|
|
|
The Blue Eye
Thursday, July 9 2026
location: room 115, M.S. Monet on a course for Sarandë, Albania
We wouldn't be arriving at our destination in southern Albania until after lunch, so we had to find ways to pass the time on the boat. Gretchen and I hung out with Kelly and Brian in the lounge for a time gossiping and carrying on with our mirthful banter while various activities unfolded out on the back deck. One of these was an event where people were encouraged to tell the story of how they came to be vegan, which wasn't of much interest to us. (As I would point out later, I think it's possible to be a vegan while not finding veganism particularly interesting.) Kelly mentioned that on some earlier cruise, perhaps in Vietnam, the cruise director, who was not vegan and had a thick Filipino accent, pronounced the name of the "Why Did You Become Vegan?" activity "Why Began?" and she has jokingly called it that ever since. Somewhat late in the morning, Kelly buckled and joined the others at "Why Began?" partly out of a sense of duty, which applies a force roughly opposite to the irreverent, non-conformist (and occasionally somewhat lawless) peer pressure applied by Gretchen and myself.
When we docked at the harbor in Sarandë (aka Saranda), we were the only cruise ship. Something about the cheap, boxy look of the buildings suggested why Saranda might not be as popular of a tourist attraction as all the other places we'd visited. Albania was ruled for decades by a madman named Enver Hoxha, and the look of the place reflects this. During Hoxha's rule, Albania was a hermit dictatorship similar to North Korea, and the culture and economy continues to bear the scars of that period. Sometimes poverty is good for preserving cultural heritage, since there isn't the money to tear things down and replace them. But if an unquestioned leader doesn't have much respect for cultural heritage, it has a way of not being preserved (just look at the state of the White House to see an ongoing example).
There wasn't much to do in Saranda, so Gretchen had signed us up for an excursion. Usually Gretchen avoids excursions on Dirk's boats because they're often infuriating, but if we wanted to see much of Albania, there was no other choice. Those of us going on the excursion were run through port security (where flashing a card issued by the boat is required when leaving or returning) and climbed into a tour bus. Then we were driven through the ugly city up over a ridge into the country. Up until today, the Balkan escarpment looming over the Adriatic had mostly been forested, but here in southern Albania, it looked more like Greece or perhaps even the Middle East. The mountains were mostly denuded of forest and stood as hulking barren slopes that had clearly been overgrazed for millennia. Some showed obvious signs of the kind of erosion that leads sensible governments to set up bioreserves such as the Catskill and Adirondack parks.
Our bus stopped at a simple and ancient structure that looked something like a small castle, though it had none of the charm of the kind of castles one sees to the north or west. This, it seemed, was what Albania had left of its medieval architecture available to show to tourists. The castle had been fixed up and capped with a fancy restaurant and gift shop, but the site also carried the scars of Enver Hoxha's insane dictatorship. Our guide, a skinny young man with a great command of English, stood atop a low domed concrete structure set in the rocky dirt a couple dozen feet outside the castle wall and told us about Albania's infamous system of bunkers. It seems Hoxha was so paranoid about an invasion from his many enemies (which included not only the West, but also Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union) that he had 170,000 concrete bunkers installed throughout the small nation so that there would be enough available for the entire nation to hide out in. They were also tested to make sure they would stand up to conventional explosives. No double this vegan crowd loved hearing about the livestock that was placed in the bunkers before such tests, but apparently they survived (the tests at least).
We spent a few minutes on the grounds of the castle taking pictures. The dining area overlooking the Saranda harbor was actually rather lovely, but if anyone cared about &aesthetics, the penis and boob shaped bottle openers in the gift shop wouldn't've been placed front and center.
The next destination was the Blue Eye, the only real tourist attraction in the Saranda area. To get there, we had to drive way out into the country past small settlements and herds of sheep along a creek flowing with unusually clear blue-green water. Along the way, I was explaining to Gretchen how it is that deforestation leads to desertification by interrupting the transpiration cycle carrying moisture tree-to-tree from the coastal areas getting moisture from the sea. I then said that, to the extent that this part of Albania was turning into a desert (it wasn't quite there, but maybe further inland it was), it was entirely the result of humans cutting down the forest and overgrazing the land.
After our tour bus parked at the Blue Eye parking lot, we walked along a roadway lined with merchants selling things such as soft drinks, fruit, and gift items. Seeing us walk through, they called out to us in their best English to tell us what they had to sell us. The experience had a decidedly global-south feel to it.
We arrived at an artificial lake that appeared to be the source of that clear blue-green water we'd been seeing. The plan here was for us all to go kayaking, but first we had to walk on a trail to get to where the kayaks were. This trail ran around a secluded end of the lake and apparently provided people the privacy they needed to defecate, as the whole area stunk of human feces and there were clumps of besmirched toilet paper here and there along the trail.
