Docked at Port Algiers

Latitude 36.78 Degrees North and
Longitude 3.06 Degrees East

April 27th, 2018

Weather: Sunny With Light Breeze and High of 73 Degrees With Low Humidity

Author: Don

Today we visited Algiers, capital of Algeria on the north of the African Continent.  It was a bit of a disappointment.  Our Cruise Director's and Shore Excursions Director's port talks had warned us it would not be very glamorous, and it wasn't.  For one thing, the government would not let anyone go ashore outside of a formal shore excursion.  To us, Algeria seemed to be another apparently depressed strictly-Muslim country with only stern-looking men to be seen on the streets during midday.  (We were told that only men go to the noon prayer at the mosques, but the women would fill the streets later in the afternoon for shopping.)   Our tour buses had a police escort at all times.  The metropolitan area's population is a densely packed 5 million people who speak mostly French and their own unique, local Arabic dialect.  Very few people here speak any English.

Algiers likes to call itself the “white city” because most of the buildings are painted white.  There was evidence of a lot of external building maintenance in progress, but the work must be going very slowly because many of the buildings we saw were in need of repair and paint.  Most of the buildings in Algiers were built by the French during French possession of Algeria, so they have a distinctively French appearance architecturally.  But to us, it looked as though they had not been given much care since Algeria won its independence from France in the 1960s (after a long and bloody fight).  We were told that even the fabled Casbah was now essentially just a run down and smelly old neighborhood.   (Donkeys are used for hauling garbage there.) 

Tourism as an industry is relatively new to Algeria.  From early 1990s to the early 2000s, a civil war between the government and armed extreme religious conservatives raged sporadically.

The largest part of Algeria is the Sahara (which means “desert” in the local language), but by far most of the people live along the Mediterranean coast.

Our tour today took us through much of Algiers and to the Algeria Monument of Martyrs, which honors the thousands who died during the Algerian war for independence.  It is an impressive 302-feet tall structure built atop a hill in Algiers.  It has three large soldier statues, each representing a stage in Algeria's struggle.  Algerians are justly very proud of it.

Our guide, Aladdin, was an intelligent and articulate young Algerian man (with a wife and brand new baby daughter) who was proud of his city and country, but nevertheless, was emigrating to Canada within the next several weeks.