9. Algeria 2 - Romans and ruins

Day 38, May 21st.  Ghardaia – Foughala, 24-29C, sunny

It’s a big day’s drive today – nearly 450 kilometres north / north-east, heading out of the desert and back towards civilisation. 

In preparation, Nina, Ralph and Laurie stock themselves up on a fine breakfast of fried eggs, parathas, fresh yoghurt and honey at the farmstay, whilst I confine myself to electrolytes – a mysterious desert stomach ailment having hit me in the night.

We’re en-route by 8.45 and and drop Abdallah off at a junction just outside Ghardaia, so he can catch a taxi back to his home village, another 40km away (a mere trifle of a distance, he’d probably have walked if time allowed).  Then we’re on our way, heading north-east towards Tolga. 

We have no escort today, which is good and bad.  Good, inasmuch as we can kick on and make good time, without unnecessary stops.  Bad, since if anything goes wrong, we’re driving on the quietest, most remote stretches of desert road that we’ve encountered in the whole trip. 

Nina starts us off, while I try to rest and not feel too sorry for myself.  Abdallah had warned us both “don’t speed”, but the distances are huge and the traffic is sparse – but not sparse enough on the first section, unfortunately.  Nina is flagged down at the first (and only) police checkpoint we see today, clocked on a radar gun doing an indeterminate speed above 100kph, the limit.  Using her finest English – and steadfastly refusing to speak or understand any French – after a minute or two she is let off with a lecture by the friendly gendarmewho doesn’t know whether to be more confused by the Western girl driving, or the fact she’s driving a right-hand drive vehicle.

Shortly after, we pass through the dusty, nondescript town of Zelfana, then head north, through a series of equally dusty and nondescript desert towns: El Guerrara, Guettara, Oum Laadham, Ouled Djellal.  They are spaced at roughly 50 – 75 kilometre intervals; in between, there is just desert.  We pass a truck – occasionally a car – every 10-15 minutes or so, and every now and then our spirits are lifted by the sighting of a little patch of greenery somewhere to the side of the road, or off in the distance – indicating the presence of water, and possibly life.  But there is nothing else. 

On several occasions, we absentmindedly count down the kilometres on our Google Maps navigation to a “turn left” or “turn right”, sign, expecting, or hoping for, some morsel of civilisation.  Usually, said junction is nothing but a dirt track, veering off into nothingness, somewhere on the horizon.  We’re very pleased we got the fan fixed yesterday…

Finally, past Ouled Djellal, the scenery starts to change.  We’ve hit the southernmost tip of ‘date country’ and from here, more or less the whole way to Tolga, the road is lined with date plantations: densely packed grids of very welcome greenery, grown in the desert soils – which – with the simple addition of water – can be very fertile.

It takes us three hours to extract exact directions to our accommodation from our host tonight.  An unnecessarily prolonged WhatsApp conversation seeking directions, elicits the following responses:

“Just search on Google” (Google returns a series of options, all in Arabic)

“Search on Facebook” (we don’t have Facebook)

“Call my sister” (Nina calls his sister – cue challenging conversation in very Araby French)

Nina asks (again) for a simple WhatsApp location pin.  An invitation to join WhatsApp is received, several times.

Eventually, someone else calls us, from a French number, and Nina can convey that a simple WhatsApp location pin is all we need.  Request finally understood, said pin is immediately delivered. 

A good thing too as well: we are staying in a palmery that’s actually in Foughala – not Tolga – only 5km away but that’s literally in the same room in Algerian terms.  The last 3km are down heavily rutted, unmarked, semi-suburban dirt tracks that weave their way through a pleasant, albeit slightly rubbish strewn, series of date farms.  There’s no way we could have found this place with verbal directions alone.

Our destination constitutes a series of whitewashed concrete holiday houses built around an attractive swimming pool, all built within the grid confines of the date palms.  It’s calm, shaded, and – despite the friendly yet inept service from a host of random men hanging around smoking (there is a solitary woman in jeans and a T-shirt who speaks excellent French, who actually does all the work and runs the place) – hugely welcome after today’s seven-hour journey through the desert.

