We Cross the Med…

The Big Fella lines up for a final African Customs and Police check in the harbour of Oran...

The Boys in Blue gather to bid me Bon Voyage, and farewell to Africa...

Getting out of Algeria was a bit stressful…

Firstly, my taxi driver friend did not show up at the hotel as instructed… I have the Oran Mafia out looking for him as I write this… Apparently the Algerians have not taken too kindly to him blotting their good record… That’ll teach him…!!

The hotel manager very graciously offered to send the staff driver ahead of me to show me the way, and within minutes, I was standing in front of the gate of Oran Port, digging my passport out for the first of the many occasions I would so over the next few hours… Security is understandably tight, and my passport was checked and re-checked, then the Big Fella’s papers were double-checked as well… Both Tunisia and Algeria are not interested in the Carnet du Passage, and each issue a separate piece of paper at your entry point, which must be returned to the Customs Office at your departure point.

As I went along from Police to Immigration, then back to Police and then to Customs, and finally back to Police to check that I had been through every office and everything was in order, I was instructed to park my bike in the shade of the little Police hut on the wharf, and invited to drink tea with half a dozen officers. Each of them took photos of the bike and I and then some more with their mates…

Ees beeg... Ees very beeg...!! The boat too...!!

“When you come back to Algeria…?” they kept asking…

“One day my friends, one day…!” I replied…

“If you come to Oran, you stay wis us, not in hotel…!!” more than one offered…

By noon, all the cars had been parked in the belly of the huge ship that was to take us to Spain… But there was a small problem… This boat had never transported a bike before, and the crew were very concerned that it would fall over during the crossing… They scratched around and brought me a huge chain to tie the bike down…

Even the Big Fella flinched at the sight of it…!! I patiently explained in a mixture of English, French, Arabic (and Afrikaans when I saw that I wasn’t getting anywhere) that over my dead body would they be tying my bike down with 50 kgs of chain, and that they had better find something more suitable, otherwise I would stay down in the hold with the bike to make sure it did not fall over…

A long length of nylon webbing was brought from up above somewhere, and I tied the bike to a steel rung on the wall, wondering just how rough the sea was going to be… I needn’t have worried… I have seen bigger waves on Germiston Lake…!!

Leaving Africa... The Captain inches the ferry away from the jetty in Oran, Algeria...

...and takes us into the cobalt blue waters of the Mediterranean...

The engines had been throbbing away below decks before we came on board, and through the soles of my boots I now felt the big ship shudder as the propellers dug in to move us away from the jetty. Soon we were heading for the concrete arms of the breakwaters, turning west and chugging toward Spain…

Our top speed on the way to Almeria was just 29 km/h… Hardly breakneck…!! I was amazed that the ferry had sailed with so few vehicles, about 16, and only 40 or so passengers… I can’t believe that the voyage was a very profitable one… I sat in a section of the lounge that had seating for 150 people, and I was the only one there for the entire voyage…

I went out on deck to wave Africa goodbye, wondering when I would see her again… For a few minutes I felt very alone up there on the deck, apprehensive about the fact that I was heading for another continent with its completely different set of challenges… I felt a lump in my throat as Oran was swallowed up in a sea mist that had come in from the east, drifting across the city and the harbour… It was another goodbye that I would rather not have faced. I don’t think it would have had the same impact as riding across a border that connected the two continents… I felt no excitement about the days that lay ahead… Not until I caught my first glimpse of Spain, almost 10 hours later…

Who says we can't drive across the Med...??

I had this entire section to myself... I could cough, burp and fart to my heart's content... Assuming I did those kinds of things in public, of course...!!

Something that the ferry from Wadi Halfa did not have, and Lake Nasser pays the price...

The rest of the passengers did not make things any easier for me, as not once during the voyage did any of them greet me, or attempt to strike up a conversation… Glum lot these Spaniards…!! The crew were even worse…!! Not a single one of them made any attempt to speak even a word of English when I asked a question… They would rattle off a string of Spanish, and then turn on their heel and walk away… At 6.00pm, meal voucher in hand, I went looking for something to eat… I was told (in Spanish) that there was no food, as the cafeteria was closed…!! There was no indication anywhere that meals were only served until 3.00 pm, three hours after leaving port… I was properly frosted…!! And hungry too…!!

