Preze -> Tirana

Waking up in the top of the hill was pretty beautiful and going down the hard hill was so faaaast...
We cycle to tirana where we meet a local organizer from a local NGO promoting bicycles... with them we cycled in the new bus and bicycle shared lanes and took some pictures for future propaganda about bicycling in tirana, in the mean time some other local activists were spreading flyers in the local park where we also had company of lots of local children looking at us for hours!!
We still had some time to discuss a little about my general opposition to bike lanes and introduce vehicular cycling and then we went to a recent opened hostel that made us a special price to camp in their garden (really nice people).

Ondreij auto*mat t-shirt

In the night marcha, me and jorden went out to walk and look for rakjia (local spiritus) and chocolate :D

Durres -> Prezë

transformed taborda (luckly it just stayed few hours so bad)

I wake up with an allergic reaction, probably to mosquitoes bites (something that didn't happen to me for long, long time), and a funny swallow face...

We cycle back to Dures where Isabel (Germany/England/Bosnia) joined us, and then we continued in a road parallel to the highway to Preze, a small village with a castle in the high top of a hill (last 3 or 4 km took almost one hour to climb).
There we meet some people responsible for a recent permaculture project (as i was felling really tired of the allergy i slept almost all the meeting and afternoon)
We mount the tents inside the castle with a great view over the long flat surface bellow...

Shkalinur -> Durres

In the morning we cycled some km in the sand next to the sea water direction Dures.

On three wheels next to the sea :D

Arriving there we had a meeting with Irene (???) of a local NGO about the problems in the city, there is a big italian coal power plant planed to be built in Porto Romano and local people are not really aware of the problems of it.

saying goodbye to lilly and babsi

After the lunch, bapsy and lily left us to cycle alone, faster by the coast, direction north.

Porto Romano

We then cycle to see the future place of the power plant (Porto Romano) and had a flyer distribution action in a big avenue of the city.
In the same avenue, in the evening, we projected two movies about coal problems (sadly the sound system was too weak and no one could really understand them) from Bankwatch (the organization Ondrej works on).
Already late, and after a dinner in the avenue while being watch by really interested people on how we eat (people in albania don't really find staring at other people as bad education and they do it constantly in a really deep way that you take time to accept), we cycle to a field next to the city where we camped with the company of thousands of annoying mosquitoes!!

Spille -> Shkalinur

waking on the beach

morning swim

Yesterday we planned a beach cleaning action in order to try to show sporadic beach tourists the quantity of garbage in this beautiful beaches, after lunch we all walk to the beach with some big plastic bags and cleaned a little part of the beach, not having people speaking albanian in the group is hard to pass a message, but at least we start doing something as a self-organized action group...

beach cleaning action

After unmount and cleaning the camp we follow a dirt road next to the beach for some km in the hills, passing lots of small villages and end up camping in a nice beach full of bunkers (albania built 700 thousands bunkers in the war time to defend the country so they are common every where you look)

babsitaborda on three wheels :pbike, sheep, sea and sun :D
cycling on the hills
Nizam (turkey) on top of a bunkerbiketour turn right signYarden and the sunset

Spille

Resting day in the forest next to the beach... Before lunch, we had a workshop about Israel-Palestine conflict given by yorden (israel) where we could understand a little more about the conflict, its origins and how it changed during history...

Israel-Palestine conflict workshop

After lunch me and felix (Austria) built a wooden construction in one of the trailers to carry the Biketour banner all the time and i painted some more stencils in yellow patches to give to the people who will leave next days...

Yarden, Lily, Sven, Nizam, Neils around the fire

We had a great dinner in the beach, and some of us stayed there sleeping with sand as a mattress and the sky as a roof (summer time is great to see falling stars :D)

Elbasan -> Spille

waking in the elbasan monumental park

In the morning we cycled direction Spille and stopped in a village in the way where, after using my italian language talent :p, we could get a kitchen to use inside a restaurant, we stayed there (ab)using the space all afternoon...

Elbasan industriesbreakfast in a "watermelon gas station"aggressive babsi :pplaying games in the lunch time
felix, neils, benoit, jania, beranger,daniel, me and ondreijmeeting circle after lunch

in the noon, we cycled to Spille beach were, while me and jania went to buy dinner, the others found a great place to mount camp
we cooked on the beach after one of the bar owners got us a safe place to make fire and talk till late around fire...

Liza lighted by the fire :D