To Tipaza Through Friendly Algeria…

Early morning in Annaba, and the locals are already enjoying their coffee at the many pavement coffe shops...

The hotel manager had advised me to stay clear of Algiers, and rather head for Tipaza, about 100 km west of the capital…

“Zere are too many peoples and cars in Algiers and you will take time to find anything…!” he said…

That was more than enough advice for me, as I have spent many a hot and frustrating hour getting into and out of the big cities in North Africa… Just as I was about to leave, the manager walked up to me and slipped the key ring of my room into my hand and with a big wink and a finger on his lips to indicate secrecy, said,

“Souvenir for you…! Remember Annaba and Hotel Hippone, Mr. Ronnie, and come back one day… Insh’ Allah…!”

The Big Fella said that this was the biggest gazebo he had ever seen...

For once I took the correct road leading out of town and into the hills surrounding it… I was soon on the main road leading to Constantine, and two hours later, had passed this city by and was on my way to Setif… I thought back to Mr. Chabani at the Algerian Consulate in Pretoria, who had insisted I visit his brother in this city and stay a few days with him… I regretted the fact that I would not be able to do this, and once again rued the lost time I had to endure in Egypt…

I was now on the massive new “Auto-Route”, a six-lane highway that would eventually link the Tunisian border with the Moroccan one, and cuts through the entire northern part of Algeria…

On this highway, there are very few off-ramps… It is reserved for long distance, high speed traffic… The only exits lead to the major towns and cities, some of these over 150 kms apart… Just as it was in the deserts of Libya, you did not want to run out of fuel here…!! There are no “Ultra City’s” and no place to make a u-turn, if you find yourself on the wrong side of the highway!

Both east and westbound lanes are encased in concrete barriers without a single opening between them except for the off-ramps… Get caught on the wrong side, and you are in for a very long detour…

I marveled at the massive bridges that had been built to join one side of a mountain to another… Some of the concrete pylons holding up the road were over a hundred metres tall, and where the highway could not go around a mountain, it simply cut straight through it… A system of impressive tunnels forms part of the Auto Route, and riding through them at high speed was both exciting and scary… Most traffic in the fast lane was traveling at about 140 km/h, and never slowed down through any of the tunnels, some of which ran through a few curves before exiting on the far side of the mountain that they have been built through…

Once you are on the Auto Route, there's no getting off until the next major town...

Entering the tunnel on the Auto Route west of Bouira...

Zooming through the tunnelS at high speed made for an exciting few minutes...

I refueled in Setif, and then got back on the highway… Fuel stations in Algeria are as rare as rocking-horse dung, and there are always huge queues of cars waiting to refuel. I am not sure if the number of filling stations are “controlled” or not, but a massive business opportunity exists here to open more of them… I always pretended I did not understand the queuing system, and rode the Big Fella between the cars until I was adjacent to the pumps, and then pretended to be confused at all the cars surrounding me…!! On every occasion, I was waved in front of the car I had stopped next to, and allowed to refuel… I usually went up to the driver and apologized as contritely as I was able to, hiding the grin on my face as best I could…!!

There is always a crush of cars waiting to fill up at service stations in Algeria...

I barreled back onto the highway, a little voice in my head saying I could make it to Oran if I pushed the envelope a bit… I had been told that Oran was only 250 km west of Tipaza, and on the Auto-Route… This info proved to be spectacularly wrong, as it in fact lay over 400 km to the west, and by 4.00pm, I was just nearing the outskirts of Algiers…! I was running perilously close to having to push the bike to a fuel station, when I spied the road to Tipaza, and began frantically searching for petrol… With just 5 km left in the tank, I found one 40 km short of my destination, and did my usual “push to the front”…

The streets were clogged with traffic, crawling along at less than 20 km/h… I switched my brain over to “Drive like an Egyptian”, and got onto the painted line separating the two lanes, put my spotlights on, and cruised down the centre of the busy road, waving oncoming cars away like I was the lead motorcycle in a presidential convoy… It worked most of the time, and I got to Tipaza at least an hour before I would have, had I sat behind a car and puttered along like they were doing… All along this narrow coastal road, cars were pulling onto the dirt shoulder, unpacking picnic baskets and walking the few hundred metres down to beaches hidden behind the dunes and low brush… At some places, wide areas had been bull dozed to allow parking, and these were crowded with weekend holiday makers, all vying for their place in the sun… It was chaos on a massive scale…!!

