Mostly we relaxed, however, in a bungalow by the sea, quieted by the slow ebb and flow of the tide on rocky shoals.

It took some effort to reach the islands: slow drives to and from the old port and costly powerboats rocking over choppy seas for over two hours. But here is where an incipient tourist industry can begin, increasing jobs and income for the country without destroying the rugged and unspoiled beauty of the place.

One object lesson on all this was our “rescue” of the local ferry boat stalled out at sea. In the midst of the two hour powerboat ride to the islands, our boat captain noticed the distressed ferry. It was a large, ramshackle ship that must have been carrying over a hundred people.

Not only were we obligated to help them by the rules of the sea, but our captain was also friends with the ferry pilot. The ferry engine had stalled out, and reportedly they had no communications with mainland help.

After a bit of discussion among the crews, we began to wonder if the ferry passengers might opt to swamp our boat or we might keep tipping anyway to the side during our linkup.

But we gave them the help they needed – a jump start. We handed our battery to their crew. They connected it while we and these intrigued onlookers watched, restarted the engine, gave the battery back, and then puttered off again…as did we.

Once on our island, our intent, though, was to relax at the finish of our strenuous six weeks travel in the heat and dust of western Africa. We were in the right place.

Early and later in the day, during which temperatures rose above 100F (34C), we could enjoy moderate air and water temperatures at inviting, empty beaches like this on Rubane Island.

The olive bellied sunbird turns his belly away from us but shone his iridescent back instead. It didn’t matter much where you were on the island to catch some beauty like this. We happened to have discovered Bob’s Fishing Village at the end of the island, a wonderful respite in the quiet season with a friendly bartender and seductive drinks. Many birds like this also came to visit.

We saw several of these striking lizards (agama?) around the island.

A spider hibiscus.

A rainbow of petals marks the Mexican Plumeria, which reminded us of Asia’s Champa flowers. Turns out that they both belong to the same genus of plant.

The source of this post, Finding Heart and Soul in Battered Guinea-Bissau, first appeared on Adventurephiles. (To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Guinea-Bissau, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.)

Only freed from Portuguese control about 50 years ago, Guinea-Bissau was then riven by civil wars and dictatorial rule. Signs of economic weakness and disrepair are everywhere, especially east of the coastal capital of Bissau. The roads – whether dust-blown dirt or rutted asphalt – are in terrible shape.

Why go? We were intrigued because it was the home of our market vendor in Lisbon. Yet we also saw once again how people do well when they have sufficiency and community. The marketplaces are abuzz with goods and activity. Everyone seems to belong, to be connected, to have a home. Old colonial structures are creaky, but kept habitable. We could look past the patches into the resilient spirit of the people.

Eastern Guinea-Bissau: Bafata and Gabu

This was one of the better dirt roads – and one of several surprisingly lovely allees – on route eastward to Bafatá and Gabu, the larger town, several hundred very slow kilometers inland.

The roads are just one of many tough conditions in the country that citizens regularly surmount.

This is the street market in Gabu, block after block of tightly packed stalls and shoppers. You can find nearly anything you need here, from clothing to machinery to tech goods to food. Not everyone has plenty, but there is plenty to be had there. And it’s nearly impossible to thread your way down the street. It’s a slow slog. Though clearly not locals, we were accepted as just another element in the throng, pushed past or offered “good prices” like anyone else. We were even able to find school supplies and soccer balls to donate to the local school.

People gathered at the local hair salon in Gabu, with a bicycle stall to the left and street food to the right. Women generally wear eye-popping fabrics like these; men wear jeans and t-shirts. Everyone sitting here seems to have opted for the hairstyle promoted on the poster to the right.

At Bafatá, the former port operated at this confluence along the Gêba River. Traces of the port are now barely detectable. The river enabled lucrative trade in peanuts, cattle, and textiles over the centuries. Bafatá’s rich clay soil also made it a robust brickmaking center. Though, sadly, the factory has closed down, the bricks it made can be found in the buildings all over town.

Bafatá is a smaller town than Gabu, but we slept in Bafatá because it had the richer history as a trading center, plus the most appealing hotel in the region. The Triton offered large simple rooms surrounding a colorful courtyard, a huge pool to cool us down in the 40+ degree C (110 F) heat, and A/C when the electric grid worked in town (7pm to 6am). A police training session met here while we were visiting, so the hotel was completely booked.