 Day 39, May 22nd.  Foughala – Timgad, 24-31C, sunny

Unfortunately, overnight Nina has succumbed to the same mysterious desert stomach bug which predated upon me in Ghardaia.  Fortunately, I’m more or less recovered, so we’ve unwittingly managed to tag-team having at least one of us on full working form at all times. 

Laurie has a worrying half-hour when he seems to have succumbed as well, but after one electrolyte sachet, makes an immediate recovery.  ‘Iron stomach’ Ralph remains serenely unaffected.  All those years of drinking out of the dog bowl as toddlers at home seem to have stood them in good stead…

After another lovely swim and another very poor breakfast (imported bread buns in little plastic wrappers, plastic jam and even plastic honey), Ralph and I pack up the car, load up the invalid contingent and make our way to Timgad. 

A few gendarmes have been hanging around the pool this morning; smoking and chatting to the young men who ostensibly work here.  Once our car is fully packed, they head back to their car, parked in the driveway. They give us a friendly acknowledgement as we drive past them, and then follow us out. 

Unusually this time, they’re just following us, not leading us.  We decide to ignore them – we’re not keen to have to put up with unnecessary stops for police changeovers today.  Sure enough, when we leave Foughala they melt away, leaving us alone.  It seems they’d just decided to see us safely off their ‘patch’ so they could report their attentiveness back to their superiors.

Our morning’s drive is short and uneventful: a series of small towns, all bedecked with date palm plantations, and a reasonably good dual carriageway – albeit the journey is slowed by the endless speed bumps in the road.  Algerians, we have noticed (and by their own admission), pay no attention to any traffic laws.  Neither do the police, in our experience.  So the government has built speed bumps – including on motorways and dual carriageways – everywhere where there is even the remotest hint of a junction.  They are preceded by small signs – but only about a metre in front of them – and the bumps vary randomly, from trifling to suspension-busting.  So constant vigilance is required; on numerous occasions throughout our time here, we have to slam on the brakes to avoid everybody and everything in the truck violently hitting the ceiling.

We meet our next guide, Ridwane, outside Batna, and he guides us to a busy grill restaurant for lunch.  Lunch restaurants are reassuringly good and consistent in Algeria – guide or no guide, it’s always possible to find a busy grill restaurant, packed out with men, where we can fill up on excellent, cooked-to-order chicken and beef skewers, chips, salads of varying quality, and spicy dips.  Nina stays in the car, still nauseous, and not keen to test her recovery in a grill-smoke filled, un-air-conditioned restaurant.

Ridwane, like all our guides, is kind, knowledgeable and eager to please.  After lunch we make a very quick stop at Batna’s Roman ruins (impressive, and just scattered in a field on the outskirts of the city) before heading direct for Timgad – home to an ancient Roman city founded by the Emperor Trajan in 100 CE.

Timgad is the first of three major Roman heritage sites we visit over the next four days, the next being Djemila, and Tiddis.  The first two have UNESCO world heritage status; all are huge sites of outstandingly preserved Roman ruins – and outside of Italy – some of the best preserved in the world. 

It would be boring in the extreme to describe each magnificent arch, amphitheatre, forum and bathhouse in detail: suffice to say our photos do better justice to these elements.  From our perspective, wandering through each set of magnificent ruins is made more enjoyable by (a) the wild grasses and flowers that grow haphazardly in abundance across each site, giving everything a soft, natural feel, (b) the absolute lack of tourists – beyond a handful of locals in each spot, we have the places to ourselves, and (c) the fact that nothing is fenced off – and Ralph and Laurie can treat each site like enormous, picturesque climbing frame. 

Tour concluded, we retire to our hotel – the aptly named Hotel Trajan, immediately adjacent. 

Marble floors and immaculately clean rooms are offset by a classically ‘80s-style soulless hotel restaurant – with few diners, many items on the menu, and many possibilities for food poisoning.  Nina retires to bed; the boys and I carefully order simple grills and pick the tomatoes out of salads that look like they were prepared several days ago, in a different country.

Day 40, May 23rd.  Timgad – New Constantine, 24-30C, sunny

Restorative sleep, poor breakfast – not even salvaged by an omelette man, making fresh omelettes to order.  Ridwane and his bag squeeze into our car and we set off for Constantine, excited about staying for three nights in the same place, and excited about being amongst the metropolitan, urban delights of Constantine for a while.

