Search for the Blue Eye in Albania and you will get photographs of two different places, six hours apart, in opposite corners of the country. Both are called Syri i Kaltër. People do book the wrong one. This guide covers both: where each one is, how you reach it, what a visit actually involves, and which of our tours goes there.
The Blue Eye near Saranda
This is the famous one. It rises just west of the village of Muzinë, off the road between Saranda and Gjirokastër, at 152 m above sea level, and it pushes out 18,400 litres of water a second. That flow is the head of the Bistricë, which runs 25 km to the Ionian south of Sarandë.
Divers have gone fifty metres down the karst shaft without reaching the bottom, so how deep it goes is still unknown. It has been a protected natural monument since 1996.
How to visit the Blue Eye near Saranda
It is about 25 km from Saranda, roughly thirty minutes by car on the road towards Gjirokastër. From the car park it is two kilometres in to the spring — on foot through the trees, or by the golf cart that runs the track. Allow one to one and a half hours in all.
The site is a viewing platform over the spring rather than a bathing place. The water comes out of the karst cold all year, and most visitors look, walk a little along the Bistrica below it, and move on. It is open all year; mornings are the quiet hours, before the coaches arrive from the coast. Most people combine it with Butrint and Ksamil in the same day.
From Tirana: the day trip
The Blue Eye sits near a main road, which is why it fits into a long day from the capital. Our Blue Eye, Saranda & Ksamil Day Trip runs from Tirana, Durrës and Golem, takes about fifteen hours door to door, and is priced per group from €280. The spring is a stop on the way rather than the whole day: Saranda and the beaches at Ksamil are the rest of it.
The Blue Eye of Theth
The other one is in the Albanian Alps, at Nderlysaj inside Theth National Park. It is not a roadside stop. Nderlysaj is thirty minutes by car from Theth village, and from there it is forty-five minutes on foot — a four-by-four track, then a path.
The reward is a pool you can get into, which the southern one is not. The water is 10 °C all year, so getting in is a decision rather than a swim. Two to three hours is the realistic time for the visit including the walk, and the season for it is June to September.
How to visit the Blue Eye of Theth
You get there from Theth, and Theth is reached from Shkodër. Our Theth Day Trip with Waterfall & Blue Eye leaves Shkodër (from €240 per group) or Tirana (from €290 per group) and takes eight to twelve hours depending on where you start; the Grunas waterfall is on the same day. If you are spending nights in the Alps, the Blue Eye is a half-day from Theth village on any of our Komani–Valbona–Theth itineraries.
Which one is on which trip
If you are heading south — Saranda, Ksamil, the Riviera — the Blue Eye you will see is the karst spring at Muzinë.
If you are going to the Alps, it is the one at Nderlysaj, and you will be walking to it.
They are not substitutes for one another. One is a volume of water coming out of the ground beside a road. The other is a cold pool at the end of a path in the mountains. If you want both, they belong to two different trips, and the drive between them is a full day on its own.
