falling, always heavily, and we wanted to avoid any possibility of getting stranded.  The man in the hotel had also conveyed to me an approximate distance to Budva of 25 kilometres and an assurance that there would be no snow there.  Just as we left town we stopped to fill up the tank, and the man who filled our tank for us confirmed that Budva was snow-free and that in fact we would already be beyond the snow only five kilometers away.  This gave us some relief, though it wasn’t totally clear how the climate could change that quickly.  We drove on, still with snow falling but with plenty of other cars and some buses on the road with us.  We had made it and all would soon be well, thanks to our now greatly appreciated all-weather tires.

Five minutes later we saw some cars stopped ahead of us, so we slowed down until we could see if it was safe to pass them.  It was an odd scene, with a couple of vehicles seemingly parked diagonally and a few others parked along the side of the road.  As we got close we realised that some cars had become stuck as the road began to slope upwards.  Their tires were spinning but they couldn’t make any forward progress.  As soon as we realised this I sped up again, determined to get around them and not suffer the same fate.  Our fancy tires made it around a couple of cars with ease and I made the mistake of starting to feel proud of our trusty little van and its shiny tires.  The van suddenly began to lose a little grip as we tried to press forward.  Then it lost a lot of grip.  I knew what was about to happen and announced that we were about to get stuck.  We made it a couple more yards but then the wheels lost all traction and spun pointlessly, as the rear of the van started to slide out to the side.  I took my foot off the gas and allowed us to roll back a little before trying again.  But it was hopeless.  We rolled and reversed to the side of the road between several other contestants who had failed.  I asked the driver of the delivery van in front of us what happened now.  “Now we wait for the street cleaner”.  Assuming he meant a snow plough we settled in expecting a long wait.  In my side mirrors I saw a long line of vehicles trying their hand at the slope.  The occasional one made it through with proper tires or snow chains, but mostly it was like watching the Keystone Cops, with cars sliding all over the place.  We remembered that we actually had snow chains somewhere in the cargo hold in the back, but with absolutely no idea how to put them on, and not much desire to learn in the middle of a blizzard, we decided to see if the plough would come.

We didn’t have to wait long.  Within a few minutes we noticed two snow ploughs making their way through the throng of stuck cars towards our position.  The first was just ploughing, the second was ploughing and dropping grit behind it.  We were able to pull out right behind them and try again on the now grittier road.  There was a precarious moment where I wasn’t sure we would make it, but then we found enough grip to get past the spot that had defeated so many and we drove directly behind the ploughs.  The uphill portion continued for a while, but driving directly on the newly-dropped grit we had no problems.  Once over the crest of the mountain the ploughs pulled aside and for us it was plain sailing down to the bottom.  The snow continued heavily for most of the way down so we took it very slowly, and as Budva became visible below us the snow turned into rain.  Torrential rain mixed with scary gale force winds that caused the van to move substantially when it blew.  But at least it was now only rain.  We drove on a little while before finding a spot beside the road to stop for a late breakfast.  And to breathe a few sighs of relief after having escaped being stranded up the mountain, as well as making it through some fairly scary driving conditions safely.

After we set off again we actually ended up back in snow.  The route we were on to the Albanian border began to take us back up a mountain and into some very ugly-looking weather.  A quick look at the map showed us an alternative route through the capital of Montenegro and to a different border crossing, so we turned around and drove back down the mountain.  The new route took us through snow as well, but on a larger and more travelled road and, by chance, we found ourselves behind another snow plough which we followed for quite some time, until the bad weather had abated.