Sadly, it’s not quite what we hoped.

After a short drive, broken up by a quick stop at the Mausolee de Medracen (huge, circular mausoleum-temple of the Numidian king Madghis, from around 200BC) and a good grill-restaurant for lunch, we arrive in New Constantine – a city of some 500,000 inhabitants, which has been hastily constructed in the past 20 years, around 12 kilometres from the actual city of Constantine.

Our hotel is here – a monotholic block, surrounded by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of near identical apartment blocks, built on a grid-ish structure, with wide, rough tarmac roads between them, no pavements, and virtually no public realm.  It is extraordinarily ugly, and not what we had in mind. 

Our hotel suite (where they exist, these work better than individual rooms, keeping us all together) stinks of cigarette smoke; we ask to move, the alternative offering smells fresher but is the proud owner of a filthy, disgustingly stained carpet.  We settle for the room, but ask for the carpet to be hoovered. This happens, with a hoover that’s possibly older than the hotel; it removes nothing. 

Another generalisation we feel comfortable making:  Algerian hoteliers should stick to marble floors – or invest in carpet cleaners.

We contemplate changing hotels, as much for the location as anything else.  Constantine is a magnificent city; we are not in it. 

Ridwane dissuades us of the idea for numerous reasons, including the fact we’ve obviously pre-paid for this place and will lose money, plus their previous ‘usual’ hotel in Constantine has changed hands, and gone downhill, plus we’re hardly going to spend any time in the hotel, anyway.  We suspect that making changes mid-way through our journey causes issues further up the security-apparatus food chain as well, although Ridwane is tacit in this regard.  So we stay, and make the best of it, spending the rest of the afternoon catching up on home-schooling and diaries.  At least the beds are comfortable…

Day 41, May 24th.  New Constantine – Djemila – New Constantine, 23-28C, sunny, evening thunderstorms

Day trip to Djemila today.  150km each way – again not considered a relevant distance by Algerian standards!

Djemila’s ruins are magnificent and inspiring, flowing down the mountainside like an architecturally designed lava flow.  See previous general description, and photos.  Laurie and Ralph cover huge distances, climbing over everything, causing Ridwane much anxiety.  We admire the peace and quiet, and the appealing juxtapositions of attractive ruins, pretty wild flowers and mountainous backdrops.

We stop for late lunch at a smart new roadside restaurant on the way back to our hotel.  We’ve spent a lot of time talking to Ridwane in the car today, talking about his family, his children, and the country.  Both his daughters are at university; one in France doing a Masters’ in forestry and the other in Algeria, studying human relations. 

Education – like fuel and housing – is heavily subsidised in Algeria; girls take particular advantage of this, seeing it as a ticket to freedom.  Men, on the other hand, are less focussed, it seems.  Ridwane shrugs when he describes his son, who’s 24, smokes, drinks coffee and drives a car. 

As we explore these subjects further, reasons become apparent.  Despite the vast wealth created by the country’s oil and gas reserves, which subsidises the country’s housing, health, education and fuel, there are precious few actual employment opportunities for the country’s young population, coming out of education. 

The most aspirational youngsters consider emigration is their only option for a fulfilling life and career – to (French speaking) Canada, the UK, and France.  It is expensive, and hard for Algerians to get visas to these countries (the visa system, as ever, is reciprocal).  Many here decry this – but the truth is if it were easier, Algeria would be suffering a brain-drain of epic proportions.

Those who stay remain comfortable thanks to the subsidies, but are generally under or unemployed, bored, and disenfranchised – which explains the huge numbers of young men we’ve seen, idling and smoking in coffee shops at all times of day.  There is little for them to do; outside the army and wider security apparatus, genuine career opportunities are limited. 

The situation is the same for women but – as was the case in Morocco – women are simply less visible in society, despite the ongoing liberalisation that has quietly made the country less conservative – and more tolerant of female aspiration – than it used to be.

