Blogs from South, Algeria, Africa

So I sold my rings and got around 50000 dinar. Then I finally got around to going to my friends house. He had given me the address 10 years ago and told me to drop by anytime. when I got the the address there was a giant sand dune, with a sign that said come back in ten years. Supossidly this dune has been moving forward covering houses until it passes again and they are resurrected. I thought that this could be a free place to stay- so I started digging it took all day but I fiannaly reached the inside of the house and the inside was completely untouched. There was even canned food and 3 bottles of 5 times distilled Potato Vodka. This was such a good evening. I lit some candles and relaxed ... read more

I can't recall how exactly we located our new lodgings in Taghit. As I mentioned before, I was happy to entrust the logistics to the others. Apparently Mustaffa, the restaurant owner, had arranged things. We were to stay in the house of a local man a few kilometres north of the town. Like a typical desert inhabitant he had a dark complexion. He was slight of stature and it was hard to gauge from his neutral expression how pleased he was having us inhabit his home. I was unsure how much we were paying but Sofian assured me that the price was negotiated beforehand. The house was a modern structure, one of half a dozen or so on either side of a dusty street beyond which was a large expanse of dusty flat-land and the main ... read more

Español / Català Benabderramane Mahdi is tall. Very tall. He’s also very thin. And if we add a four feet long chèche, the turban kind used by touaregs, he is even taller. In his stays in Barcelona, sometimes he wandered through Gracia neighbourhood streets, looking for the same sort of tea he and his friends used to drink when they are in the desert: a Zhejiang Gunpowder green tea. He particularly loved this kind of tea. Nothing happened when he dressed a western suit with a tie. Even stylish. But he loved to dress as he was always in the desert, a blue ... read more

We jumped in the Land Cruiser and headed south through the desert and sand dunes to Timimoun. We travelled over 350 miles, but the change in scenery and culture would make you think we travelled to another country. The architecture looked nothing like Ghardaia or anywhere else we have been in Algeria. The dress was very different and did not seem to be nearly as conservative. The women do not fully cover and there certainly are not any "ghosts." The residents of Timimoun are Berbers and many have much darker skin (look more sub-Saharan). Not surprisingly, we did not run into any tourists and being an American seems to make us celebrities. We passed through several checkpoints along our journey to Timimoun, but after we passed through one checkpoint we were informed we could only continue ... read more

trip to the heart of the sahara... read more