Traveling to ALBANIAN ALPS!! First Impressions of THETH, Albania

20 seconds? No, no. It's not 20 seconds though. No, my hand froze. Good morning everyone, this is David Hoffman from David's Been Here coming at you from beautiful Skoda Albania. Today I'm super excited because we're driving three hours into the Albanian Alps to see Theth. That's one of the most beautiful places in the country. My man. We started in the morning. We're going to get some traditional birki. And then we're going to drive for three hours to the Albanian Alps, Theth National Park. We're gonna start here in Skoda and we're gonna go all the way around to here. To Theth National Park for 86 kilometers. I'm excited. This is something I've been hearing about for a while. You know, we need really three, four days to see it all. But unfortunately, we have only one day. So we're going straight to Theth. Rock and roll. As you can see, we're driving through Skoda. It's 6 30 in the morning. And it's basically like the never-ending bazaar here. Lots of fruits and vegetables. We're stopping right now at Burek Pika. Let's go buy some burek. If you guys don't know about burek, it's basically a pie. You have it with meat. You have it with cheese, spinach. It's delicious. Oh, it's not ready yet. Oh my god. We need it. We're starving. We go for another one. The good thing is that there's so many burek shops all over the city. It's 6 30. That one wasn't ready yet. But I'm sure there's going to be more. Cheers. Rakija, rakija, rakija. Okay, let's go, let's go. Where's the burek? One thing I noticed here in Skoda is that there's so many bicycles. He was telling me it's like Holland of Albania. So many bicycles. Weather's like perfect for it. It really is nice. Here we have the burek. The best. The way they do it is like triangle shape. Usually the meat ones are like more like a rectangle shape or a square. How many are we getting? We're getting like six. Oh my god. Eight bureks. Meat and cheese. 300. Okay, 500. Thank you. Bye. It's a good start. It's Monday, man. You need to start early to finish early. We're gonna see loads of rivers, small rivers, loads of a water spring. A beautiful view from the mountains. As he's telling me, the entrance. Once you start getting up into the mountains, it's like gorgeous. Mountains everywhere. He's like, basically like somebody painted it, right? That's what you're saying. So about 90 minutes before we get to the actual entrance of the alps. From here on, it's basically flat on this main road. And then over here to the right, we see the mountains. So the next 90 minutes are just like this. Asphalt road. Once you enter the national park area, then it becomes more of like a rocky road, right? Yes. So you have to come in a 4x4 or at least a big vehicle because if not... Otherwise, there's no chance of going there. Yeah. Big, big rocks? It's not about big rocks. We just need a higher car. You need a higher car. Okay, okay. This is nice. This is super smooth. Sun's coming up. You got mountains to the right. Over here is basically farmland. Lots of different businesses on this road. And if you keep going straight, you can also get to Montenegro? Yes. Yeah. Oh my god. I can't wait. It's hot. Hot burek. Is that Japan? Yeah. That's Japan. That's cheese. The burek is great, but it's way too hot. We got to wait a little while. You got to be careful with this. Is it hot? Oh, it's so hot. We bought eight of these? It's crazy. That's a jail. It was built for the Europeans. It's capable of 1,250 prisoners inside. We basically entered, right? Yeah, yeah. Whoa. Yeah, it's just one lane. Yeah, this street is one lane. Beautiful. As you can see, we're making our way up the mountain over here to the left and the right. We have these beautiful hills, lots of houses, and super high mountains. And the road, as you can see, is very winding. It's narrow. And during high season, when a lot of people are going up and down, it's a little crazy, you would say, because it's hard to pass. You get stuck behind somebody, a truck, and you're stuck behind them for hours, you know? And one thing that I want to mention about Theth in particular is that, you know, people weren't living there 1,000 years ago. When the Ottomans started invading Albania, that's when people started, you know, leaving Skodra and went into hiding. And they went into hiding here in the mountains. So they just went up here. And then later, after communism fell, like, 91, they came back down to Skodra, and they abandoned their houses, abandoned their lands. So then tourism started picking up. And they decided, you know what? Let me go back up there. Let me open a guest house. Let me open my restaurant. Because tourists were going up there, and there was, like, no one. Not a soul, you were saying, right? Nothing. There was nowhere to sleep. There was nothing to eat. It's just, like, empty. Just go sleep in the wilderness, basically. Yeah. There's a small village named Boga. There are some few bars, a couple of restaurants here. A nice view. Here, the people stop usually, the ones that are going to Theth. Before they go to Theth, they stop here. They have a coffee, relax, have a cigarette, have a rakija. And then, like, carry on towards to Theth. And that's what we're about to do. Some rakija, some burek. My friends, are we having rakija? Yeah, rakija. Yeah? I'll have some rakija, too. You're drinking rakija? Yeah, drink rakija. Rakija, for sure. We're having coffee, rakija, some water. Uy. What's uy? Uy. Water. Water, yeah. Always, always, the best. Look at this. Look at the nature. The mountains, scenery. Wow, look at this. So gorgeous. It reminds me of, like, Switzerland out here. Smells great, too. No, no. Too much, too much. She's trying to give me three bureks. I already had one and maybe one more. All cheese, all cheese. This is, like, the best place ever. Beautiful scenery. No, no, no. Literally, she just baked them when we got there. The best. Love this cheese. Salty, flaky doughy. So everybody stops here on the way in, on the way out to have a coffee, relax, see the scenery. That's it. Look how flaky it is. Golden. Love it. Burek, all day. We have two types of rakia. Grapes and plums. Which one would you like? Plums. That's our espresso. Need to wake up. Oh my god, that was a strong coffee. Cheers. All right, rakia, made from plums. You talking about me, huh? This is good, this