Tale of Two Ferries (Albanian Intermission Day 13)

While my girly was at her day camp, we took the opportunity to snoop around the southern part of Albania for a few days. It was cool and relaxing and refreshing for our fatigued souls.   I had taken a quick glance at the map knowing the general direction of where we were headed and major landmarks. I naively was leaving the rest up to Google Maps....what I didn't notice was the break in the highway on the map:

Imagine this scenario:  We are driving along happily enjoying the historic scenery when we are abruptly stopped by a man in uniform-type outfit yelling in Albania for me to pull to the right.  Okie dokie. Pulling to the right.  Enter a second man, dressed in street clothes rushing the drivers window speaking in English "Where you going? Where you going?"  Um...south. I'm going south. "Go left. You go left. Now!"  Oh. Ok. South is left. Pulling left.  Then the Albanian yelling started---Uniform man standing in front of the car vs. Street Clothes man standing at my window with us blocking traffic between the two. Now what??  In what I can only assume was a torrid insult to each other's mothers, Street Clothes man won and we pulled left...straight unto a floating pallet in the middle of a body of water with only inches between us and the water.  WHAT THE?!?!  HOW?! WHAT?! Where is the Uniform Man?!? I don't want to go south anymore!! Then...the floating pallet starting moving! Annie pulled out her GoPro. My Mom was praying in tongues. Isaac was laughing hysterically. And I starting calling out my last will & testament.  At that point a third man, chain smoking, showed up at my window as we were floating across the water and asked for money. Seriously?? There is no saying no now.  THEN we saw what was happening---we were on a moat ferry being pulled across by a chain pulley! Like old school England-to-France-chain-pulley.  It was SO cool and SO crazy at the same time. 

The inches between us and the water...and the stellar barrier should any catastrophe occur. 

Can you see the chain pulley??

These are the travel experiences that you can only ever stumble upon.  And one we ALL will remember till the end of our days.  Bonkers!

Fast forward through the weekend as we were exploring the area, we noticed there was a REAL car ferry to an island near by which was technically Greece which would totally cross off a MAJOR bucket list item in my life.  Let's go touch Greece!  I'm from Seattle. We are car ferry experts...except Grecian car ferries are nothing like Seattle car ferries.   This ferry was HUMONGOUS, loading on full buses and large semi trucks into the belly and a separate 40+degree ramp UP into the upper deck of the ferry.  We were driving a newer vehicle with an automatic transmission which shouldn't give you any real issues going up an incline, right?  Nope...even with a good running start, we got half way up the ramp and the tires started squealing and the car started rolling BACKWARDS.   Oh sweet Jesus, we are going to DIE...at the very least roll into the 12 cars behind us and flip backwards onto our hood.  We are under enough spiritual attack. THIS is how Satan is going to take us down??   I literally closed my eyes and gunned the gas as hard as I could which propelled us fish-tailing into the ferry with such velocity I had to SLAM on the breaks to keep from creating our own monster truck rally inside the bowels of the international ferry.  The whole event clearly got everyone's attention as we were the LAST vehicle to enter and they carefully positioned our car NO WHERE NEAR any other vehicle. *eyeroll* Thanks Greece. In the words of my buddy Rain Man...I am (indeed) a very good driver. 

Bucket List: Greece ✔