Once off the highway, the road wound its way through the mountains south of Algiers...

From the minute I set foot and tyre in Algeria, I have been amazed by the friendliness of its people… More so than many of the countries I have visited so far… In Tipaza, I stopped in a busy street, looking for a hotel… A guy came up to me and asked all the usual questions in a mixture of French and English… When I asked him where the ATM was, he gave me a long look and said,

“There is one at the Sheraton Hotel in Algiers, about 80 kms from here…”

The look of anguish on my face at this bit of news must have spoken volumes, because he immediately pulled out his mobile phone, made a few calls and then told me that he had found someone who would change US dollars or English Pounds if I had them… He asked me to park the bike and wait for him… He dashed off and a few minutes later, returned to where I was melting quietly on the sidewalk, and offered me the ice cold Coke he was carrying…

“You must be very hot in your suit…! I brought you a Cola!”

I exchanged US$100.00 at a rate that was far better than the one I had received at the border, and when I asked how much I owed him for the Coke, he told me it was his gift to me… He then advised me where to find a decent hotel, what price I should pay, and said that “I could go by hand to reach the Internet Café from the hotel…” I didn’t have the heart to correct him, but the mental picture of doing a handstand all the way into town made me smile to myself…

The coastal highway west of Algiers, hugs the Mediterranean...

While we were chatting, a guy drove up in a flashy sports car, stopped next to me, blocking all the traffic in the street, and asked where I was from. When I told him, he said,

“Goeie Môre, hou gaan dit?” A huge grin splitting his face as he saw the shocked look on mine…

My jaw had dropped open at hearing an Algerian speak Afrikaans… The fact that it was after 3.00pm didn’t concern me too much, and I answered him in the same language, and then switched to English and asked,

“Where the hell did you learn to speak Afrikaans?”

“My friend and I have just returned from watching Algeria play in the World Cup! We learned some words at the hotel…”

By now half a dozen cars were hooting at him in an effect to get him to move on…

“Tot siens, baie dankie!” he shouted and with a wave he left me standing there, watching him ride away and thinking about the amazing little interaction we had both just enjoyed…

Then another guy walked up and said, “Hi, I am Seder… How are you…?”

I introduced myself and asked him how he came to speak with a Pommie accent…

“I am a cab driver in London… I have been there for 14 years and am taking a two month holiday here in my home country… I am sick of London, and want to start a business here in Algiers…”

Down one part of the main road, pottery stalls such as this one lined the road for hundreds of metres...

We chatted for almost half an hour, greeting everyone who squeezed past us on the narrow pavement… All the shopkeepers from the little shops and restaurants along the road, made their way over to where we stood, and wanted to shake hands with me and welcome me to their country… Not one of them tried to cajole me into coming to eat or buy something from their establishments…!! I was completely at ease here, despite it being as foreign a destination, as ever I had been in…

I was directed to the Hotel Manares, a few kilometres to the west of this bustling little sea-side town, and was welcomed with huge smiles and laughter on arrival there… The small group of guys operating from behind the front desk were extremely friendly and helpful, and a few of them spoke more than passable but halting English, which would help with the upcoming negotiations regarding their rates…!!

“All the way From Afrique de Sud!!” they exclaimed, “You are the first one for us…!! Wow…!! Bon courage, Mon Ami…!!”.

