Taxes done, and then hike to a 16th century monastery

May the 1st today. Wow. We've been in Albania for a month and a half.

I posted our April expenses last night if you missed it, you can see it here...

https://www.travelwithkevinandruth.com/2021/04/april-expenses.html

Well, I've spent an hour or so a day for the last three days getting our Canadian income taxes done and making sure all of the i's were dotted and t's were crossed. Then yesterday morning when I attempted to send everything in, I got an error message. 

It turns out that you can't use the electronic filing system between the hours of 3am and 6am eastern time in Canada. Well of course at 10am here, it's 4am eastern time in Canada.

We wanted to go for a hike, but we delayed it until it was after 12 noon here. At 12:05, I sent in the returns and everything went through fine. Then I sent in what we owed through our online banking. 

There's that done for another year. Of course we don't mind sending them a bunch of money... they spend it so wisely!

We had some lunch and then drove about 20 kms (12 miles) over to the village of Goranxi on the other side of the valley. Parked the car, and then set off on a 4.2 km (2.6 mile) uphill climb to the Manastiri i Ravenes (Monastery of the Ravens).

Heading uphill.

The only problem with such a late start is that it was pretty warm. Summer like weather has arrived here in Albania and the temperature actually got up to 28C (82F).

And with a fairly steep uphill climb of 1,500' in 2.6 miles it was a bit hot and sweaty! We are not complaining though... it was a beautiful day. 

You can see our path up ahead.

Some neat cave like rock formations.

Starting to get higher.

Still climbing.

Stopped to enjoy the view.

Can you see Ruth in the lower left?

That's where we're headed.

The meadows are full of yellow, blue, purple and white wildflowers.

Spring in Albania.

The entrance door was locked.

Not sure why they bother locking the door because there are several parts of the wall that have crumbled enough that people just hop over the wall. As did we!

The monastery was built in the year 1600.

Still in pretty good shape for a 500 year old building!

But the door to the building itself was also locked, so we couldn't see the inside.

Ruth, enjoying the views.

Monastery of the Ravens near Goranxi.

And then we hiked back down. It had taken us almost an hour and a half to climb up, but only 40 minutes to go back down. The 8.4 km (5.2 mile) hike was a good workout! Ruth said on the way down that we are sure glad that we put in the effort to keep in good enough shape to be able to do this kind of thing.

We saw this odd looking pretty butterfly.

Then we realized that it was actually two butterflies. Doing what butterflies do, apparently!

Another neat looking cave.

Almost back to the bottom.

Today is moving day!

We are headed to the town of Permet. It's only 64 kms (40 miles) away, but there are some detours that we want to make so we probably won't arrive until later in the afternoon. And we're trying to get an early start, so we better get going!

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LED Light Strips are on sale. 16' or 32'. These come with a 115VAC adapter, but can they operate at 12VDC and can be spliced directly into an RV 12 volt system. 

And in Canada...

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