February 2021 found us in one of the few countries worldwide without imposed lockdowns and travel restrictions: Albania. It was, in fact, for this particular reason we were there in the first place. We had settled in the southern coastal city of Saranda, where we experienced some lovely, halcyon days during the last winter weeks. We had already been at the beach a couple of times; the temperature exceeded 20 Celsius at midday. It would be lovely to go kayaking, we thought.
We searched the Internet, but couldn’t find any kayak-renting places. Only one place showed up for our “Saranda kayak” search, but that was a gelateria. We happened to have noticed the place down by the promenade. There were indeed a couple of kayaks lying by its entrance. Although an ice-cream place, we decided to contact the owners and ask if they could rent us a kayak by any chance.
The place was owned by a very nice and extremely generous local man called Charis. It turned out that he wasn’t interested in renting his kayaks, but he offered to borrow us one for free!
We agreed to meet the next morning and have a coffee down by the seaside. So we did. We had some nice talks about various subjects, and he also gave some good recommendations for places to head to on our imminent paddling trip. Then we carried his tandem kayak down to the shore, and out we set.
We only had a couple of hours, so we wouldn’t be going far. We paddled west along the bay and made it just around the first promontory after the city end, some 6 km both ways. It was a lovely short trip. It would be nice to come back in the summer sometime and go on some proper kayaking. The area offers lots of beautiful destinations. One could head down to Butrint Lake or even Corfu, for example.
Accommodation and Activities in Albania
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