And so it went for the next few minutes… I was reminded that it was the weekend, and that rates were higher than during the week, which here begins on Saturday night… I asked that they consider charging me the midweek rate and they retired behind their desk to consider my request… While I waited, I was given a large bottle of cold water, and a short while later, another guy came up to me with a huge bowl of food…

“This is for you, our local dish…”

The Residence Manares... Friendly, helpful and generous, staff made my arrival here after a long ride, a great end to the day...

I was given a fork and told to take a seat in the main reception hall, where I could enjoy my meal… It was a large bowl of hand-made noodles, with chickpeas and boiled potatoes… On top of all of this sat a large piece of grilled chicken. I growls of appreciation from my stomach made me realise how hungry I was, and I tucked into this unexpected meal with gusto… When I had finished eating, I was called to the front desk and handed a receipt for the midweek rate…

“Merci… Shukran jezehra !” I said, mixing my French and Arabic, much to their delight… They repeated my phrases over and over, all have a giggle at this strange South African, who had arrived unexpectedly on their doorstep…

My room looked out over a bare patch of veldt and onto the beach beyond, where a mass of people were enjoying themselves… I was too tired to expend the effort in digging out my costume and a towel and joining them, and settled for a cold shower instead… The hotel is by no means a highbrow establishment, but nevertheless seemed to be very popular with the locals… There was a problem with the electricity supply, and there was only enough apparently, to run either the lights, or the power points, but never both at the same time… During the day, the power points worked, but come nightfall, these were switched off and the then only the lights in the rooms worked… When I went to ask about this, I was taken next door to their sister hotel, where I could sit in their reception area and work on my laptop…

On my way back to my room later that night,  I noticed a young couple admiring the Big Fella and reading the names of all the flags on the pannier… I stopped to chat to them, and within minutes of meeting me, they invited me to join them for dinner…

“Please…!! You must come,” said the young lady, fashionably dressed in a skimpy t-shirt and a tight pair of shorts… “We will introduce you to some local dishes…”…

I wasn’t sure if she meant women or food… I opted instead to have a few cups of coffee with them, rather than spend too much time over a dinner, and we sat chatting in a quiet part of the dining area… Her boyfriend/husband said very little, but seemed to understand the gist of our conversation perfectly well… Either that, or his nickname was “Noddy”, because that is mostly what he did for the next half hour… I never got their names, but the girl was certainly the most outspoken North African one I had encountered… I got the impression that she was a bit of a rebel, and enjoyed playing on this status…

View of the beach from my hotel room window... People streamed onto the beach until well after 7.00pm...

“I dress like this to annoy traditional Arab women..!” she said at one point… “We need to live in the future and not so much in the past… Men must learn to control their urges, rather than we have to cover up everything…!”

“Quite…!!” was all I could mumble, looking around at the disapproving women passing us by…

Back at the hotel, the guys insisted that I share some coffee with them, and laughed like hell when I said I had an early morning meeting with the President, to discuss the temporary opening of the frontier with Morocco, to allow the Big Fella and I to ride the Atlas Mountains there… There was much thigh slapping and guffaws of laughter at my comment, and it was repeated to everybody who passed us, while we sipped our coffee…

“Ze people want zis to happen, but the politicians do not…!! It suits them to make loud noises about things that have little effect on them…!! But for us, we would want the border open…!! It is close by, and Moroccans will visit Tipaza and bring more money to our country… But things are much better than before, and maybe in time it will happen… Insh’ Allah…!!”

This seemed to be the common consensus among the people I had spoken to, from Annaba to Tipaza…

But hoping that politicians would bend to the will of the people was tilting at windmills in this part of the continent, and every other part too, for that matter…

It had been a long day for me, riding over 620 km to get here, and I wanted to rest up for my last ride through Africa the following day… I bid my friend goodnight, and a short while later, I lay in the darkness of my room, listening to waves crashing onto the shore nearby…

I thought about the distance I had traveled to get here, and the ride to Oran in the morning… I fell asleep smiling to myself, with the sounds of Enigma playing softly through my earphones…

©GBWT 2010