We found a SECRET hot springs | Permet Benjë Thermal Waters ALBANIA
we've been road tripping through Albania in our camper van for a few months now exploring vibrant cities historic towns and beautiful beaches soaking up the history and culture and eating so much good food but what we really love is getting out into nature and finding those amazing wild camping spots. in this episode we're heading to the mountain town of Permet hiking through the stunning Langarica Canyon soaking in the Benjë Hot Springs and even uncovering some hidden communist era tunnels if you love wild places and off the beaten path road trip adventures stick around this one's for you. and we are back on the road today we're heading towards the Langarica Canyon and the Permet area where there are some hot springs and just some nice nature apparently there's a hike up a canyon so we're looking forward to checking out some of Albania's natural beauty we crossed the Vosjë River just south of Tepelenë and drove towards the town of Permet the river has carved out a canyon which was spectacular to drive through oh Jesus we made it to Permet where we stopped for coffee and supplies before heading up to the hot springs "except for the sea we have everything else" we're just doing a sneaky sneaky blocky cuz we couldn't park on that side of the road sue is directing to the nearest Byrek Cafe she's taking us uh through a bit of suburbia morning after walking through these back streets we made it to the main part of town this old guy's hassling Nigel for a cigarette he's following him around we don't smoke no sorry he was following you around this is the main square of Permet such beautiful place it's surrounded by the mountains couple of nice little coffee places we'll go and grab coffee there so we found a little Byrek place to grab our morning snack Nigel has the meat i have the cheese nice fresh Byrek see how it's done it's pretty cool eh the ingredients next stop fruit and veg we got two lot lots of garlic we got eggplant we got broccoli tomatoes onions potatoes leaks all for 600 lek or 10 Australian dollars lovely thank you mate yeah and this is one of the things that we love about Albania just that being able to get fresh organic fruit and veggies locally grown most of the time for a fraction of what we would pay at home in Australia so we've stopped in the main square along with most of the rest of Permet Nigel's got his double shot i've got my little baby machiato and for those two coffees 230 lek which is about $4 Australian dollars so I'm guessing this must be the church given that there are candles burning outside and there's icons there and people crossing themselves coming in and out cuz this is all there is i don't know what's through that locked door but yeah all these beautiful icons so we uh we lost a supporter yesterday one of our biggest supporters and a very dear friend Alison uh may you rest in peace this is for you. We continued on following the river seeing farm animals beautiful blossoms and bunkers Benjë Benja and then the road got even narrower full of potholes look at this bridge we have to drive across and there's a car coming the other way we'll see we have arrived at the hot springs we've just been checking out this area there's been quite a bit of rain so it's a bit muddy and there is more rain forecast Nigel reckons he can get through here i really hope we don't get the van stuck nigel got the van through the muddy puddles and onto this concrete pad right by the river i then got stuck into some editing work in the van while Nigel went on a scouting mission he wanted to find one of the upstream pools i went up the rough dirt road above the canyon before bashing through the bush on a very rough track to find the pool quite clear the tracks are not used often bloody steep slippery from the road it's taken me about 15 minutes now i'm pretty stoked to find this water hole and then that's where the water's coming out there all right friends i've made my way to the Primo water hole what we believe to be and leave that behind me and uh see if I can circumnavigate back to the van by the river river we are just tucking into an Albanian beer where was this one from n the beer um Elbar yeah Gjirokaster few chips cheers cheers another another day another Albanian beer it's not so bad working when the view from your office looks like this come on Sue let's go exploring okay let's go one of the biggest challenges for us living in a van and traveling full-time is the lack of routine from driving days to exploring and creating content every day is different which is great but sometimes we struggle to focus and get our work done so for the next seven days we're doing the Magic Mind 7-day challenge oh wow that tastes really nice what's in this stuff you know it's got a bunch of different herbs and vitamins even ashwagandha which is really good for anxiety and stress i can taste passion fruit it's a delicious passion fruit flavor chin chin so that's it the magic mind 7-day challenge done i don't know about you but I'm feeling much more motivated and focused yeah I'm not having that 3:00 slump which is huge for me and I'm sleeping better and we can sit down to work and concentrate when we need to so yeah all these vitamins and minerals in this have really helped us out really helped our energy levels but what's cool about Magic Mind is it's not a coffee replacement we still get to enjoy our morning cup thank goodness for that if you want to feel more productive more motivated more focused like us why not try Magic Mind they ship internationally to 65 countries and they have a 100% money back guarantee click the link in the description to this video and if you use the code NSAdventures you will get a discount off your first subscription for the next 10 days now let's get back to those hot springs roger we're walking up and over the bridge there's like no railings or anything this Ottoman era bridge was built in the 18th century it's 7 m high and 30 m long so as you pass the bridge we come to the beginning of the Langarica Canyon which is almost 4 km long comprised of limestone rocks and at its deepest it's 100 m deep and about 20 or 30 m wide we're leaving the beautiful old bridge behind now and heading up into the Langarica Canyon the hot springs are caused by fissures in the side and sulphur water coming out so rather than crossing over here I think we're going to walk up along the other side so at this point here here's another one of these sulphur fissures and they've kind of sandbagged this one a little bit to make it a pool but you can see where the water's bubbling out kind of below where Nigel is there and now we're taking off our shoes and socks to cross this river i think the only thing I can say is apparently adventure has no age limit this is proving to be quite the adventure we've just done our first water crossing apparently there's a couple more to go so we made the water crossing and here are the steps leading up to the secret swimming hole which