nine nights, one minibus, two long driving days, three villages
A Small Group Albania Vacation Package From The Ionian Coast Into The Northern Mountains
This small group albania vacation package puts about twelve people in one minibus for nine nights. Two of those days are long drives, and they are the reason the route reaches villages a coach cannot enter.
Nine nights, from $2,190 per person.
Nothing here counts you and nothing here follows you off the page. One word can be written down, and only the word yes, so this strip stops coming back. What that means in full.
The road from Shkodra to the Valbona valley takes about four and a half hours in a minibus and roughly eleven in a coach, which is the entire argument for this trip. A large vehicle physically cannot make the turns above Fierza, so it takes the long tarmac route around, arrives after dark and leaves before the light is good. A sixteen seat minibus goes over the top, gets there in the afternoon, and the group sleeps in the valley.
That is what a small group albania vacation package buys here. Not comfort: the seats are ordinary and the road above Fierza is a single lane with drops on one side. What it buys is access to three villages, two in the north and one inland from Vlora, where the only accommodation is four or five rooms above a family kitchen. Twelve people fill those rooms exactly. Forty cannot.
This is the lowest priced trip in the catalog at this size, and the reasons are worth stating plainly rather than dressing up. Albania is inexpensive on the ground: a dinner of byrek, grilled lamb, cheese, bread and a salad runs about $12 in a village and about $20 in Tirana. The rooms are clean, family owned and simple, and several of them were bedrooms until recently. Nobody on this trip stays anywhere with a lobby.
- What size this is
- About twelve people and one guide, which is small enough that the guide answers questions out loud in a moving vehicle instead of through a microphone, and small enough that a village guesthouse with four rooms can take the whole group at once.
- What is actually included
- Nine nights in guesthouses and small family run hotels, mostly twin rooms with private bathrooms; all ground transport in one minibus with a local driver; one English speaking guide for the full nine nights; breakfast daily and six dinners, several of them cooked by the household hosting you; the ferry crossing on Lake Koman; entry fees at the archaeological sites on the coast; one mountain day with a local walking guide.
- Who else is on it
- About twelve, and never the same twelve twice: departures fill with couples in their fifties and sixties, a few solo bookers, and usually one pair of friends who booked separately and get seated together on the bus. Twelve means one table at dinner rather than three, one round of introductions rather than none, and a bus that stops when one person asks it to. It also means the day runs on the group's slowest walker, and on two mornings that walker sets a departure time the rest of you will feel.
- What it does not include
- International flights into Tirana and out again; lunches on all nine days, budgeted at about $8 to $15 each in this country; three dinners left free, including both nights in Berat; alcohol at any meal; tips for the guide and driver, which the desk suggests at roughly $60 per person for the trip; single occupancy, which adds $430; any optional boat hire on the Ionian coast; laundry, and there is one guesthouse where it is the only option for four days.
- Who should not book this
- Anyone who needs a lift or a level entrance. Two of the guesthouses are up stone steps with no rail, one has a bathroom on a different floor from the bedroom, and the mountain day involves three hours of walking on loose rock with a 900 foot climb. Anyone who cannot sit through a seven hour driving day twice should also look at something else, because those two days are structural and cannot be shortened.
Twelve People, One Vehicle, And What The Bus Cannot Do
Twelve is not a marketing number. It is where a guide standing at the front of a minibus can be heard by the back row over a diesel engine, and where the whole group can walk into a single family kitchen and be fed without the household having to borrow chairs. Above about twenty, both of those stop being true and the trip becomes a different product entirely.
The cost of twelve is that the route is fixed before you book. There is no vote about where to go on Tuesday. The minibus has one driver, and Albanian driving hours mean that after the Shkodra to Valbona day he is finished. If somebody wants to stay two more hours at Butrint, the answer is no, because the group is due at a guesthouse in the hills that has cooked for twelve at a set time.
The other cost is social. Nine nights with the same eleven people produces a small society by about day four, with its own habits and one or two people who talk more than the rest. Some people find that the best part. Others find it wearing. This office has had both said to it in the same week about the same departure, which is honest information rather than a complaint.
from $2,190per person
- Where it comes from
- The lowest figure this office has actually booked this trip at inside the last twelve months.
- Read as
- Two people sharing one room, unless the rows above this say otherwise for your case.
- What lifts it
- A smaller party than the size this trip is filed under, a better grade of room, a peak week, and a late decision.
- When it stops moving
- When an operator puts its own name under it in writing. Until then treat it as the floor of a range this office has seen.
Whatever you settle is settled with that operator, on whatever system it runs. No part of it passes through this office and no card is ever seen here.
Months That Work Here, And The Two That Do Not
The northern mountain section closes the trip's usefulness for roughly half the year. The Valbona pass and the walking day above it are snow covered from late November, and the guesthouses in the north shut. The coast stays open longer but the ferry schedule on Lake Koman thins out, so a winter version of this route would be a different trip on different roads, and this office does not sell it.
Heat is the other constraint. The Ionian coast in late July and August runs into the mid nineties Fahrenheit, and the archaeological sites have very little shade. The walking is done early on those departures, which means a six in the morning start rather than eight.
- May
- Everything green, rivers high from melt, some cold nights in Valbona at around 45F
- June
- The best balance: coast warm, mountains clear, guesthouses not yet full
- July and August
- Coastal heat in the nineties, walking moved to early morning, busiest beaches
- Mid September to mid October
- Water still swimmable, mountain color turning, this office's own preference
- Late October
- Mountain nights near freezing, some village kitchens already closing for the season
- November to April
- The northern half is not passable on this route and the trip does not run
What Is Fixed On The Day You Confirm
Confirmation locks four things at once, and after that the moving parts are small. The guesthouses in the north have four to six rooms each, so the departure is capacity limited by the smallest of them rather than by the minibus. That is why a departure can be closed at nine people while another at eleven is still open.
- Deposit$400 per person holds a named place on a dated departure and triggers the room block in the two northern villages
- RoomingTwin or double is confirmed within a week; single occupancy at $430 depends on the northern guesthouses having a spare room, and sometimes they do not
- BalanceDue 60 days before departure, after which the guesthouse and the minibus are paid and the money is out of this office's hands
- Final paperworkAbout three weeks out: the driver's name and cell number, the guesthouse addresses, the walking day route with the climb figure, and a packing note about the stone steps
Ask The Awkward Question First
The useful questions are the ones about steps, driving hours and bathrooms, and this office would rather answer them before a deposit than after. Send a message and it is read the same working day. If the question needs a figure put together, that takes two to four working days, because it means calling the guesthouses.