Reserve an eleven night Albania coast and river trip for the spring and September window

A river with no dam on it

The Vjosa runs about 270 kilometers from the Pindus mountains to the Adriatic. Nothing blocks it on the way, which is now rare in Europe. In March 2023 Albania made the whole length a national park. A dam at Kalivac had been drawn, funded and abandoned twice before that.

What free flowing looks like on the ground is a mess, in the good sense. Below Tepelene the water spreads across a bed of pale gravel half a kilometer wide. It splits into six or eight channels, rejoins, then splits somewhere else after the next storm. Gravel islands come and go between seasons. Terns and little ringed plovers nest on the open stones, which is why the islands matter.

Color is not fixed either: in clear weather the water runs green over gravel. After rain in the mountains it turns the gray of wet cement for two or three days. We spend two nights at Permet, above one of the wider braids. We walk the edge of it on three afternoons.

Stone, hot water and the Lengarica canyon

The Lengarica joins the Vjosa a few kilometers east of Permet. Just upstream of the meeting stands a single arched stone bridge, Ottoman work. It is narrow enough that two people pass sideways. Nobody agrees on the century. The masonry is dressed river stone laid in a shallow curve, and the parapet is low enough to be alarming.

Warm mineral water comes out of the bank below the bridge and collects in pools walled up with loose rock. It runs around 26 to 30 degrees Celsius, which is warm rather than hot. Where it has run a long time it leaves a crust over the stones. The crust is the color of old ivory, ridged like candle wax. Sulphur is faint but present.

Above the pools the canyon narrows to a corridor with limestone walls three or four stories high. You can wade a short way in when the water is low, in June or September. In April it is usually too cold and moving too fast.

Drive the coast road slowly

The road from Vlore to Sarande climbs the Llogara pass at 1,027 meters. It then falls to the sea in about seven kilometers of hairpins. On the way up you are in black pine and cold air. At the top you look down on the whole coast at once. The drop is steep enough that the view feels wrong.

South of the pass the villages sit above the water rather than on it. Dhermi and Himare are old stone standing over newer concrete. Qeparo has an upper village that is half empty. The climb up to it takes twenty minutes. At Porto Palermo a triangular fortress holds a low neck of land, water on three sides. It is dark inside, and ten minutes covers it.

We finish at Butrint, on a lagoon south of Sarande. Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Venetian work sit on the same forty acres, in trees. The Roman theater holds standing water through the spring.

Seven kilometers of hairpins, and what is going up beside them

This trip has a hard hour in it. The descent from Llogara is a continuous set of tight turns. There is a drop on one side and rock on the other. If you get car sick, you will get car sick here. A seat at the front helps, and the driver will stop. No version of that road is gentle.

The coast is a building site in places. A long tunnel and a widened road are under construction here, so you share the stretch with trucks. Unfinished concrete frames stand above several of the beaches, some of them for fifteen years, and nobody clears them. Photographs of this coast are usually taken with the frames just outside the picture.

Two smaller things. The beaches are pebble, not sand, and the stones are the size of eggs, so thin shoes hurt. The sea in April and early May is around 17 degrees, swimmable for about four minutes.

Where $1,485 else goes

This departure sits on the $1,485 rung, and it is not alone there. The office keeps every trip at that figure on one page so the number can be seen doing different work in different parts of the world. It does not rank them and will not tell you which is the better buy, because that is not a judgement a figure supports.

• The whole of the $1,485 rung
• All eight figures side by side
• Every departure in one table