predicting there'd be lots of people up here but remarkably there's nobody here uh we found a secret rock pool which is not so secret because it's on Google Maps as thermal water this little pool here is beautiful and Nigel's going to take one for the team and go and have a swim in there i might put my feet in nigel's in there having a swim it's really quite beautiful here but it's very smelly water's coming out very quickly it's quite a good strong flow what's going on you're not going in Sue's feeling sick with the smell it is quite strong i'll grant you that put that aside that's actually really nice we also got to put aside the floaties dunno what's going on there now the sun's gone behind a cloud and the cliff it's gotten a bit chillier armpit farts always warm you up though Nigel that water's um super cold upstream of uh the last thermal so yeah Sue made the decision to leave her shoes on i mean she's regretting it oh man look at this uh canyon though there's a tiny little couple of tiny little fissures here it seems to be like clockwork that we get rain in the afternoon here 3:30 and it's just started to rain again but luckily we've got plenty of work to do here in the van friends this is absolutely awesome while we're sitting here at the hot springs Nigel is helping me with editing a video this is so cool he's just learning how to um put the music into the editing software and create a bit of B-roll i'll make sure in that video I tell you yeah that Nigel has helped out with the video happy times ahead yay so we've got a bottle here of Verë e Bardhë very bad very bad wine we do like this very bad wine though the the that that means um white wine in Albanian and this one is very it's actually vera vera vera e coo so the ver means wine is it vera i think yeah wine the wine is white mhm and that one wine is cookie cookie very kooky red wine is very kooky and white wine is very bad we'll go with that dear Albanian friends please know that we're not poking fun at your language at all no we're poking fun at ourselves because we we cuz we can't say it we can't say it properly albanians if you'd like to send us a voice note with the correct way to say these words we would gratefully accept that and try to improve our pronunciation good morning friends we woke up this morning to so much more water in the river it rained a lot last night view from the bedroom window i can't believe how much more water's in there i'm super glad we walked up the canyon yesterday Nigel cuz crossing over that river might be a bit dodgy today this is such a beautiful spot to just hang out and relax so we spent this day doing just that oh and working What's going on the kitchen tonight there Suzanne? well Nigel I'm liking I'm liking the look of uh the aubergine i'm trying to do like a little There's a bit of Albanian going on little bit of Albania oh you know what's got to go in here if it's Albania this one what's that oregano oh yeah yeah what I've done is I've um scooped out the center of the aubergines yeah and I've cooked that up with onion garlic tomato um and oregano and then I'm going to stuff this in the aubergines mhm and thank you Nigel for demonstrating we're going to pop them in the Yeah they're not ready to just to demonstrate look at Look at that beautiful uh shape they're going in the omnia yep so that's done which obviously goes on the thing y all right the next stage of the game here is stuffing the They kind of That's okay all right it's all about the sauce right let's do a quick sneak peek yeah look at that well Nigel what have we got to say i don't know yet i haven't eaten it it looks pretty good huh so we got eggplant look how soft that is yeah is it all right give me a chance sublime mhm it is our last day here at Benjë we're actually quite early this morning it's Is it 8:00 yet Nigel you don't know doesn't Something like that we're the first ones on the track oh I don't know if you guys can see this now but there's so much steam coming off it's beautiful isn't it it's really cold over there because the sun hasn't hit yet so I've just come back over this side of the bridge to sit and try and warm up a little bit it's incredible this morning because it's so cold there's so much mist coming off the the water cuz the water temperature is quite warm there's no clouds on top of the mountains it's all down in the valley it's absolutely beautiful and there's nobody here if you come to Permet the hot springs Benjë whatever you want to call it Benjë make sure that you come early in the morning if you can beat the crowds here this place is even more magical so while Nigel's playing in that pool I'm going to go follow these red and white arrows to see where they lead it's definitely a path here i've come out in this little clearing there's some um bunker pieces here oh wow this is wicked check out that view of the bridge and the pool and the mountains we've got really great views up the canyon through the trees here where that graffiti is there's a tunnel and there's another one just kind of over to the left nigel's come up too what a great way to start the morning there totally we're just going to go and see if we can have a look at these tunnels so it looks like the path goes down here and just across this little canyon where you taking me and we've come out near these tunnels this place just keeps getting more and more epic looks like a whole another Oh wow bunker system like the one we visited at Vlorë it's these ones are spookier Nigel is anybody there? well that's kind of freaky isn't it oh my god more tunnels so maybe it goes all the way through to this one we need to start carrying a torch in our camera bag in Albania because we keep finding these tunnels looks like it's uh all collapsed in pretty much yeah all this this roofing it's collapsed so yeah probably probably not advisable to be in here to be honest but it's hard not to explore but this might just be the best view of the bridge too oh my lord look at this this is a beautiful view of the bridge okay we're just down from exploring the tunnel system up there the bunker system and I I was just saying to Sue just how grateful I was to be at peace in the uh the biggest hot spring the main one on my own the early bird catches the uh the worm you probably hear the crowds in the background group of young lads having a great old time but you know again it's just so nice to um have the place to yourself worth getting getting up early oh to be honest this so beautiful here this place is actually really hard to leave but sadly leave we must there's still so much more of this beautiful country of Albania to see so long as we can get out of this field it's a bit of a roundabout way to get out cuz we don't want to drive through this puddle hopefully we'll get out no worries it is pretty wet god it's already spinning wheels good job Poss Poss hit that subscribe button and join us next time as Nigel's flower obsession continues and we explore the beautiful city of Gjirocaster
2025-04-24 08:14