I had ten hours to keep myself occupied… I spent an hour or so going through the little Spanish Phrase book that Anette Stevens had bought for me in Cairo, looking for a set of words that would make up the sentence, “Lighten up you sad bunch of twits!” but gave up eventually…

I completed rewriting the words to Mark Knopfler’s “Speedway to Nazareth”, and read through some of the other stuff I had jotted down in my little pocketbook… I could see the days on which I had experienced a “downer”, the words I had written clearly indicating the mood that I had been in at the time… On my return to Cairo from Alexandria, after my abortive attempt to get the ferry to Venice, I had fiddled with another Mark Knopfler favourite, and wrote this…

My back-trail is haunted by the ghosts of my past,

My dreams were once mountains, and in them we played…

They could come take me if they wanted, but I have nothing worth counting,

And like the sands of the Sahara, they’ve gone drifting away…

Lady Luck is still a mystery with her hand on my shoulder,

And I don’t know why I still want her to dance…

But I guess that’s all history, and what it is, is I’m older,

And I’m still a fool for a one way romance…

Her dice were all loaded, they rolled and they tumbled…

And I never saw time running out with my roll…

In the wasteland of a divorce court, my dreams they all crumbled,

And I paid with whatever I had left for a soul…

Now as dawn breaks again on an empty horizon,

There’s no reason for holding, no reason to stay…

Feels too soon to be leaving, and too late for criticizing,

And like the sands of the Sahara, I’ll go drifting away…

I was shaken from my reverie by the shouts of children up on deck, and I went out to see what the fuss was about… I strolled onto forward deck, and there ahead of us lay Spain…!! The sun had set behind a ridge of mountains, painting the sky in pastels… I could just make out a few of the taller buildings of Almeria, and the control tower jutting out into the harbour in the distance…

The ferry nears the shores of Spain, and I saw that Zorro had preceded my arrival...

I hurried downstairs to get me camera, and even though it was almost 10.00 pm, it was still light enough to take a few photographs… As we entered the harbour, a strident voice came over the loudspeakers, barking instructions in Spanish… By the alacrity with which the other passengers headed for their belongings and lined up at the elevators, I realised that we had been told to prepare for landing…

The Garmin Girl and the Big Fella were ready, but was the Gypsy Biker...??

The Big Fella hadn’t moved an inch when I got down onto the vehicles deck, but he had been fiddled with… The handlebars were facing in a different direction to that which I had left them in, and the heated grip switch was on… Buggers…!!

We rode out onto the docks as soon as the huge steel doors had been lowered to the concrete, and into the mayhem of a busy port… Two other ferries were loading, and cars were zipping about trying to get into the correct lanes to get to the ferries they needed to be on…Policemen and dockworkers alike were yelling at every driver, pointing in half a dozen directions all at once… Pure mayhem…!!

I had my E.U. Passport scanned (the first time I had ever used it…!!) but was then prevented from leaving the harbour until I had bought 3^rd Party Insurance… I headed back to an office in the main departure hall and paid an eye-watering R4 500.00 for the privilege of riding on European roads for the next six months…!! Buying your “Green Card” is far cheaper over the internet, but I had no fixed address that it could have been sent to, so had to pay a premium at my port of entry…

My room in the Torreluz Hoteles... There will be no cat-swinging here...!!

At around midnight, I was finally through with all the formalities, and headed off into the main road of Almeria, looking for the Hotel Le Perla… The narrow one way streets had me riding around in circles, as a few of them around the hotel were now pedestrian walkways… The Garmin Girl had not been told this, and insisted that I ride down among the fountains and flower pots, dodging people walking their dogs, and frightening old folk on their way back from their bridge parties (or whatever it is that 80 yr old Spaniards do this late at night…!) I pulled up in front of the hotel, and a group of people inside the lobby hurried out to take a closer look at what had just arrived… I heard the words Sud Africa mentioned a few times, but none of them spoken directly to me.

The hotel was fully booked, but I was directed to another just a block away, where thankfully one of the night time managers spoke a passable version of Broken English… I was relieved of another €40.00 and directed across the Plaza Flores to another building which formed part of the hotel… By the time I had made the two trips it took to get me gear off the bike and into my room, had a shower, hooked up my laptop to make sure the internet connection was working, read my mail and eaten my last Snickers Bar, it was 2.30 am…

I fell onto the bed, turned off the lights and tried to wrap my head around the fact that I had arrived in Europe… I had planned to leave for Gibraltar that same morning, but just before I fell asleep, a little voice said,

“ARE YOU MAD…??”

©GBWT 2010