Tuesday the 27th of January and we's just walked across a no-man’s-land area to the Algerian side at the Morocco-Algerian border.Now we had to deal with Algerian border guards. It started badly when the a Canadian who had tagged along with us started whistling while waiting in the office. Tt seems this is really disrespectful which made the Algerian border guard really angry and he decided to be uncooperative. The whistling Canadian guy asked Danielle to translate in French that he was happy, but she decided that wouldn't be a good idea, given the guard's mood. Danielle tried to apologise, but that did not go down well either. Eventually we got pissed off with the Canadian and said that he was doing us a disservice as his behaviour was now our problem too. Eventually he did apologise with a disclaimer that the guard did not understand, thank God.
The guard then took ages to process our passports, and give us no information about how to get from the border to the nearest town, Maghnia, 14 km away.
The border crossing is such an issue, it's even been parodied in Arabic TV comedy. See the YouTube clip below.
Eventually we found out at the only cafe that a bus across the road was going to Oran at 2:30 PM (the official had told us 4 PM or 4:30 PM) and decided to catch it but we had to change Spanish pesetas into Algerian Dinars at Maghnia in a hell of a rush when the bus stopped to allow passengers disembark and embarked at the bus stop. Daniel manage to do it just in time and we were off. We found the buses in Algeria a much better, smoother and newer - we speculated that they probably sold all the old ones to Morocco. Oran was hole and expensive and we decided to leave tomorrow.
The next morning we got some food and caught the train at 12:30 PM for the Tunisian border. We arrived 1 1/2 hours late at Maison Carree (in El Harrach on the outskirts of Algiers) and missed the connections to the border. We waited two hours for another train, going to Constantine at 9:30 PM. We had a bit of a look around and had our first real couscous meal which was good but very filling.
The train arrived roughly on time at the station, was absolutely full, but everyone manage to get on somehow, and Danielle’s pack went in through the toilet window just to get it on board. People either sat down or stood up in horribly cramped conditions on the outer passage of the carriage. We settled down to arrive at 2 AM in Constantine.
This night should go down as one of the worst we ever spent. Worse even than the trip from Milano to Genoa. Due to the snow, the roads were blocked and so all the bus passengers caught the train. We tried to sleep but couldn't of course because of people trying to get past and find a space during the night. Someone groped Danielle several times and she had to smack down the hand that felt her quite hard.One young guy crushed up with us started to cry, it was that depressing, cold and uncomfortable.
The train eventually arrived in Constantine at 8 AM, six hours overdue - boy were we ever tired!
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| Constantine - Postcard |
We found a hotel and put our bags in and went for a walk. The room in the hotel was quite cheap as the water in the rooms was not working so the tariff was heavily discounted. It was one of those faded Colonial hotels, with a wire cage lift and ornate decorations.
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| Constantine - Postcard |
Three days after crossing into Algeria, Friday the 30th of January, we caught the train without problems and even had a compartment that we only had to share with two other people - luxury. As we crossed the Algerian border, the Algerians officials really went through our bags and they were completely surprised by the number of books and postcards we's collected after months of travelling.
