We had very few expectations of Algeria, other than (one) pretty much everyone we met told us not to go there and (two) Algeria likes a bit of old school French inspired bureaucracy. Number one appears to have been based on absolutely no information other than pre-conceived ideas based on random western news reports and, happily for us, all this scare mongering turned out to be needless and Algeria was a great experience. Number two was evidenced by way of our visa applications, which were required prior to leaving New Zealand and in which, we needed to provide (among other things) a planned route itinerary and a hotel booking for every night that we were in Algeria. Given that we were applying for a 3 month visa, this was no small thing. It resulted in a correspondence of about 30 emails between myself and Monsieur Fethi Ouaret of the Best Western Hotel in Oran with whom I was very honest and explained that the counsel in Canberra required the booking, and that we were not actually going to book into his hotel for 90 days (especially at the somewhat exorbitant price). This correspondence had culminated several months prior to entering Algeria with Monsieur Fethi Ouaret asking me “Really, will they believe it?”, which, I have to agree, was a pretty fair question. Well, they did, we got the visa.
The ferry to Algeria was meant to leave Almeria in Spain at 12am, but only eventually did so at 2.30am. Typical. We did get some curious looks on boarding, a couple of incredulous questions about us wanting to visit, and an immigration official who failed to stamp us out of Spain because he was convinced that we would be returning to Melilla, rather than exiting to Algeria. Once we got on the boat, the thing was practically empty and people just slept on the couches (definitely a bonus at 3am). The ferry itself was fantastic. It would have been rather grand back in the 1980s, which I expect was probably when people were last coming to Algeria as tourists. It was kept immaculately in the style in which it was created and was an exceptional blast from the past.
The people in Algeria were really friendly for the most part and pretty genuine. If someone offered to help, they were never trying to make a buck, or commission, but rather, they were generally interested in assisting you, knowing about your family, inviting you for tea, or generally showing you around the town. All that said, there was definitely a certain amount of nerves associated with our arrival because we just had no idea what to expect (no tourist guides for this one) and people tended to look at us pretty incredulously when we told them we were not working on a gas / oil field, but were tourists.
After a very thorough check at immigration in Ghazaouet, a nice guy helped us sort a cheap shared taxi to Tlemcen (“the spiritual capital of Algeria”). This was our first real Algerian town and it was really very cute. The town was almost European in feeling with lots of outdoor cafes (of course, like everywhere else in North Africa, only men sit in these). There was also a bunch of shrines, mosques, kasbah and a gondola. I am pretty sure that Algeria’s motto should be: We love a good gondola. While I was very surprised to see one in Tlemcen (a fancy Swiss creation opened in 2009), we proceeded to see many of these as our trip progressed.
On arriving, we managed to get through the rigamarole of changing currency (a pain, which is taken very seriously by the officials) and find accommodation. A constant hindrance in respect of accommodation in Algeria is that we are not in fact married. We quickly learnt to lie about this in Algeria (and for that matter, everywhere in Africa). Unfortunately, a bit of a lie is not always enough in Algeria and the hotels actually want you to produce an “act of marriage”, which apparently Algerians carry around with them whenever they travel if a female is staying with a male in a hotel. In our case, for the most part, we managed to find places where the proprietor would eventually okay us (these tended to be either at the very top, or the very bottom of the price spectrum).
After Tlemcen we moved onwards to Oran. My knowledge of this port city was pretty much entirely based on the movie Casablanca. Yes, I am a big fan. In the film, Oran was one port on the “tortuous refugee trail” that sprung up from “Paris to Marseilles, across the Mediterranean to Oran, then by train or auto or foot across the rim of Africa to Casablanca in French Morocco. Here the fortunate ones through money or influence or luck might obtain exit visas and scurry to Lisbon, and from Lisbon to the New World. But the others wait in Casablanca, and wait and wait and wait”. Naturally, I was convinced that Oran would be exceptional and needed no other reason to visit said cultural icon. Lucky Thomas.
We did in fact enjoy our stay in Oran. The city is really pretty with a lot of old French buildings in the same style (and by the same architect, Ignaz Hirtoff) as those along the Champs Elysee in Paris. A lot of these in Oran are decaying and falling to bits, but this only added to the charm of the place. We spent two days checking out the city and hanging out on the boardwalk. We did some tourist activities, but it is fairly difficult to find information about such things in Algeria and the suggestion of a tourist map evokes perplexed expressions. We were also pretty much back to day time excursions in Algeria as well as the cities are not really that nice to walk around at night.
Algiers was great. It is a really beautiful city with a lovely bay, stunning old French buildings and some nice countryside around it – no wonder the French liked the place. Too much possibly, as while the colonial French architecture is stunning, throughout Algeria, the French demolished the even older (and likely amazing) medinas that previously occupied these locations. By the time they got to Morocco they had determined that this was possibly not their best approach and had instead taken to building a “new” French town next door to whichever city they had decided they wished to colonize at the time. We spent a couple of days in Algiers and went up to Notre Dame D’Afrique, the Martyr’s monument and a few other attractions including some Roman ruins outside of the city that were excellent. Most of the fun of the place was really just hanging out in the city though and looking at the buildings (including the Grande Poste – which was totally exceptional and still used as a post office). As noted, they also love a good gondola and we managed to ride two of these – they do not treat these as tourist attractions however, but rather as a genuine means of transport and they are dirt cheap.
From Algiers we caught a bus to Ghardaia. In what was not to be the last of these types of occurrences, the bus managed to run out of fuel in the middle of the Algerian desert, where we stopped and flagged down vehicles to get a refill.
