The most exciting boat ride ever

Although the plan of the journey was not to have any plan, the plan was to use Shkodër as base for trips to some nice places in the surrounding. But where to go? There is a tourist office at the Sheshi Nënë Tereza ("Place of Mother Teresa" who went to school in Shkodër) but it was closed for an unknown reason. A taxi driver saw me and sent me to a kiosk that also offers hiking maps etc.. The guy there was very friendly but it turned out that he never visited places in the mountains. I nevertheless bought a map which turned out to be useless. But OK, if the gentle people cannot give information about touristic sites, the Internet should do the job. (As in most countries finding an Internet café is easy in the bigger cities while they don't exists in small towns.) I searched about 2 hours without success. In the past I used and contributed to wikitravel but this seems to be almost dead while the Wikipedia-project wikivoyage provides more information. Nevertheless, information in general is a very rare good in Albania. So what can one do? As I wrote, lesson 1 for Albania is that communication is the key. I read in the Internet that the Koman lake (even the Wikipedia has no valuable information about it) should be beautiful but unfortunately nobody knew how to get there and if it is possible to have a boat ride. They recommended me to stay at 5:30 (sic!) at the Sheshi Demokracia to ask for Komani. Damn, getting up that early only to have a chance to get perhaps the information I need. But OK, I stood there and yelled "Komani, Komani?" and within a few minutes I was sent to a minibus (called "furgon" in Albania) that drove me to another bus that drove me to another bus that drove me to another place in the town. There they collected the people and at 6:30 we left the town with 3 furgons.

The road to the mountains is not in a good shape because it was formerly the main road towards the region of Bajram Curri and to the Kosovo. Since a few years there is a new highway from Tirana to the Kosovo and the ferries along the Komani lake were taken out of service. So the road to the Komani lake was formerly stressed by lots of trucks every day and now it is no longer important for the country. However, the landscape is beautiful and I envied the tourist we saw who took used a bike to climb up to the lake. Finally we arrived at the embankment dam of the lake and got the information that there is only one regular boat per day in each direction. Good that I had only one backpack so that I always had everyting we me. Around 9:00 the boat started to the most impressive ride in my life. You might listen to
Gramatik - Chillaxin' by the Sea
while admiring ;-) the views.
As it was so exciting and as images cannot describe feelings I exceptionally post all images so that you can pick out your favorite:

One can book boats like this one.

This is our boat - the public one.

The public boat is the only public transport for the people living along the lake. It is therefore also used to transport all kind of goods people need - food, clothes, material to repair houses etc. With a closer look at the image of the boat you will notice they took a coach of a bus and welded in onto a hull of a boat. This looks a bit funny but is functional because this way it has good seats, a toilet and large windows.

Looking back to the embankment dam.

Looking forward. And now enjoy...

There are some houses scattered along the lake.
This one is part of a hostel-like site where you can book a room
or a small house to go hiking.

A small village.

Roberta and Fulvio from Bari who I met on the boat.

This wall has a height of about 800 m.
Many of the walls along the lake have never been climbed.

Incredible - there is a small path from the lower left to the
upper right at this wall. I the middle of this image you can
see an old man who came here wit our boat. He is about
70 years old and is still able to climb this steep path to his house!

To transport larger goods up the mountains they
use donkeys and even horses.

The end of the lake.

These are the abandoned ferries from the pre-highway times.

The whole breathtaking boat ride took about 4 hours (when I remember correctly). I still cannot imagine that I found by chance such a beautiful place on earth!!!

Finally some 2 furgons took us to the next city: Bajram Curri.

Lessons learned:

1. Forget about plans - enjoy what you find!
2. Albania is a land of early risers. In many places the last buses leave at 6:30. If you miss them you will have to wait a day!