We return to our hotel, enjoy a refreshing swim in the hotel’s huge, almost underground swimming pool (no view, probably no bad thing) and meet Ridwane later, in time to venture out to eat in New Constantine.  The new city has one ‘strip’: a busy, four-lane, neon and LED-clad street of shops, coffee houses and eateries.  It’s as scruffy as the rest of the city but is much improved by darkness – the lights and the people everywhere provide a buzz, and it’s harder to see the pavements and the rubbish.

We eat in the enticingly named ‘Food’ – an assortment of different kitchens corralled into a large ground floor cookhouse fronting the street; diners eat on plastic tables and chairs in the air-conditioned room upstairs.  Ridwane helps us to order: skewers from one area, Burak (deep fried crispy pancakes full of meat, cheese, spices and an egg) from another, half a chicken from a rotisserie and salads, sauces and chips from somewhere else.  The staff are youthful, focussed, and energetic; the service is lightning fast.  Ridwane tells us this is the best place to eat in town – and we eat well – approximately £20 for the five of us.

Over dinner we talk about Algeria’s relations with Morocco: we’ve been with Ridwane for long enough now to know we can discuss this touchy subject rationally.  He explains that from an Algerian perspective, the mistrust and poor relations flow back to the French conquest of Algeria.  Having originally supported Algeria, Morocco changed sides in 1844, sealing Algeria’s fate.  Morocco then bilaterally agreed Algeria’s borders with France, creating French Algeria.  Territorial  and political squabbles continued thereafter on a regular basis, until in 1963 the ‘Sand War’ erupted, instigated by more aggressive Moroccan territorial claims of Algerian lands. 

More recently, Western Sahara has created near continual antagonism since 1975 (when Spain abandoned the territory).  Whilst Algeria has never claimed the country, it has always been averse to any of its neighbours holding it; it has long supported the Polisario Front (Western Sahara’s independence movement).  The Western Sahara question is not yet resolved: it remains the last colonial state in Africa not to have independence – and remains Moroccan administered. 

The final element in a long and complex set of issues is the two countries’ relationship with Israel: Morocco is a firm ally of Israel, whilst Algeria is a staunch supporter of Palestine, was one of the first countries to recognise the Palestinian state, and has no diplomatic relations with Israel.  Interestingly, Ridwane says this particular element is a side-show, compared to the border, territorial, and Western Saharan issues.

Until this, and other tit-for-tat areas of mistrust and antagonism are resolved, it’s unlikely relations will thaw, or the land border (closed since 1994) will re-open.  Ridwane talks heatedly about the possibility of a further war between the two countries – vehemently insisting Algeria would be better prepared for any eventuality (we don’t doubt this).  But he also adds – more rationally – that no Algerians want any more wars – the people of this country have suffered enough with war, since the 1950’s.

Day 42, May 25th.  New Constantine – Constantine - Tiddis – Constantine - New Constantine, 23-28C, sunny, evening thunderstorms

Today, we’re finally going to get into Constantine itself – and it’s worth the wait. Algeria’s third-largest city, it has clung steadfastly to a series of vertiginous hills, separated by an eye-wateringly deep ravine, for over 2,000 years. 

We park at the city’s (French-built) train station and take a taxi to the Monument aux Morts, the city’s huge, arched, WWI memorial, which provides an excellent vantage point to take in the sheer size of the cliffs the old city is perched on, and to being our meandering, city walking tour, downhill back to our car.

We walk across the Sidi M’Cid suspension bridge, one of eight bridges that currently span the ravine, and admire the view, hundreds of metres down to the Rhumel River, which violently crashes through gorge below.  Not a natural lover of heights, I find it deeply unsettling, and hold on to Laurie’s hand tightly. 

Across the bridge, we enter the heart of the old city.  In other locations across the world, a city blessed with such astonishing topography would be inundated with tourists, full of souvenir shops and restaurants, and – possibly – have an infrastructure to match.  Constantine – like the rest of Algiers – has none of these things.  In the centre of the city there is a busy, scruffy, working market, much like we have seen anywhere else – and a similar absence of pavements. 

Tourism is not a priority here.  The country generates such wealth from oil and gas that it doesn’t need it, and a lingering suspicion of foreigners (since the War of Independence, then re-ignited during the civil war in the 1990’s) means there is little appetite from on-high to encourage tourism.  There is no doubt that many people in the country could benefit from the jobs, and the direct injection of cash at local levels that tourism provides. 

