Mount Rosi Cafe Hike
Mount Rosi is one of the round peaks towering over the mountain town of Valbone in the Accursed Mountain range in Albania. Valbone is a popular town destination for hikers and vacation seekers. The Mount Rosi cafe hike is an out-and-back trail. If you’re following my Albania Itinerary, then you’ll do this hike on Day 7.
The full Mount Rosi hike is 9km from Valbone and mostly uphill. However, if you don’t want the full drama of climbing a mountain upright then you can just hike to the cafe as we did. As the next day we were hiking the Valbone-Theth 18km route, we used this as a little warm-up.
We met a couple at our guesthouse who suggested we do the full hike—the views they said are totally worth the effort and there is even a portion of the trail that takes you into Montenegro! We decided to see how we felt by the time we reached the Mount Rosi Cafe… Obviously, we didn’t make it—haha.
Total hiking time to the cafe: 2 hours and 40 minutes from Guesthouse Rosi.
The Mount Rosi Cafe Hike
In the summer months, I suggest starting at 6am as the heat of the day (especially in July) is intense. As we were staying at Guesthouse Rosi, we had a 1.5km advantage as we didn’t have to walk up from town.
If coming from town, take the turn off the main road when you see a sign that says “Guest House Kukai,” though your first stop will actually be Guesthouse Rosi. The trail to the guesthouse is slightly shady but totally uphill. 4×4 cars can reach the Guesthouse Rosi and even the start of the trail but I think it’s not worth it to organize transport for this hike. However, we did see a car that dropped people off later in the day.
Here we are hiking up to Guesthouse Rosi once we turned off the main road in Valbone the day before
At Guesthouse Rosi you can fill up on water if you need to.
Cooling drinks with fresh gound water is a popular way to keep drinks cool in Albania. You can just go up and fill your bottle from the hose
Once you pass Guesthouse Rosi, continue up the trail, following the car tracks.
After around 1.5km (25ish minutes), you’ll reach a sign that says “Maja Rosit” and “Valbona,” keep to the right of the diverging pathways to leave the car tracks and enter the forest. We made the mistake of continuing along the car tracks at first and later had to double back.
The trail from here is easy to follow. There are red and white markers on trees and some rocks if you get confused. Mostly, just continue on the path going uphill and you’ll be fine. I suggest you download the app MAPY and download the Albania maps.
As you hike you’ll pass through forest and some open space. As such, you should bring a hat, sunglasses and sunscreen.
At a steady pace, it took us an hour to reach the cafe from the signage.
Mount Rosi Cafe
Mount Rosi Cafe is a cute spot to have breakfast and the views are worth the effort without having to hike all the way to the top. Coffee and water cost 100 ALL and beer will cost 300 ALL. Bring cash!
We had a packed breakfast from Guesthouse Rosi and stopped for an hour for our meal before heading back down.
For us, the hike back and forth took 2 hours and 40 minutes, not including our 1 hour stop at the cafe.
The cafe menu
Continue to Mount Rosi
The hike to the top of Mount Rosi will take around 3 hours from the cafe. While we were hiking down at 9:30 am, we passed several groups that looked intent on reaching the top.
The walk down will probably take 4 hours to Guesthouse Rosi.
This hike also sounds like a nice afternoon hike, depending on the weather, so that you get sunset views on the way down.