The main street of Bafatá, as it slopes down to the old trading market center and river port, marked by the forest green at the upper left. We spoke with some Bafatá families that occupy the striking colonial-era buildings now.

The old Governor’s House in Bafatá during Portuguese rule is now a Regional Education Center. Notice the balustrade decoration and veranda, which are typical of so many buildings in this former colony.

Along Bafatá’s main street, this neat and simple colonial building has lasted for decades since independence, and – as the antenna reveals – has been re-purposed as the headquarters of a women’s radio station, Radio Mulher.

A group of men fussing with cars across the street could not explain why it was there or the programming.

The old Bafatá marketplace near the port had been restored since the Portuguese left, but has again fallen into disrepair.

In the old market center of Bafatá, several impressive buildings still seem in good shape.

The statue marks the end of Guinea-Bissau’s colonial control by honoring Bafatá’s native son, the renowned intellectual and fighter for independence, Amilcar Cabral. He was assassinated less than a year before his efforts succeeded here. We visited his birthplace and childhood home in town, now a simple museum about his life.

Bafatá’s Our Lady of Grace (Nossa Senhora da Graça) is a Catholic cathedral dating from Portuguese rule, and still seems in good shape. The country is largely Muslim in religion, but the churches remain active.

This Portuguese-built home in Bafatá was a typical one occupied by local residents near the commercial street grid of town. Almost all the streets were unpaved, very dusty in the dry season, but muddy during the rainy. We saw it while hunting for restaurants listed on Google Maps, most of which seemed to have closed in the last few years.

We ended up in a restaurant that was really just an extension of a local home, but with superb and custom-cooked food. As electricity restarted the city lights at 7pm, the cook’s very loquacious Spanish husband talked non-stop at us for 15 minutes though we only understood bits of what he was saying.

Capital City of Bissau

The resilient spirit of citizens of Guinea-Bissau, despite the poverty, and signs of an improved future were most evident in the capital city.

Robust marketplaces, malls, infrastructure improvements, street renovation, and new buildings form the most obvious indicators in an expanding city. But we also observed the promise in the young boys and girls, gathering for school on weekdays or scouting on weekends, who could make its future happen.

Some shoppers in the Bissau market area pass by a rhythmically named pharmacy.

On the corner of the sprawling marketplace, Bissau’s busiest roads meet at a roundabout that causes very slow-moving traffic. Those roads are always lined with shoppers as well as the capital’s ubiquitous blue and yellow mini-vans. For 25 cents, those bus people to destinations out of the center as clearly marked on their signage.

On the steps outside the Catholic cathedral, hundreds of young people stood at attention or sat in groups or worked on projects – as in a church-sponsored scout event. They mostly ignored the noisy construction project that was revamping the long adjacent boulevard.

Inside, many others joyously filled the space with song as they rehearsed hymns inflected with a Creole beat.

The interior of the Catholic cathedral in Bissau from 1935 echoes medieval and colonial-era church styles. While listening to the swinging children’s chorus, we delighted in the contemporary stained glass portraits of the apostles along the sides. The church tower also operates as a lighthouse for ships nearing Bissau on the Geba River estuary.

On a blustery day, the gusts along the old center of Bissau whipped the dirt of the unpaved road all around us. This is the original “high street” of town, heavily used as a main commercial street now and as a colonial business center back to the 19^th century. Throughout Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, the taxis – like the one in blue following the dog – are nearly all old Mercedes-Benzes, patched up and kept running by crafty mechanics. At the nearby roundabout, a monument to Ché Guevara recalls the Marxist revolutionary zeal that inspired people to rebel against Portuguese colonial rule.

The Fist of Timba near the old docks of Bissau: The most notable – as well as rugged and powerful – monument in the city marks the 1959 massacre by the Portuguese state police of striking dockworkers demanding better pay. Dozens were killed and many others thrown into prisons.

The violence convinced leaders like Amilcar Cabral to turn to militant action against the colonial rule until independence in 1974. We thought it represented the hand of a dockworker or revolutionary demanding rights. But another interpretation is that it’s the clenched fist of the colonialists keeping all the riches to themselves.

The central city is a UNESCO World Heritage site, filled with colonial buildings in typical Portuguese style – some in disrepair, but many already renovated. During weekdays, the streets are busy, but are very quiet on weekends.

