Tuesday, 19th April 2005 Alger, Algeria
Yippee! We have a WATER SACK! A huge thank you to
Neil Jewitt, Rachid Sekkai, Karim and
Karimo who have spent hours over coming the numerous problems of Ortlieb
and the Royal Mail to arrange the delivery of a replacement water sack
to Alger by courier for us after ours split. The sack doesn't look like
much and Stani has spent many a hour whinging how much she dislikes it
(the 10l sack isn't nearly as user friendly as the 5l sacks we used on
our previous voyage through the Americas (and are still using now)). A
thousand kisses to them for super hero help.
Saturday, 16th April 2005 Alger, Algeria
Our military friends on their motor bikes were
completely amazing today. Our entry into Alger was a complete breeze and
seriously - the city has some major traffic!
Wednesday, 13th April 2005 Tipasa, Algeria
Just to let you all know - due to the constant demands
for more photos we've added some of our Bolivian photos to the Americas
page. You can view them
here. I'm sitting in our room at the hostel updating this site -
Richard is off trying to arrange some form of travel so we can visit the
Regal Mausoleum of Mauretania. It's only 12km away but our friend Aniour
has said it is too dangerous to cycle there.
Algeria seems quite advanced in terms to recycling and environmental
matters as we've already mentioned. The radio has been discussing the
fact that the black plastic bags that we found so widely used in Morocco
are in fact poisonous - a problem as they are widely used for fruit and
vegetables. The black bags are cheaper to produce - we assume because
white plastic bags most under go a further level of extraction of the
dangerous ingredient. Black plastic bags will now be banned in Algeria
from 2006.
Tuesday, 12th April 2005 Tipasa, Algeria
For once we were actually going to be ready for our
military escort on time. Even despite being invited for breakfast by our
friends on the course here we would have been ready. As we were
preparing to start bring the bikes and panniers to the front there was a
knock on the door. We smiled at each other - it was 9:10. We had
arranged 10am with the guard. But as they had been between ½ and 2½
hours early every morning this was about the norm. But no - it wasn't
our guard. Anouar stood with a big grin. We were delighted to see him
and spent the next 2 hours chatting away. But again the bad and the
good. Despite only being 60km from Alger we were not to leave but to
stay in Tipasa until Saturday when we could go to Alger as that would
give Anouar more time to arrange our reception in Alger. Stani was not
delighted to say the least. The other thing she found strange was the
fact that the military guard didn't turn up that day. Richard went off
with Anouar to chat with various important people and came back
a couple of hours - we were invited for lunch by some ministers. To be
honest this was the worst meal yet that Stani had had in Africa
and she was surprised that it was served to all these important
functionaries. After lunch Anoiar and Richard went to chat to
more people - Stani has no idea who and is not sure Richard is
either.
Wednesday, 6th April 2005
Oran, Algeria
Oran must have the nicest people in the world.
Absolutely everybody we have met here has been so incredibly
kind to us that we are completely bowled over.
We arrived
early in the morning and unlike our arrival in Morocco there
were no hustlers to greet us. On the ferry several people had
warned us to be careful in Algeria and despite what appeared to
be very aggressive behaviour (so it seemed to us with loud voice
and animated hand gestures) one man came over and broke into a
big smile and offered us each a mint. As the ferry door opened
we got our first glimpse of Oran. Located on the top of the
cliffside it was gorgeous. We had no problems going through
customs - merely that one person would wave us on and then
another would call us back again. We noticed that the customs
officers were giving all the cars a through check and we
ourselves were questioned several times as to whether we were
importing anything. One officer decided to give us a check over
but while Stani resigned herself to the fact that we would have
to empty all our panniers he was only interested in the
waterproof map holder on top of her handlebar bag. Very
interested. Despite assuring him it was just paper work - maps
etc he wanted to see every scrap of paper it contained. On
reflection we think he was seriously interested in seeing the
maps as opposed to actually checking that there was something
being smuggled in!Finally after waiting a while, being given
a customs nothing declared form we were let go - well as far as
the locked gate where we waited for half an hour before it was
opened. But everyone greeted us with a cheerful Bonjour and
genuine interest as to what we were doing. Finally the gates
were opened and we were let free - as far as the next police
booth where we had to provide details of our exact route day by
day where we were going. As we hadn't decided this ourselves it
was a bit of a challenge! We climbed the cliff side road to
Oran - Stani pulled over half way up to take a couple of photos.
While Richard hissed warnings to be careful. A car pulled over
and a man jumped out to wish Richard "Bon Courage". This summed
up the rest of the day. As we continued on the road, cars gave
us encouraging honks, people waved, cheered and shouted
encouragements to us. We had big smiles on our faces by the time
we reached the central square. They soon vanished. We had a
major problem. It was morning. Richard hadn't had his morning
coffee. We had no Algerian money. After a hour of trolling
around trying to find an ATM we had only found a couple of ATM's
but both were out of service. Inside the banks we were assured
that there were no ATM's in the city. The Tourist Office advised
us to go to the Bank of Algeria as they gave the best rate. It
was a very impressive building and Stani was completely charmed
by the graciousness of the staff there. She was also surprised
that there was no commission as we had been warned in Alicante
that the banks in Algeria charged exorbitant commission charges.