But, as we’ve experienced, the security apparatus views each set of tourists as (a) vulnerable individuals who must be protected from supposed dangerous elements within the country (important note – we have always felt exceptionally safe here) and (b) potential espionage threats.  So long as this continues to be the case (and, as many have pointed out to us, the army really rules the country), tourists will continue to be a rare breed.  We secured our visas in London, in April, via the Algerian Ministry of Tourism; our visa numbers were 0992, 0993, 0994 and 0995 – this itself tells a story about current tourist numbers to Algeria. 

What can’t be disputed is that all of this provides a totally authentic travelling experience.  Nothing in this country is for the benefit of tourists, everything we have seen is just as it is – very real.  Arguably, our pre-approved route and occasional police escorts have meant that we haven’t had free rein to travel as openly as we might have liked, but in reality the sheer vastness of the country, coupled with the heat and the quality of the roads, would have limited this anyway.

Ridwane believes that moves are afoot to promote and increase tourism.  We hope he’s right.  

We spend the rest of our day in Constantine, contentedly visiting the beautifully decorated and shaded former Bey’s Palace, having coffee and milkshakes in the pretty square next door, wandering the backstreets and crossing and admiring the city’s many awe-inspiring bridges. We finish up with a visit to the vast Emir Abdelkader Mosque, another whopper, albeit beautifully decorated with intricate Moorish arches and frescoes, and very pointy twin minarets.

Back in the humdrum reality of New Constantine, we eat in ‘Food’ again (why change a good thing when there are so few options) and talk to Ridwane about the environment.  He’s on the committee for the Algerian environment association; their particular focus right now is to educate, and change ingrained habits, around the use, re-use and discarding of plastic.  We explain how every time we’ve bought anything, shopkeepers have insisted on putting the item(s) in a plastic bag, no matter how small, or how much we protest.

He openly expresses his frustration at Algerians’ lack of care for their environment, and concedes they have a massive task ahead of them, to change attitudes.  But we are heartened to hear that there is at least recognition of the issue, and moves afoot to change things.  We laugh, as our waiter brings us another five plastic cups with our second water bottle and insists on taking away our first cups.

Supper finished, we head to bed early, watching and listening to another swathe of thunderstorms, rolling over the city. 

Day 43, May 26th.  New Constantine – Annaba, 23-30C, sunny, humid

We leave promptly this morning, heading for Annaba, on the coast – and only 100km from the Tunisian border, which we will cross tomorrow.

We reach the city by 11am, in time for a quick visit to the Saint Augustin Basilica, Annaba’s splendid, twin-towered, domed Catholic church.  The polite, softly spoken priest lets us climb one of the towers, it provides a great view of the city and the Mediterranean beyond, plus the Roman ruins in front of us.  We decide we’re done with Roman ruins; we can tick these ones off with an aerial view, and make all haste to our hotel, and the beach. We’re all tired, we can feel our five-day R&R break in Tunis calling now…

We drive through Annaba’s grand French centre (in far better condition than many of its peers) and stop for lunch en-route to our hotel, in a local fish restaurant, right next to the beach.  In true Algerian fashion, the restaurant doesn’t face the beach, or even have windows looking out on to the sea – it faces the road.  But the fish, prawns and skewers are good though – mustn’t forget our priorities.

Ridwane checks us into the Hotel Sabri – a grand looking, high-rise white edifice which would have been very smart in the 1980’s or 1990’s, whenever it was built.  Now, it’s a little less smart – and again, would benefit from a modest investment in a carpet cleaner.

Checked in, we bid our thankyous to Ridwane – he has been a kindly, engaging, honest and knowledgeable companion for the past four days.  And he’s put up with tired (and ill) us, tired children, and a rather cramped car.  He’s rather saintly, in fact.

We spend an hour at the hotel pool (having taken 20 minutes trying to find it, due to an extraordinary lack of direction-giving ability on behalf of the hotel staff).  Then we go in search of the beach.  We ask at reception where the path down to the beach is; we are informed, apologetically, that the beach is “fermee” – until June. This is mysterious – we’ve literally watched locals playing on beaches the whole way along the seafront, on our way to the hotel. 