A street in colonial Bissau with distinctive Portuguese architecture. Most of the restored buildings are used now for government ministries and businesses, so the streets are very quiet on a weekend day.

Some of the most impressive structures, like the one headquartering Galp Energy, gleam outside the large Amura fort.

On the opposite end of the fort’s footprint, a massive, centuries-old kaopak tree still stands guard. The Amura fort dates from the mid-18^th century during the 150 years that the Portuguese were profiting from the slave trade out of Bissau. They were concerned about the French military who were strong in Senegal and nearby Guinea. The fort is difficult to visit since it’s still an active military base.

Uphill from the old city and the port on a main street that was being renovated while we visited Bissau, one finds newer buildings. This roundabout at its top, named Heroes Square, is full of ironies. It’s a popular gathering spot in the evening, especially for young couples, at the high end of the main boulevard (now under renovation) leading through the old city to the waterfront.

The large column, adorned with emblems of Portuguese triumph, was built in 1941 when the capital shifted to Bissau. Oddly, it celebrated a mid-19^th century revolt in Portugal itself. In 1974, Guinea-Bissau didn’t destroy it but just renamed it as a celebration of its new independence, topped by a revolutionary star. Facing it is the headquarters of the PAIGC, the revolutionary party that Amilcar Cabral founded to kick out the Portuguese.

Lastly, the presidential palace behind it, another assertion of Portuguese rule, is unoccupied, we were told, and perhaps haunted. Past presidents there have not done well, either assassinated or nearly so in coups. Recently Chinese construction companies renovated it, but perhaps did not change the luck. They also built the Parliament in the city, a building that’s constantly in need of repair.

Back at the older colonial center, and along the old harbor, many of those UNESCO World Heritage buildings form an impressive lineup. There appeared to be significant commercial activity at the newer facilities far away from the pier we’re on. But low tide near the old port city exposed many disused boats wallowing in the mud.

The waterways of Bissau irrigate the land today, and helped create the enchanting Bijagos archipelago off the mainland. The main channel is the Geba River which ends in an estuary some 15 kilometers (10 miles) wide near the port.

The post Finding Heart and Soul in Battered Guinea-Bissau first appeared on Adventurephiles. (To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Guinea-Bissau, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.)

The Gambia runs several hundred kilometers along the Gambian River, cut from the middle of Senegal by the British in the early 1800s. The British troops secured the river mouth on the Atlantic, as well as upstream, to stop the slave trade by the French and others from the African coast.

They kept control of the country until 1965 when The Gambia became in independent member of the Commonwealth. As a result, though its people share tribal origins with the French-speaking Senegalese, Gambians speak English instead – and still use the British three-prong electrical outlets.

After independence, Gambians suffered economically and politically under an oppressive military leader until 2017. Yet we found them, newly independent and democratic, to be surprisingly joyful and welcoming. They are very optimistic, proud of the democracy they’ve become and eager to vote in municipal and national elections. We saw many of them in line to register for the next election.

In the centuries before the British, several long-lasting empires controlled the area. At the National Museum in Banjul, the capital, we were enthralled to learn about them. The earliest was the 600 year reign by the renowned empire of Ghana, wealthy from its mineral resources, but eventually subdued by the Muslim Almoravids from the north around 1000AD. The Mali empire of the Mandinka then gained control of the land from the Atlantic Ocean to current Nigeria until the onset of the Europeans in the 1500s. These were remarkable kingdoms little known in the west.

The River

Nowadays, it can be difficult to be a country which is mostly a river and two separated stretches of land. The busy ferry at Banjul transports throngs of people throughout the day across the mouth of the Gambian River, but cannot keep up with all the traffic, especially the trucks trying to carry goods across. Waits can be long.

On our crossing, however, we enjoyed a delightful one-hour conversation with an ambitious young robed woman who noticed our camera. Her work as a commercial photographer in a mostly male profession was a challenge she relished.

Yet, back through that imperial past, tribes along the river built hundreds of burial sites, mini-Stonehenges of dark laterite stone. We visited the most magnificent of these Senegambian stone circles, though formally on Senegalese land. (Click here to read the post.)

The Gambia’s narrow strip of land is quite fertile because of the river, though much of the farming remains small in scale. Here is the irrigation system for one farm, where potatoes and other crops grow on mounds surrounded by channels of water dug out with a lot of hard work.

We went on a splendid bird-watching safari with the most knowledgeable expert – and a comedian as well.

