Zvernec - Narta Lagoon

A few kilometers on the north of Vlore is located the second biggest lagoon in Albania. It is called Narta, and it is well known for its production of salt. When you are driving from Fier to Vlora you will observe on left side of the road big mountains of sand, they are really salt of the Narta lagoon. Additionally there is a great biodiversity of plants and animals on the lagoon. On the 13 century it was constructed a Byzantine church in a small island in the middle of Narta lagoon. With the time the church was converted into a Monastery, and nowadays Zvernec island is a mistery place really worthy a midday visit. There is a beatiful wooden bridge that joins the Albania land with the island.

Shkopet

Shkopet is the village you find between the rocks when you drive from Tirana to Burrel. Close to the village there is also a dam which produces hydroenergy. Shkopet has always surprised me by the rocks and the clean water of the river Mat. Climbing the rocks is still my pending assignment, fortunatelly this time i could enjoy the adventures to hike through a traditional trail together with a peaceful turnning back to the starting point on kayak.

The traditional trail goes parallel to the road that drives you to Burrel. The starting point is the restaurant Vellezerit Malci, just on right passing the tunnel on the end of Shkopet village (if you drives direction Burrel).

Alex is the person in charge of the restaurant, in summer they serves meals but in low season just cafes. He is an expert mountaineer. He took me to the other side of the lake by boat, and this is really where the trekking starts.

You have 3 exits (bridges) if you do not want to get wet. Depending how far you want to go it is up to you choosing one of them.

The path sometime is a little bit abandoned, so you may need to open the path through the bushes. I lost once the trail after the second exit, and on the way point "Find the way" I returned back to the trail.

To come back to the starting point you can jump into the several "Furgons" that drive from Peskopia or Burrel to Tirana. In my case I was lucky to enjoy the way back Kayaking down the lake. See the track: http://es.wikiloc.com/wikiloc/view.do?id=3600319

Beskidy Ustron-Jaskowiec

The Jaskowiec valley together with the city of Ustron is a very popular are for many kind of tourism. In the past the principal atracctions were the beatiful hikes, skiing lifts as well as the thermal baths. Nowadays the tourists areas are getting more a more sofisticated as well as dynamical. Tourists are requiring more and more atractions.

A good example of these tourist development evolution is the municipality of Ustron in Beskidy. Many tourist recreational parks have been build on last few years replacing meadows and forest with long tobogans, extrem park, modern hotels and abandoning the older one. Also there is a big natural park where all the family can watch wild animals. The ski lifts are even opened in summer as many mountain bicyclers use them to enjoy the downhill.

We use the skilift to avoid climbing 230 meters.

00030 from geonomon on Vimeo.

Later we just follow the ridge doing a loop to arrive to the beautiful Góralska Chata. Here you can enjoy the traditional mountain food. Góralska Chata is accesible by car, so for sure you will find many people.

Later in 40 minutes following the red lines you will easily find the starting point.

Beskidy Mala Czantoria

The Czantoria mountain range is located in the northern part of the Silesian Beskidy. Is it a very accessible place for the big con urban area of Silesia (Katowice and surroundings). It can be very crowed on a good weather day, but there are so many routes and ways to be discovered that you can also find peace somewhere.

Just after passing the thermal city of Ustron on the way to Wisla, you should leave the main road to the right on the street Akacjowa. This small road takes you to Poniwiec ski resort. You can park the car anywhere along the road depending how long you want to go with your hike.

We climbed the small Czantoria mountain which offers you great views all the silesian plain.

We would like to thank our Silesian friends who guided us till the summit, unfortunately I had to take a plane back work.

Therefore we got to improvise the way back to the starting point. We found a very used forestry road which bring us again to the valley.

Running Lowlands Gliwice

The south of Poland is occupied by a mountainous terrain where the rivers grow. As soon as the rivers leave the steep valleys begins a part of the big north European plain also named the lowlands.

The Eurpoean plain is also a very interesting place for outdoors activities. It is difficult to be on the top of hill as the king of the landscap. As i am not use to the lowlands terrain I consider the orientation sometimes a little bit more confusing that in the mountains.

You can get easily confused in the forest losing the north but hopefully with the tracks I include the path will be more clear.

The tracks included start all in the north part of Gliwice (Silesia) where you can spend a nice jogging or hiking. 10 KM TRACK

20 KM TRACK

6 KM TRACK

Pelister national park

This time we chose Pelister national park in between the Prespa lake and the historical city of Bitola in the Republic of Macedonia.

There are many marked path at the entrance of the national park . You have mainly three routes to arrive to the top of mount Pelister, which is the third highest peak of the Republic of Macedonia. The beaty and huge of the coniferous forest will remind you an alpine atmosphere

At an alttitude of 1,400 is the main entrance of the national park were there are plenty of hotels and rooms to stay warm.

On 2012 easter holidays, the grandmama and Helen come to Albania to spend some time with us. On the weekends, the expedition team was more populated than usual. For that reason it was not necesary to put into practice the ski touring relay technique. Grandmama and Helen used to stay on base camp taking care of the baby while we could both enjoy together the skin up.

If there are plenty of snow it is much convience to follow the valley just behind the hotel Monika, otherwise you can skin up through the alpine ski piste and follow the ridge. The ridge is a litlle bit rocky but you can manage with the skies to slalow all the granit baloons... I recommend you to visit the city of Bitola, historically called Monastir. In Monastir there was a big community of Spanish Sephardi expelled from the Iberic peninsula. After the second war world the nazis end up with the community. Ofir a spanish folk group is trying to keep still the diaspora alive. More info in Spanish: VIDEO OF THE OFIR PROJECT

ski mountaineering relay

The activity of ski mountaineering relay started to be a part of our outdoors activities as soon as our first child was born.

Basically ski mountaineering relay consists on taking care of our child in a base camp while the other climbs up searching for a nice slope to descent with the skis.

This time the base camp was a nice hotel in Brod village outskirts. There is a big number of slopes for skiing. This time Xymena chose the most direct one. The village of Brod is located 10 kilometers high from Dragas which is the southest municipality of the district of Prizren in Kosovo. Geographically, Dragas is the southern part of Kosovo on the border with Albania and Macedonia. You can get there with a normal car as the road is asphalted. Only the last 2 kilometers from Brod village to the hotel is a forestry road.

You can download the tracks on wikiloc: Xynia's track

or

Juan's track