It started one afternoon when walking back to my house I ran into my friend Egla. Egla goes to university in Elbasan but she comes back to Gramsh every weekend and her little sister is in 11th grade at the school I'll be working at. Egla mentioned that her sister and her friends were going to go on a hike the next day and wanted to know if I wanted to go along with her. But there was a catch, they were leaving at 7 AM and I had just finished telling the director of the school that I would meet her to discuss my summer courses the next day. So I had to tell Egla that I couldn't go along with them. But Egla is a tricky one and even in our short time of knowing each other she has figured out exactly what to say to keep my interest and as I walked away she said she would try to enjoy the waterfalls without me. And that was all it took. No way was I going to let them go to the waterfalls without me.
I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out how I could talk to the director to let her know that we needed to move our meeting. Luckily the great thing about living in such a small town is that you're never too far from anyone. So as I stood at my normal dyqan checking out the banana selection of the day, I heard my director's voice calling to me from the heavens. After I took a few minutes to realize that I was in fact not hearing things, I looked up to see my director standing on her balcony across from the dyqan. SCORE!! So Romeo and Juliet style, I yelled at her from the street that I was invited to go to the waterfalls the next day and we needed to move our meeting. And just like that...I was free!
So at 7 AM I met Egla and her sister in the city center to walk to the bus. I figured I'd be able to relax during the hour long bus ride to the waterfalls maybe even catch up on a little sleep but woah was I mistaken. I've never been more impressed by the energy 16 year olds have. These kids were dancing and singing the entire ride out to the waterfalls. And when I say they were dancing I mean that at one point we even stopped the bus so we could circle dance around it for a bit.
When we finally got to the waterfalls, we hiked for around half an hour and then BOOM, this was our view.
Needless to say it was totally worth all the craziness. Apparently the waterfalls change slightly throughout the year depending on how much water there is but they keep going year round. When we visited, there were 3 main areas. The two pictured above were the coolest. The one on the left is a long single waterfall that ends in a nice little swimming pool and the one on the right is a bigger waterfall that falls straight onto the boulders in the river below.
We spent the rest of the day swimming, grilling, dancing, talking and taking pictures. I was exhausted by the time we decided to head back to Gramsh but luckily the bus driver knew exactly what I needed because as soon as we left he turned the music to best song ever. (I'll give you 3 guesses.) Thats right he played MAMBO NUMBER 5!!! Naturally I still remembered all of the words and impressed the kids with my singing ability. And after another hour of dancing and singing on the bus, we were back in Gramsh. It was the perfect completely unplanned and unexpected day.
PS-I'll try to add some more pictures when my internet is a little faster.
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