We thought we were heading to some remote reserve, but the best site he said was amid the small farms that sit on the border between the salt water and the fresh – making for a dizzying mix of birds. This is one old favorite: the roseate spoonbill.

Another elegant Gambian bird on the prowl during our birding safari: the little banded goshawk

Banjul

Arch 22 in the capital of Banjul is the dictator’s monument to his own triumph – along with other grandiose buildings. He betrayed those who joined with him to rule the country and then eliminated those who opposed him.

Now, the Gambians consider the arch and the museum inside a kind of testimony about that horrible time.

A view from atop Arch 22 over the capital city of Banjul. The old town is mostly a governmental center, with hulking white colonial buildings. However, many upscale resorts beckon along the coastline of endless beachfront.

The old British church in Banjul still offers Christian services on the main street.

On the streets of Banjul, the colorfully dressed women carry their big sacks, their wrapped babies, and often a tub of something on their heads.

The Gambia National Museum in Banjul, where we learned about early African empires, occupies another of the old colonial buildings from the time of British control. Vintage photos, artifacts, tools, and costumes from the past make for an interesting visit.

We were able to pluck these instruments at the National Museum, each of which comes from a different tribe of the area.

Another featured one was a xylophone of bamboo, invented by the Mandinkas, said to have magical power.

This charming mosque sits on the main street of Banjul near the large central field where celebrations take place.

You wouldn’t think that stuffed furniture would sell well outdoors in the very steamy conditions here, but that’s where you find them often together with carved wooden furniture.

We were taking a late afternoon walk on the shore at Banjul, where very few people dotted the vast beach. A group of 8 girls were posing for phone photos by jumping near the surf.

These two came over and we chatted for a while. They hoped to use the nearby hotel pool, but that was for hotel guests only. We told them that the ocean was much better anyway, though we’re not sure they believed it.

One day, we hoped, they would be welcome guests.

Serrekunda

Banjul is a small, somewhat sleepy capital. Inland from the coast, the suburb of Serrekunda has become the middle class center of the city. Restaurants, formal shops, a medina-style market make for lively and plentiful shopping options. And if you need a ride, a vintage Mercedes painted taxi-yellow can take you around.

Apparently this shop in Serrekunda offers not just best quality, but good prices as well.

In the Serrekunda market, a side street features medicine men like this. Their stands are piled with traditional herbs, oils, bark, leaves, and more – with remarkable medicinal value.

The Gambia is rich in fruit production. Serrekunda’s street-side stalls abound in whole fruit and cut fruit in whatever variety you want, and all grown organically.

The post Big River: Unveiling The Gambia first appeared on Adventurephiles. (To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from The Gambia, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.)

The same transition is possible in countries to the east of Senegal. Each shares a common concern, the drift of the Sahara southward to encroach on the fertile lands of the sub-Sahara. So a joint initiative among those countries is to develop a green wall of sorts, as a barrier to the desert, for the benefit of its diverse animal population and the growing human one.

We in the west can understand this movement a bit. The winds from the Sahara whirl the Atlantic Ocean water into hurricanes. The dust wafts over South America, bringing nutrients there.

Wetlands of the Saloum Delta

We love the desert. But we were thrilled to see lush greenery again as we navigated the mangrove channels of the Saloum Delta wetlands.

A splendid overlook on a main channel of the delta.

Exquisitely tangled mangrove roots in the Delta

A few islands in the delta, built up from silt over long ages, accommodate fishing villages. This villager is trimming the roughness in the hollowed tree used as the base of his pirogue, or fishing boat.

The former leader of the village, a woman who was considered the queen of the delta, had died recently at around 100. She was said to be gifted with foresight as well as wisdom.

Her elder son just took over the leadership (a bit like Charles after Queen Elizabeth). He said his toughest job as leader was divining the right opportunities for action such as plantings.

Two Western Reef Herons discuss the fishing prospects. As they often stand in water, it is rare to notice that their feet are golden in color.

We had no idea what a cashew tree looked like, or the fruit that produced the nuts. Now we know, because this region is famous for its cashew crop.

The red fruit is used for juice and has a delicious tangy pear taste. The knob on the fruit is the nut, which is removed and roasted. Everywhere on the streets or in the market, you can buy various size bags of these, usually hand-roasted by the seller.

A sense of what the narrower channels feel like among the mangroves of the delta.

