Being in a hotel last night meant getting away quickly was easy. We started the day with a local style breakfast of feta, tomato, cucumber and bread. Washed down with a few coffees.

Our plan was to check out a beach I had found on Google earth that looked almost isolated due to the track you had to use to get to it.

Due to the ongoing Garmin GPS problems, I had circled it on the map. This meant it was another day heading to a circle, this time it was my circle.

The drive to the beach took about an hour or so. We first had to negotiate some spectacular steep roads with tight hairpins over the surrounding mountains. The roads had various bits missing and loads of fallen rocks which claimed a few victims to punctures.

The turning to the beach was immediately off the bottom of the steep decent.

There had been a few attempts to grade the track, but the track was pretty bad. On the was down we got held up by a truck rescuing an Italian mobile home who had been overly ambitious in their 2-wheel drive. Both the truck driver doing the rescue and the Italian camper looked frustrated. The tow rope was in taters. The owner said something to me as we squeezed by. I promised to return with my tow strap and shackles.

By the time I had stopped 50 meters on and returned they appeared to on there way so I returned to Tusky and we continued to the beach.

When we got to the bottom we were delighted, we found an almost empty beach except for a couple of 4×4’s and 2 or 3 like minded overland campers. This was an Albanian secret for Overland travellers only by the looks of things.

The beach was made up by sandy white pebbles, it was like a postcard. The top of the beach had a sand track which was easy to traverse. We headed most of the way along the track then turned down to the sea. Parking 10 meters from the water.

Here we swam in crystal clear water and lounged around for the morning. Cassie loved it. Spending most of the time checking out the little fishies.

Getting Bogged

Later on we decided to leave, I was a little apprehensive, as I had noted the sand and shiny pebbles made for horribly difficult driving. I had deflated the tyres a little and even in low diff-lock, I struggled. I had to repeatedly reverse to get any momentum.

My first attempt to get up the beach failed, I thought I had enough speed but could not get into low third without grinding to a halt and sinking. I stopped and let some more air out of the tyres and reversed.

Foot to the floor, I headed slightly back down towards the sea and managed to get some speed and into third. This allowed me to managed the engine speed and get enough velocity to get over the sand up to the slightly better surface to get off the beach.

Once I was back on the track at the top, I was hot and sweaty! So we headed to a small makeshift bar a local had erected in the rock walls of the mountain that encapsulated the beach. I had a Fanta and a beer to chill. I really needed another swim.

Buneci Beach

Once we had recovered we headed south to find a place to stay. We had again opted out of camping as we had no supplies.

We eventually after some chaos ended up at a tiny restaurant at Buneci beach, which had rooms. The owning family lived in a tent. They were very nice and cooked us a traditional pasta dish and we drank loads of beer and swam.

The rooms in these places are basic but functional and clean. We paid 30 euro with breakfast.