is good. Gives you wings. Makes your heart beat faster. For sure. It opens all your veins, your blood pressure, and loads of energy later on. The best thing about this is that it puts you to sleep. I gotta say, I fall in love with rakia here. Everybody makes it at home. It's so good. It's strong. It doesn't give you a hangover at all. Well, maybe if you drink a lot. But I've been drinking, like, one of these a day, two of these a day. I personally like the plum ones more than the grapes ones, because the grape ones are just way too strong. All right, let's continue our journey to Teth. And this is the problem. Too many cars in front, stalling it. They're just stalling us, man. Uh-oh, oh my god. We finished with the asphalt now, and now we're going really to the area of National Park Teth. Here they're building a brand new road. Obviously, it's gonna be with asphalt. Hopefully, next summer, there will be an asphalt in here. Yeah, so we did the winding road, asphalt all the way to the top, and then now it's like this, just like rocks. Oh my god, look at that view. That's insane. I'm gonna stop here at a little balcony so we can see the view. What a stunning, stunning view. This is just unreal. Look at the mountains, incredible. This reminds me of Montenegro, also Bosnia. Just huge mountains, very green, love the peaks up there. And if you want to, you can go hiking up here, but I'm not hiking today. Let's go. How much more time to Teth? An hour. Something like that. So we just passed the tunnel they're building because he was saying that during the winter when it snows too much, the snow literally blocks the road, so you can't pass through here. And you can't pass through here, you're stuck. Basically, you can't move anywhere. I mean, right here, you see, it's like a, I don't know, a thousand meter drop or something, something crazy. Like we're on the edge and the road has become worse and worse. We just passed the Chafet Forest and we are around about 30 minutes to go down to the village of Teth. This cross here is really famous. It's been here for at least 200 years. So everybody stops here and do a photo because there is a good view as well. You can see half of the village and the mountains on the right hand side as well. Well, everywhere, but especially on the right hand side. 200 years this cross and the village of Teth is down there? Down there, yeah. Wow, what a view. I mean, we are on the top, the middle of the valley in between the mountains. Literally over here, we have mountains, mountains, mountains, mountains, mountains. And the winding road that goes down to Teth is down there. What do you think, 21 minutes? Yeah, something like that or less. I mean, the views from up there were insane. That's the best place for views, right? You will see a lot more views where we're going now to the village. And don't forget, we have the waterfall, which is amazing. You will love it. You cannot come to Teth in a small vehicle, no way. Once we passed that little roundabout where the cross was, it's just like worse and worse and worse. Lots of rocks. I mean, it's flat, but lots of rocks. Would be really, really hard. So you have to come one of these, right? Yeah, these are the best ones. So they're paving the road now. And in the next year, it should be completely done. So the whole thing is going to be paved brand new. So it's going to take instead of two and a half, maybe an hour and a half to get here, which would definitely help with tourism because it's going to like fly, you know. Have you ever driven like this? Maybe 45 minutes. Hey, David, you thirsty? Would you like to drink some fresh and traditional Albanian water straight from the mountains? Let's do it. This is amazing, guys. Look at this. You can just drink. Oh, the hand too? This is freezing, man. This is really cold. If you leave your hands more than 20 seconds in here, they'll be frozen. You will not feel nothing. Let me see. Let me drink some of this water. Oh my God, it's ice cold. 20 seconds? No. No, no. It's not 20 seconds now. No, my hand froze. As long as you have less water, you can even cool your watermelon in there. So you think somebody just put their watermelon in there just to cool it down? You think the watermelon just make this white here? All right, I got to get some more water. This is so good. Oh my God, it's too cold. That was just ice cold straight from the mountain. Amazing quality air, like the best air on the planet. Plus the water. I mean, you could live here forever. So as Andy said before, there's like 100 different guest houses and you can find them all along this road. As you see, buildings, little houses, tiny homes, bigger ones. I mean, they have a huge variety. First, you have to get in touch with someone and make the reservations. Just turning up here thinking, oh, I'm going to find a room in the season. That just not happens. Once you make the reservation, it depends how you want it. You can also just pay for the guest house to sleep or you can pay for the guest house to sleep and have included breakfast, lunch, dinner. If you pay for the guest house to sleep only, you can always eat in the restaurant what you want, what's on the menu. If you take it all inclusive, basically you will eat the real traditional Albanian food. In case you guys don't know, this is the biggest national park in the country. National Park of Theth. And that's it, guys. We have arrived to Theth. Theth is going to be amazing. We're going to explore for the next like five hours. We're going to have lunch here. We're going to go hike to a waterfall. We're going to see the church. I mean, this is going to be such an amazing day. So I hope you enjoy the journey driving from Skorda to Theth. It usually takes three hours. My man, Andy, he did it in two hours and 15 minutes. It was amazing. But he said also there was no traffic. There was no one on the road. I mean, we saw like two cars and we passed them really fast. And the road is getting better and better and better. They say in late 2021, it should be all complete, all paved, perfect. And you'll be able to get here in 90 minutes. It's going to be amazing. Well, guys, I hope you love this video. If you did, please give me a thumbs up. Leave a comment below. Subscribe to my channel for more awesome travel content. See you in the next travel food adventure in Theth, Albania. Albanian Alps. Let's go.