Ghardaia itself was an interesting town. It is the central town of five in the M’Zab valley and the commercial area for these surrounding towns. The towns in the valley are walled off and house a specific Muslim sect that split from mainstream Islam about 900 years ago. The women (once married) wander the streets in outfits that look a lot like a child’s ghost costume including a bunch of white sheets, one draped over their head to reveal only one eye. Prior to being married, they can show both eyes. The French did not have much influence here, which we were assured by our guide in the walled town of Beni-Isguen (you are only allowed to enter with a guide) was because the French did not expect to find such civilization in these parts and respected it so much. Thomas and I are more inclined to believe that, given the evidence of the French being completely unappreciative of the culture in the north and totaling pretty much every medina in the country, it was more likely because Ghardaia is surrounded in all directions by a massive desert and the French were disinclined to spend time arguing with a bunch of people in an area where there were precious little natural resources to be had (provided of course that said people did not interfere with the extraction of the natural resources that were available). Call me a cynic.
Next stop was Timimoun – 600km south-west of Ghardaia on the edge of the Grand Erg Occidental portion of the Saharan desert. This part of the journey included such interesting scenes as: Anthea has a temper tantrum in awful French; Anthea and Thomas sit in a hot tin box; Anthea and Thomas enjoy their first (and hopefully last) Saharan sand storm; and (last but certainly not least) Anthea and Thomas enjoy their first police escort (pretty much the closest I am ever going to get to being treated like the president). To expand. Getting to Timimoun involved some loud protestations in French (it is possible I compared someone to a goat at some point – more attributable to my only recalling being taught the farm animals in preliminary French than any complex and intellectual insult – no surprises) and an incredibly uncomfortable bus ride. On arrival, there was a sand storm – obviously we were less than impressed. The town itself is a tiny Saharan oasis town with red mud brick buildings that start to get reminiscent of what you may see as you head towards Mali. At the time of our visit, the whole Mali situation was deeply resented in these parts because Timmimoun used to be a large tourist area and pretty much no foreigners go there anymore – notwithstanding the fact that it is said to be (and indeed seemed to us) pretty safe. We decided to do a jeep tour regardless of the sand storm situation due to the fact that we had sat in the hot tin box for so long and had an unpleasant argument to get to Timimoun in the first place.
The tour went something along these lines: 8am pick up. Drive to local police. Need passports for declaration and permission to go to the desert. Drive back to hotel for passports. Drive to local police. Commandant is not there to give permission. Wait. Take a drive through the local palmerie. Drive back to local police. Wait for Commandant. And wait. And wait. Make displeasure known. Told Commandant will be arriving shortly. Go and buy picnic lunch. Drive back to the police. Wait. Commandant finally arrives. Permission granted: 10.45am. Begin driving. Realize that there are two police vehicles with us (one in front and one behind). Each with 3 men inside with big guns. Go to a few places. Police enjoy taking pictures of the tourist attractions. Thomas enjoys taking surreptitious pictures of the police (they do not tend to like this, so we do not tend to ask). Decide it is time for lunch. Police decide that after all it is not so important to hang out with us all day, and as it turns out they have been invited to have some cous cous at a local wedding. Police leave us for 1.5 hours and, by all accounts, enjoy a meal of excellent cous cous. Police materialize and escort us back into town. Thom and I are convinced that if something ever happened, it would be more useful to try and ransom the police than to look to them for protection.
Our lovely guide did take us to his cousin’s house for pretty much the best cous cous I have ever had though and adorably turned up the next day to make sure we got our bus okay and see us off.
Constantine was our final stop in Algeria. A very pretty town with not much to do and a massive bus ride to get there (about 25 hours on buses). I include a picture, but not much otherwise to report (aside from the fact that we got so pissed off with one hotel proprietor not wanting us to stay there because we did not have a marriage certificate that Thom had a fit in reception and told him to go fuck himself. This did not go down fantastically as it turns out that while he pretended not to comprehend much English, he did in fact understand this).
Finally, the border crossing. Suffice to say the following: It took 10 hours from Constantine (Algeria) to Tabarka (Tunisia). This was to cover a distance of 270km. This period included a hair raising journey from Constantine to Annaba during which our driver enjoyed tempting death by accelerating at 120km/h into oncoming traffic on wet roads in order to overtake massive trucks and missing all traffic by the slimmest margin imaginable. After said journey, we enjoyed a relatively reasonable drive to the border. We attempted to navigate the Algerian side of the border, which was vastly assisted by our driver having ‘friends’ who he paid to let us through faster. He then was not allowed through because he had not paid his Algerian taxes and there was a new chief in charge who was enforcing the rules somewhat more strictly. After finally getting through, we proceeded the 20m to the Tunisian side of the border where we were intending to use different passports. Turns out that you have to have the stamp to exit Algeria in the same passport as you are using to enter Tunisia. As our exit stamp was in the NZ passports, we needed visas to enter into Tunisia, which we did not have and which were not available at the border post. After a major argument and a payment of 50Euro a seven day visa was arranged for us. This took two hours and a good bunch of tears. Finally we arrived in Tabarka 10 hours after departing Constantine. Possibly the worse travel day yet! Not sure what other people’s experiences have been of this type of thing, but while we knew this type of thing may happen, it was certainly not enjoyable when it did (especially given that in this situation, it was not even possible for us to go back into Algeria). Fingers crossed we can extend our Tunisian visas! The only plus in this whole scenario is that the guys in the taxi with us were (like pretty much all Algerians we met) lovely and patient. They even helped us find a good (and cheap) hotel after the whole ordeal and offered to help us with the police to get the visa extensions when we got round to it.
March 2013