That time I almost died in Albania
Vlöre, sumer 2021
Many people are just sharing the nice part of their life creating illusions on social media, I want to try to share also the embarrassing ones, they can make us laugh, and maybe teach us something.
Going up the first time took 4 attempt, but then I managed it.
Our arrival in Vlöre in the afternoon of the 31 May 2021, was quite epic…
We stopped there to have a snack between two to three minutes after we parked our Van “Pedro”, not further than 150 meters from our parking we heard shotguns, a person (gang member from what I was told) was shot in daylight on the street, mafia style execution, apparently it’s no big deal, it happens regularly.
After we ate I profited of the occasion of being in a city to cut my hair by Zac’s Haircut, a very friendly young hairdresser who speaks English, then it was already late evening and I didn’t wanted to drive further. So I found a beautiful spot on park4night, where nobody went down to the beach, because there was no road to go by car, imagine with a Van… So everybody parked on the public parking, and walked down to the beach.
I just took delivery of my 4x4 Sprinter, and it would be quite ridiculous to leave it parked at the parking, so in the middle of the night, at my arrival in Vlöre I decided to go down by the “not a road”, going down without lights was already quite tricky, but I realised it was a little bit risky when I had my foot pressing the brake to the metal, and I was still slipping.
The day after I wanted to visit the city and so I had to drive up the Pedro like in the picture above, it took me four attempts to manage it, yes four attempts with low gear engaged!
The second time I went down that road, and yes I know it wasn’t a smart idea to go down a second time…
When I wanted to go back up on that tiny road two cars parked in front of the exit of the trail, which made the already particularly hard manoeuvre of exiting even more difficult, and when I backed up, in order to have more space to take speed, let’s say I backed up too much! I had the immense luck that a big rock stopped the rear right wheel and I managed to escape from the vehicle. After that if took 3 full size trucks (semi) with a winch to pull me out, the first one broke the rope, and the other two had to pull Pedro out together.
The rock that saved me and Pedro, heavy, but after half an hour with the Van on it, it started to move, the fact that I can tell you this story it’s just pure luck, unfortunately I don’t have more pictures as I exited the van in emergency to not fall from the mountain, 150 meters into the water, and I left everything I had in the Van.
The lesson here is that when your fiancée screams at you that you need to stop going backwards, you need to stop and not think you can gain a few centimetres.