It’s a surprise to see a vervet monkey amid all the water, but we just happened to catch this one on the move.

A pied kingfisher makes a striking pose.

One of many white pelicans in the delta.

The water rises and falls among the mangroves as the ocean tides ebb and flow. The line that seems to be cut at the base of the trees shows the high water mark.

Another small island features lovely shell beaches, whose plenitude and color is evident from this snapshot.

After we watched flocks of egrets and cormorants roost for the night on an island of mangrove trees, we headed past this pair of baobabs in the ebbing light.

Farther South: Watery Casamance

We were a bit leery of visiting the Casamance District, the watery southwestern part of Senegal between Guinea-Bissau and the narrow strip of The Gambia. Within the last decade, groups still fought the Senegalese government to gain greater autonomy and investment.

It’s a land of rivers, backwaters, canals, and oceanfront – with extensive rice farming and fishing, plus welcoming beaches for visitors. Our reward for going, in a time of apparent peace, was the charm of the lush landscape, warm greetings in several village communities, and even a meeting with a Djola king.

As for sea water, we’ve seen no finer beach areas than the long tranquil Atlantic shoreline at Cap Skiring. It’s fringed by a forested margin and a clay embankment some 30 feet (10 meters) high.

It seemed somewhat touristy, sitting on logs and stones in a kapok thicket within the sacred wood of the Oussouye kingdom, awaiting an audience with the king of a Djola community. Even more so when he emerged in his simple red robe accompanied only by an interpreter in very casual athletic clothing.

But, we discovered, he is the animist spiritual leader and godfather to his people, responsible for resolving conflicts, allocating harvests, and appeasing the divine. He even helped resolve the Casamance revolution a decade or so before. So rightly, he had become king by the appointment of a council of elders, rather than by heredity.

The traditional housing of many Casamance villages is made of mud and clay, which are plentiful in a land of waterways. We were invited to visit this charming rectangular one by the mother and daughter in the photo. The place was naturally cool and airy like a cavern. We worried for a moment why the house did not dissolve in the rainy season, but then recalled the sturdiness of clay pots.

Our friend Alioune (whose head is in the attic) asked about the overhead space for storage, accessible by that tricky step ladder. There they stored the rice and grains they showed us.

Another traditional housing style, also made of mud and clay, is circular, as in the one we visited below at the village of Mlomp. The rooms open on a large central atrium with a clay basin in the middle. That collects rainwater from the hole above it in the center of the roof. The collection method is called impluvium, as many Roman houses collected rainwater the same way.

This family was very welcoming, offering us refreshment and the opportunity to eat with them.

This wedge of the circular mud building at Mlomp is one of the bedrooms, as seen from the outer ring wall. Several families can occupy a large house like the one we visited.

After we had visited the Casamance village of mud homes, these schoolboys passed us.

Nearby we had seen others kicking an old soccer ball around a large dusty field. So we thought it was a good opportunity to offer them a newer ball to share. They were very pleased, as you see

End of day at Ziguinchor. Sunset along the banks of the Casamance River, whose twisting and plentiful tributaries water much of the landscape here.

The post Coastal Waterways of Senegal first appeared on Adventurephiles. (To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Senegal, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.)

In these villages, we met with chieftains, elders male and female, as well as the young – all of whom were pleased that we could visit their homes or school and explain their culture to us – initiation rites, marriage practices, the ruling structures, the seasonality of work, and some of their typical foods.

Fulani People of the Desert

The Fulani people are Muslim tribes of the desert, who live off cattle and goats, selling the milk and meat for other needs. Their villages are mostly small – family communities really. Their stock roams freely during the dry months and is gathered again after the rainy season when the grasses grow plentifully.

We were told proudly that the Fulani tribe has produced a surprising number of leaders in various countries across Africa, including Senegal.

These young Fulani are members of a nomadic group, whose gear was loaded onto several carts. Many of the Fulani tribe remain nomadic, shifting periodically from place to place for the most advantageous grazing of their animals. Most, however, stay in permanent villages.

When we arrived, the group was listening to music while awaiting other tribal members. After introductions, we joked about dancing to the music as the young man handed the player to Nancy. Soon everyone broke into an informal tribal dance that the girl on the far right just had to record on her phone. TikTok?