Eventually the snow was behind us and we drove the rest of the way to Albania through rain.  These last portions of Montenegro were not attractive.  It is not a rich country and all its beauty is of the natural kind rather than anything man-made.  Though it was the Garden of Eden compared to what was coming next.  We arrived at the Albanian border and after a short wait we made our way across.  And immediately began to rethink the decision to come.  We had read about the terrible quality of the roads and driving in Albania, and the country itself doesn’t come with a reputation for great beauty.  But somehow it turned out that our already very low expectations were in fact much too high.  Perhaps the incredibly dreary weather didn’t help its cause, but it was really rather depressing.  The photos show our first impressions of the country, for which the word “bleak” seems to have been invented.  There is also a terrible litter or garbage problem, with seemingly the entire country covered in it.  We had seen a tremendous amount of garbage beside the roads in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but Albania is something else.  As for the road conditions, it was like a bad joke.  And there was an added bit of stress to go along with the roads and the Albanian driving.  We were not technically allowed to be in Albania at all, as far as the rental company was concerned.  This is the only country which the insurance does not cover, and yet this is the country where we could destroy the car just by driving into an enormous hole, without even needing the help of the psychotic Albanian drivers.  Our plan was just one night here before driving on to Macedonia.  Coming here may not have been wise but the alternative was to drive through Kosovo, so this seemed the safer course.

So back to the roads.  We spent the first hour and a half driving at five miles an hour through the most diabolical roads we have ever encountered.  Apparently the other border crossing, which the snow had blocked from us, would have led to much better roads.  But not this one.  A constant slalom between holes in an unpaved, muddy dirt track is what awaits new arrivals through this border crossing.  Once we finally arrived at a paved road we soon saw for ourselves the other difficulty when driving in Albania.  The drivers appear to have no fear of death whatsoever.  We were constantly overtaken directly in front of oncoming traffic, or on blind bends, where I don’t understand how a collision could have been avoided had I not applied the brakes.  And though the roads were now on the whole paved, this doesn’t mean they no longer had holes.  The only difference now was that if we hit them we wouldn’t be going at five miles an hour and we would probably snap the van in two.

Happily we did not snap the van in two and a couple of hours later we arrived at our campsite, run by a Dutch couple and their three children who moved here a few years ago.  I was greatly relieved to turn the engine off and contemplate all the different kinds of scary that the day’s driving had involved.  Though in winter their restaurant is closed, that night the Dutch couple offered to cook us something anyway and we had a nice dinner in their little Albanian-styled dining room.

We had decided to stay a second day, so we spent it at the campsite getting things done and relaxing a little.  There was an intensely cold wind blowing during the day, so not much time was spent outside.  The boys did play a little football though.  That night the wind had really picked up and the sound of it blowing outside was eerie, as was the occasional shaking of the van.  Which I assume was from the wind and not some crazed Albanian hill-dweller.  Tomorrow we head for Macedonia where we will stay in a hotel for a couple of nights.  I was unable to find a single open campsite and it is a country that does not look favourably upon wild camping.  Plus we all felt like a nice hot shower and a warm bedroom.

(I should point out that we obviously have not been to any of the attractive sights Albania may have and should not dismiss it out of hand as a tourist destination.  Apparently there is a nice lake somewhere up a mountain.  Whether this is a mountain of trash is not clear.  We didn't explore the southern half of the country or its lengthy Mediterranean coast and I don't imagine we'll be hurrying back any time soon.  But it might be quite lovely.)

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More Pictures

Driving conditions 8 - our saviour	Driving conditions 8 - visibility worsening	Driving conditions 10 - stuck truck	Driving conditions 11 - Budva below, snow-free
Driving conditions 9 - following the grit	Flooded area close to Albania	Welcome to Shqipërisë (Albania)	First Albanian impressions 1
First Albanian impressions 2	First Albanian impressions 3	First Albanian impressions 4	First Albanian impressions 5
First Albanian impressions 6	First Albanian impressions 7	First Albanian impressions 8 - the Empire lives	First Albanian impressions 9
First Albanian impressions 10	First Albanian impressions 11	First Albanian impressions 12	First Albanian impressions 13
Albanian dinner 1	Albanian dinner 2	Bedroom Picture #75	Football at campsite 1
Football at campsite 2	Boys and flag

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