Why they call Ksamil, Albania 'Europe's Caribbean'

I'd seen photos of Ksamil dozens of times before going — it's probably the most repeated image of all of Albania, the one that shows up in any search for "best beaches in the Balkans." And still, nothing prepared me for the exact moment I stepped onto Aquarium Beach for the first time.

We arrived mid-afternoon, after the short drive from Sarande, with the sun already starting to lose some intensity. The water had a color I'd never seen outside a clearly edited photo: layers of turquoise and blue that shifted depending on where I walked along the shore, almost as if someone had put a physical filter over the sea.

It's the kind of water that makes you stop taking photos after ten minutes, because you already know none of them will do it justice, and you'd rather just look at it.

We got in and started swimming right away, without overthinking it or hunting for the "perfect" photo spot. And underwater the effect multiplied even more: you could see the bottom with a clarity I hadn't seen even in the cleanest Mediterranean water I knew until then, every stone and every small fish perfectly defined.

What surprised me most, even more than the color itself, was how uncrowded everything was compared to what I expected from such a photographed place — we arrived worried we'd find a row of sunbeds packed shoulder to shoulder, and that wasn't the case, at least at that hour. After that first sunset in Ksamil, I understood, without anyone needing to explain it to me, why so many people start comparing this coast to the Caribbean.