The year · August is underlined
| Region | J | F | M | A | M | J | J | A | S | O | N | D |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Divjakë-Karavasta |
Dated facts · every figure carries the day it was checked
| What | Value | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| The pelican year | Nests are built on Pelican Island from January, and the colony stays until June when the breeding season ends | 2026-08-25 · Albanian National Tourism Agency, Pelican Island |
| The park | No entry fee and no special permit to enter the zone | 2026-08-25 · Wikivoyage, Divjaka-Karavasta National Park |
Getting there
car. About 60 km south of Durrës, with the visitor centre roughly 4 km west of Divjakë village. On foot it is a twenty to twenty-five minute walk from the town into the park.
Parking: At the visitor centre and along the forest road.
Photography
Best light: sunrise, golden.
A nesting colony is the one subject on this site where a drone is a disturbance question before it is a permission question. Photograph the island from the shore at first light, and check drone requirements with the AAC before travelling.
Drone: not confirmed. Albania's registration requirement is reported differently by every secondary source, so verify with the AAC before you fly.
Karavasta is the largest lagoon in Albania, separated from the Adriatic by a strip of golden sand and backed by one of the country's largest natural coastal pine forests. It is a Ramsar site, and it holds roughly five percent of the world population of the Dalmatian pelican.
The birds decide the calendar, and the calendar runs against the rest of this site. The pelicans begin building on the island in January and stay until June. That means the strongest months here are the months the Riviera is shut, which makes this one of the few places in Albania with a real reason to visit in February.
There is a second season on top of the first. In summer the lagoon strip is a beach, and it is the quietest big beach in the country because it is nowhere near the Ionian circuit. The two seasons barely overlap, so decide which one you came for.
Entry to the zone is free and needs no permit. There is a visitor centre with a lookout tower, and boat trips on the lagoon exist, but no price for either could be confirmed against a fetched source, so none is printed here.
Nearby
AI imageApolloniaA Greek city on a hill above the Vjosa plain, with a thirteenth-century monastery built out of its stone in the middle of it and almost nobody on the site.
AI imageDurrësThe country's main port and its biggest domestic beach, with the largest Roman amphitheatre in the Balkans in the middle of the town.
AI imageArdenica MonasteryA working Orthodox monastery on a ridge above the Myzeqe plain, half an hour from Apollonia and open when almost nothing else inland is.