When we got to the floating dock with the kayaks, Gretchen immediately jumped into the lake to cool off. She did this so suddenly some in our group and perhaps some of kayak facility employees initially feared she'd fallen in by mistake. But then they saw the smile on her face. Her favorite water experience is a lake experience, and she'd been looking forward to this. To her surprise, though, the water was extremely cold, about ten degrees Celsius or 50 degrees Fahrenheit. This had something to do with the subterranean source of the water at the Blue Eye itself.
Gretchen and I were the first of our group to be given a kayak, and we quickly separated from the others and went to explore a little creek entering a corner of the lake. Along the way, I saw a tiny grebe vanish beneath the surface as well as a number of extremely green frogs. I had to piss pretty badly, and it seemed easiest to just go ashore to do that instead of trying to make it happen from the kayak itself. That cold, clear water was bracing!
We continued to do our own thing mostly away from the others in our group, as it always becomes a logistical trap to be in a large group being organized to go somewhere or take some action. It was easier to hang back and follow them at a distance. Brian had stayed back on the ship, though Kelly was part of our group, and she was being a bit of a baby about the whole experience, fretting about whether her kayak would overturn and whether she would be able to control it. She also kept asking us to watch out for her. She ended up in a kayak with a nice American woman who turned out to know about Gretchen's ongoing efforts to organize a march to end animal testing, and she and Gretchen struck up a conversation about it while we were still in our kayaks.
Ultimately we came ashore at the other end of the lake, abandoning our kayak, paddles, and life preservers for good so that we could hike a short distance to see the Blue Eye itself. Our skinny tour guide, standing next to an exotic Chinese-made electric car that is impossible to buy in the United States, gave a short talk about the Blue Eye, saying it was where a deep underwater spring came from beneath the mountain. It has significant pressure to it, creating visible upwelling on the surface of the pool where it emerges. Scientists exploring the spring have sent probes down through the void in the rock for hundreds of feet and not yet found its bottom.
We then walked to the Blue Eye itself, which I was somehow picturing at the time as a massive pool, given all the tourist infrastructure. But when we got to it, it was just an upwelling in a small pool in front of a viewing platform. It was maybe a meter across, and the void beneath it disappearing into the bedrock was even narrower.
We spent maybe a little too much time there at the Blue Eye, giving Gretchen a chance to dunk herself another couple times in the bitter cold water. There was also enough time for our veterinarian friends from Brighton to sit down at the restaurant and have beers with their new besties Eric and Gila, a pair of obnoxiously self-centered "health vegans" from the Albany area of New York (they were the ones who'd been banging on our wall to make us stop talking the other night).
On the bus ride back to the Saranda harbor, Gretchen and I ate some disappointing cherries she'd bought from one of the vendors near the Blue Eye parking lot.
At dinner this evening, we dined with Kelly and Brian and that older English couple from France again. Somehow the topic of Bonnie Tyler came up; it seemed she'd just died. I couldn't think of any of her songs, but Brian was there to remind me. One was "Total Eclipse of the Heart" (which got renewed attention during the 2024 eclipse) and "Holding Out For a Hero." It just happened that one of the entree options tonight was a Greek-style gyro made with mushrooms, so of course I had to keep saying, "I need a hero," which is how I remembered the chorus for "Holding Out For a Hero" going. I didn't have much of an appetite, but that gyro was so good I could've eaten two of them. And it came with proper English chips!
Our bus before we boarded it in the Saranda harbor. Click to enlarge.
Passing a cypress. Click to enlarge.
People have water tanks on their rooves in Albania, sometimes with solar hot water heating. Click to enlarge.
A suburban valley east of Saranda. Click to enlarge.
Albanian buildings. Click to enlarge.
Our guide atop the bunker near the "castle." Click to enlarge.
The bunker near the "castle." Click to enlarge.
Tacky knick-knacks at the gift shop atop the "castle." Click to enlarge.
A nice view of the Saranda harbor from the outdoor dining option atop the "castle." Click to enlarge.
A nice design for a toilet near the "castle." Click to enlarge
Some sort of thistle. Click to enlarge.
Gretchen in front of our kayak. Click to enlarge.
A barren mountain viewed from the artificial lake. Click to enlarge.
I cut off the Mötörhead tag, but at least you see this peculiar anti-American message. Click to enlarge.
A Xiaomi YU7 electric car. Because of our ?reedom, such cars are impossible to get in the United States. Click to enlarge.
Mallards downstream from the Blue Eye. Click to enlarge.
The Blue Eye itself in its totality. Click to enlarge.
Tourist info at the Blue Eye. Click to enlarge.
Wild angelica near the Blue Eye. Click to enlarge.
Common mallow near the Blue Eye. Click to enlarge.
A dog resembling Yoda among the shops near the Blue Eye parking area. Click to enlarge.
Beehives and barren mountains near the Blue Eye. Click to enlarge.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?260709 feedback
previous | next |
