For the seventh time since Durrës, our driver Giulio has stopped. Black clouds level with our eyeline emit a lightning rod onto the darkness below. We’re in the closest thing the Ceraunian Mountains of Albania have to a construction site (our second of the evening), with bits of broken cliff-face scattered across a semi-flattened patch of dirt.
They haven’t gotten round to building this part of the road yet, it seems, which is especially helpful under these circumstances.
I look down at the map on my phone and see what Giulio has apparently spotted. We’re stuck. Balancing his phone precariously in one hand, not looking in any direction but its tiny screen, he twirls the car’s steering wheel under his other hand as if he were driving a bumper car at a fairground.
We begin rolling backwards towards a 1,500-metre sheer drop, the Ionian Sea and whatever else is in between. Heavy rain drops smack the window pane as I stare out into the abyss. My phone buzzes. It’s Xav, sitting next to me.
After saying his last goodbyes to family and friends, he’s composed a brief epitaph for our trip and sent it to me.
It reads like a list of things not to do on holiday:
In a cloud
up a mountain
doing switchbacks
in the rain
in the dark
on a construction site
in the fog
in Albania
with a guy who fucking hates us.
You couldn’t script it.
Giulio was very friendly when I met him at Tïrana International Airport, where Xav and I intended to catch the last bus down south to the Albanian Riviera. He was standing beside a row of car rental stalls populating the airport’s outer perimeter, and seemed like a local who could point me to the bus station.
In fact, he hadn’t the slightest idea where it was, but was convinced I should rent a car for myself and my friends. I was waiting for just one friend, I explained, while the rest had already made it to our hotel. But it was just three hours in a car, he insisted, whereas a bus plus a taxi would take at least five.
‘I am not a criminal’
Before I knew it, Xav had arrived at the tiny airport, and we were walking with Giulio to a car he’d picked from a rental company he had some kind of indefinable association with. With night setting in and neither of us in a position to argue, we’d settled for a more expensive drive down the coast courtesy of my new acquaintance, over the hassle of our lengthy pre-planned bus + taxi combo.
Neither Xav nor I had an Albanian SIM card, but I’d decided to switch my roaming on briefly to send
a message 10 minutes into our journey. Xav asked if he could share some of my EU data, which was
slightly more Albanian-friendly than his British equivalent.
Giulio seized his chance.
He needed to share my hotspot, too, as his phone’s Internet wasn’t working. Given that he was our ride to the other end of an unknown country, I begrudgingly obliged.
It was after a brief pit stop for fuel that our worries really began. Giulio had an “MP3” he wanted to attach to his phone, he said, and a cousin to collect. We’d rather go straight to our destination, thanks. Just for the company, he said. It was a long journey.
We might have taken offense that our company wasn’t enough, if we weren’t beginning to panic about his real motives for picking up a stray cousin.
To put our minds at ease, he suddenly announced, “I’m not a criminal!” If he was trying to reassure us, he couldn’t have done any worse. And no, Giulio wasn’t a criminal, as it turned out. He didn’t have to tell us, though.
Xav put his foot down. No cousin. We were going straight down the coast, and that was that.
Except, it wasn’t: 15 minutes later, without warning we swerved 90 degrees off the highway into pitch black. Only the flickering of a broken neon light was ahead of us. It was soon behind us. The car’s low-beam told us we were at a dead end. Some sort of construction site.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I took my seatbelt off. The car slowed almost to a halt. I had my hand in the door handle, thinking of our luggage in the boot. “Er, where are we going?” Xav sounded the least sure I’d ever heard him. Giulio turned a corner into further darkness and the car sped up again. “We’re going to my club!” he declared.
Xav and I looked at each other, trying to decide what type of kidnapping involved an abandoned nightclub. Were we about to be pimped?
“Er, sorry, we told you. Take us to our destination.” A light appeared at the end of the road. It grew larger and brighter. “See, here is my club! I’m not a criminal!” Giulio reiterated, this time more aggressively. The car stopped. An old man in a tank top shuffled out of the club, Giulio muttered something to him and he turned back inside.
Would a criminal have such totally legitimate documents? Well, would he?!
“What’s going on?” we demanded. “Look, look behind you. Look at the documents!” Giulio gestured to the back of the car. “Would I have these if I am criminal?”He was now furious. “It’s not about that,” we stammered “It’s just .…” Another tank-topped man had appeared beside the car, younger this time, with a phone charger cable and three cans of Red Bull in his hand. “My cousin .…” “No! We’ve told you, sorry,” Xav’s firmness was back. “We don’t want an extra person in the car. Just take us to our destination, please.”
The car skidded away, leaving a confused cousin in its wake. Giulio didn’t say a word to us for the next three hours. The mountain road has returned. We’re out of the construction site and no longer dangling on the edge of oblivion.
Half an hour to the hotel. To freedom, and safety. My phone buzzes again.
One of our friends already there has decided to wind us up, by sharing the UK government’s official advice page for kidnappings in Albania.
I press the power button, planning to turn the damn thing off, then remember that Giulio is navigating one-handed via my hotspot, non-EU roaming charges and all. You couldn’t script it, indeed.
I should add that Albania is an incredibly beautiful place, abundant with stunning mountain vistas, untouched Mediterranean beaches and warm, welcoming people.
It’s safe, tourist-friendly and amazing value for money.
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Read more about Albania here in Dispatches’ archives.
Co-CEO of Dispatches Europe. A former military reporter, I'm a serial expat who has lived in France, Turkey, Germany and the Netherlands.