So we decide to make our own way instead.  Laurie and I set off out of the hotel gates, Nina and Ralph a little further behind.  We’re not more than 10 metres outside the gates when we’re urgently called back by the hotel’s security guards. “Interdit! Interdit!” they shout.  They cross their forearms at us, shake their heads, and urgently gesture us to come back inside the hotel grounds.  They too, explain that the beach is shut, and it’s dangerous for us to go out. 

“But we’re only going for a walk!” we reply, in English, and French – albeit our French hasn’t been so well understood here.  A hotel guest – who speaks good English and happens to be walking past – stops to help. He explains that – for our own security – the guards won’t let us out of the hotel.  It’s unclear whether we would be allowed to leave in our own car, or whether it’s just pedestrian egress that’s barred. 

Either way, we are very unwilling to become prisoners in our hotel – and it’s only 3pm – so we get the car keys from our room, jump in the car, and drive out; this time, unhindered.

The nearest beach is less than a kilometre away, nestled in a small bay, with a line of pretty, slightly dilapidated two-story houses running behind it, overlooking the sea.  A smattering of locals – with some girls in bikinis and some in full hijab, are enjoying the afternoon sun. 

We spend the remaining four hours of the afternoon doing blissfully little – enjoying having our own time, the boys getting a much-needed sand fix, Nina and I even indulging in a discrete (drinking in public is illegal) beer on the beach, courtesy of our remaining stash, still nice and cool in our fridge.

We eat at a surprising find – one of those lovely ‘naughty places’ which serves beer and pork.  We don’t bother with the pork – their skewers and salads are excellent – but any beer in a restaurant is always welcome here.

Day 44, May 27th.  Annaba – Tunis, 24-38C, sunny

Big border crossing day today: our only entirely non-European land border crossing of the trip.  In time-honoured fashion (from our last trip), we’re up early, enjoy a surprisingly excellent breakfast at the Hotel Sabri, and make with all haste for the border, expecting a slow crossing. 

Leaving Annaba and heading east, the scenery changes: pretty sea-side sand dunes become larger, hillier and ever greener, until we’re in a land of sandy pine forests, grasslands and – eventually – lakes and wetlands. 

We reach the border by 10.30am, drive past a very long line of parked up trucks, and – following our border crossing protocols established on our last overland trip – drive very slowly through the border post until someone stops us. 

We’re waved down by a friendly policeman, asked to park up, and to fill in the usual – tiny – emigration forms.  This we do, diligently; we’re then ushered into the jostling passport control hall, where Laurie – being the youngest person there and almost certainly the cutest – is subjected to more head ruffling than even he’s got used to over the past month.

I’m taken into an office round the back of the counters; two cheerful and very relaxed passport control officers – in between much gossiping, stamping locals’ passports and insisting that I sit down – proceed to fill in a whole new set of emigration forms for us, on account of not being able to read our writing. 

In fairness, passport control and customs only takes an hour; with the most cursory search of the car (open back door – sees we’re clearly tourists – close back door).  Before we know it, we’re on the Tunisian side, which is immediately more ordered and organised, ready for the next part of our adventure.

It’s hard to sum up Algeria.  It’s a very complex country, with a difficult and often exceptionally violent recent past, immensely wealthy, poorly governed, corrupt – yet hugely welcoming and hospitable, safe, culturally blessed, and in possession of some immense scenery.  Given its wealth, it has terrible infrastructure, and its housebuilding programme urgently needs some aesthetic intervention, yet its population is well cared for – with subsidised education, healthcare, schooling and fuel. Women are working on becoming more visible, yet culture and mindsets need huge change before there is any semblance of equality.

Yet its young people (75% of the population are under 35) don’t appear to be contented or fulfilled here – and see better futures abroad.  Outside the army and security services, real opportunities are limited.  The oil and gas industry employs relatively few people.  Perhaps the only reason the Arab Spring didn’t reach Algeria was because the ubiquitous security services nipped any potential unrest in the bud before it could take hold.

For us, the highs have been fewer and harder earned than in neighbouring Morocco, which makes everything so easy.  But the highs we have had – they’ve made our entire trip here worthwhile.  We leave with fond memories, and new friends.