Training Trek for the Real Trek!
My daughter, Rebecca, joined me to travel through the Balkans for three months—Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. We are currently in Albania. The main thing that we are most excited about is coming up next week when we embark on a 12-day trek around the Albania Alps on the Peaks of the Balkans Trail.
Here are just a few of the elevation maps for that trail:
We do need to be in shape for this hike!
So, since we hit Montenegro on May 6, we have been putting in quite a few training days to build up our stamina and sure-footedness. This training culminated last week as we did a three-day test trek in the Zagoria Valley near Permet in Southern Albania.
The nice thing about these walks is that we don’t have to carry camping gear—we stay in guesthouses in small villages along the way. The hosts feed us dinner and breakfast and provide food for a picnic lunch. This really lightens our load. For our “test trek” we loaded up our bags as we will pack them for the Peaks of the Balkans trail. We have not been able to weigh them, but we are guessing they weigh about 24 pounds (12 kilos). Pretty light for a multi-day trek.
For this “test trek”, we stayed overnights in the villages of Sheper and Limar.
To give you an idea of what this trek was like, I created a three-part video series. You can view the three videos below.
Day 1: Permet to Sheper
Day 2: Sheper to Limar
Day 3: Limar to Peshtan and Return to Permit
Our Peaks of the Balkans trek commences on June 24 and finishes on July 6. Our friend, Nev Chamberlain from the UK will join us. I will be documenting the Peaks trek in a similar way and I plan to share those videos sometime in the future. Stay tuned!
Other Blog Posts You May Find Interesting
Choquequirao Trek Part I: Getting There
Choquequirao is considered to be a sister-site to Machu Picchu, but few people know about it. Researchers believe the site may be even larger than Machu Picchu. A very difficult 4-day trek in and out is required to visit these remote ruins.
Peaks of the Balkans-Day 7
I had not been looking forward to this last challenge of the trek. And it lived up to its reputation, with myriad switchbacks and trails that were so narrow that faster hikers could not easily pass me.
Islas! Islas!*
I decided to take a little tourist jaunt to the island of Amantani in Lake Titicaca. You can purchase a tour from one of many agencies in Puno, but if you go to the pier in Puno and pay the captain directly for the trip and then pay your host family directly, the families receive more of the proceeds and don’t have to wait for the agency to send the money.
2 thoughts on “Training Trek for the Real Trek!”
Hi Cathy! Just watched your Albania series. I met you at the JCC in New Orleans one Saturday morning (in ladies locker room-Lol!) Hubby and I have been looking at Northern Greece, maybe Albania trip in October. I’ll keep following your wonderful adventures…
Paula
Yes! I remember you, Paula. Glad you enjoyed the post. I am working on a series of posts documenting our experience on the “Real Trek.” I hope to get some of them up in the next couple weeks. If you are signed up on my mailing list, you will get an email notice when they are published.
(BTW: I recommend visiting the monasteries of Meteora when you are in Greece!)
https://cathleensodyssey.com/meteora-part-1/