North Africa ‘Plus’ Travel Diary

2011

 

Just occasionally, I have a day when there is not so much to write about.  Today has been such a day.

The reason has nothing to do with catching up on sleep, or resting (something I invariably try to minimise when I am travelling, as my family will tell you!), but rather for the simple reason that today has been a day of travelling - and a long one at that.

We woke to a strange summer phenomenon for Algiers - a thick fog.  Fogs are common during winter in Algiers, but to have one in summer meant that some quite unusual atmospheric interactions were occurring.  It may have reduced the flood of daylight into our room, but it only seemed to amplify the incessant noise of the traffic.

Our plan was to leave the hotel at about 10:30 am to go to the airport.  The later than usual start was welcome as there were several significant work-related e-mails to attend to.  Yong arrived earlier than expected, and suggested a quick look around the interior of the main Post Office.  I was keen to do this - Tim was more focussed on e-mails - and the Post office was only two minutes’ walk from the hotel, I joined Yong for the short walk.

The Post Office was built in a moorish style by the French a little over a century ago.  According to the story, the French colonial administration had so antagonised the local Algerian population that the building was constructed in local style as a gesture to try and win the hearts of the locals.  Given that most Algerians at the time were illiterate and didn’t write letters. it is probably not surprising that the gesture failed.  However, the building is genuinely magnificent, and I would place its interior on my list of ‘must sees’ for any visitor to Algiers.

We said farewell to Yong and drove with Badjou to the airport at 10:30 am, arriving at about 11:15 am.  We had become accustomed to the intense security at Algerian airports, but we were still somewhat taken aback when boarding began for our flight at 12:55 pm.  We were on a Turkish Airlines Airbus A330, which seats almost 300 people.  Each carry-on bag was visually inspected, and each passenger received a physical pat-down.  As there were only two officers performing these tasks, boarding took almost two hours (quite a long while to stand in a long line, I thought), and the plane took off more than an hour after the scheduled time.

The first leg of the flight was to Istanbul, and it was smooth and enjoyable with some excellent views through the clear, new windows of our plane as we flew over Italy and Greece.  Then, after an hour and three quarters in Istanbul Airport, we boarded our second flight, another Turkish Airlines Airbus A330 to Tehran.

The flight arrived at 1:50 am.  However, that was just the beginning of a series of slow queues to get our visas, clear immigration and clear customs.  We finally left the airport at 3:30 am and met our “driver cum guide”, Kian, embarking on the one hour drive into Tehran, arriving at our hotel at 4:30 am.

In that context, please forgive today’s somewhat short diary entry, but we will only be getting a little less than four hours sleep before we are due to rise, bright and fresh, for tomorrow’s sightseeing in Tehran.

Day 17 - Algiers, Algeria  to Tehran, Iran

Wednesday

29 June 2011