Pushing out into the milky blue waters, letting the warm liquid take my weight and making those first few strokes across the pool toward those snowy mountains in the distance; that was how this morning began.
Few things are more refreshing than an early morning swim, a chance to wake up and stretch, enjoy an hour of open headspace before the rest of the world rises. Not that there were many people around; the waters weren’t exceptionally hot but neither was the weather, and this was enough to put most off. The main appeal for us was that this pool was just the right size and depth for swimming in.
The steam swirled upwards in the thin winter sunshine, a herd of goats crossed the old Ottoman bridge with a tinkling of bells, and we swam. Back and forth, round and round, algae tickling our feet and the constant crashing of water falling from the pool into the river, staining it too that surreal milky blue as it filtered down through the valley.
The nights were cold and filled with starlit skies, alive with the croaking of bullfrogs and the rushing of river water. The days were peaceful and cool, broken up only by short visits into the nearby town of Permët.
We had a blissful feeling of completeness here, a sense of comforting familiarity we could seldom find on the road. This was the area we’d stayed in when we first came to Albania, and we loved it so much then we spent a whole week here. Little had changed in two years, apart from the damage caused by country-wide flooding had been repaired and the family of stray cats we’d fed were long gone, to be replaced by a timid yet local black dog who crept out of the shadows at night in search of food.
Sadly we didn’t have the luxury of time on our side this time, and after three short days we were onto our next destination in a bid to get our battered old van repaired before she could let us down again…
But we would always miss the milky blue waters of Benjë, tucked away in this furtive little valley, and we would remember this corner of Albania fondly.