These children drive their donkey cart around to deliver ice to the Fulani villages, like the one with thatched huts in the background. Most of the men were tending the cattle, so we met with the women who were doing chores and preparing meals.

A bit of the Sahara around Lompoule. Beautiful as this is, Senegal and the countries of the Sahel to the east fret about the drift of the Sahara southward to encroach on the fertile lands of the sub-Sahara. So a joint initiative among those countries is to develop a green wall of sorts, as a barrier to the desert, for the benefit of its diverse animal population and the growing human one.

Desert beauty between Dakar and Saint-Louis, at Lompoule. We were reminded of the Saharan Erg of Algeria and other vast deserts we had visited.

A giant baobab in arid Senegal. As is common with older baobab trees, this one was hollow enough to walk into and peer out. The baobabs were often revered by animist tribes, who buried their griots, or prophetic story tellers, in the hollows.

The Mouride City of Touba

Touba (or Felicity, in Arabic), the second largest city in Senegal, now contains over a half-million people, all believers in one holy man.

Ahmadou Bamba Mbacke was a Sufi religious leader and founder here of the Mouride brotherhood, which spread widely. His teachings reflected his emphasis on peacefulness, work, and mastery of oneself. His peaceful resistance to colonial rule further spread his reputation. For that, however, he was exiled or sequestered by the French for decades. When he was allowed to return, his followers gathered with him in the desert city of Touba, soon attracting many others. After he died in 1927, his sons, the hereditary heirs to his movement, continued his work, building this mosque for prayer, learning, and community support.

This is the Grand Mosque of Mouridism in Touba. For a sense of scale, notice the robed figures at the lower edge.

An outer hall for prayer at the Grand Mosque. This is one of many similar spaces to accommodate the faithful, who may pray, meditate, or rest as they wish. Within the mosque, a community kitchen serves meals free to those who are hungry. And a hospital caters to physical ailments.

A glorious passageway to the mosque’s inner prayer halls, open only to Muslims. The founder of Mouridism is buried within, and the two sons who succeeded him as heads of the faith are buried in mausoleums to the side of the main building.

Senegalese typically seek out a spiritual leader to guide their practice of Islam. Everywhere, you see the names marked in tribute on buildings, offices, trucks, boats, etc.

Bassari Country – the Bedik, Serer, and Pula

UNESCO has recognized the Pays Bassari, in the dry plains of southeastern Senegal, for its cultural heritage.

Part of the landscape of Pays Bassari. Atop this mountain is the Bedik village we visited, with a wide perspective over the landscape.

Here, the Bedik and, below them, the neighboring Serer and Pula tribes of this area, have maintained their ages-old style of living, sustaining a harmony with the land, and holding to their traditional beliefs.

To us, the Bedik village turned out to be the most interesting of these visits.

“What is most important to know about the Bedik people?” we asked. We were sitting on various large stones that felt oddly formal, together with the chief of the tribe and his “court.” To the left in our photo, the chief sits amid that shaded array of stones.

We had just climbed to their village on the rocky outcrop and been escorted to the leaders’ site. Though the Bedik like their villages up high, they live peaceably with the other tribes down on the plains.

The chief’s brothers continually weaved basketry during our discussion, using the time profitably. During dry season, when there is little to do for agriculture, the villagers produce beaded jewelry as well as goods like this for sale in town.

In response to our question, the chief proudly spoke of their independence, how they had left Islamic Mali and resisted Christian influences to remain animist in their religious beliefs. They also talked of their governance. A conference of village elders decides on the successor, passing leadership to a different village family when the time comes.

After our visit with the leaders, several young men guided us along the tiny, dusty streets. We greeted some older women along the way and others at work.

A view over the thatched rooves and round clay houses of the Bedik village, divided into sections by families. Their life is often hard, but all the villagers we met projected an enviable contentment.

During our visit, we encountered a French man at one house who felt the same. He had ventured into the village during the lush rainy season some years before and liked the community so much that he built a typical round house and stayed.

This Bedik woman is finishing a clay pot by hitting it firmly with a flat stone. The different tribes of the area largely survive as shepherds and farmers of crops like peanuts. This dry season is their quiet time, so other work like making pots becomes important.

In this season also, many of the villagers move to the large towns for seasonal work. While walking through the village, we found those remaining in the village to be very welcoming and gracious. Some offered us gifts of fruit; others a bag of those delicious peanuts they harvest.

Serer and Pula Villages

In these villages also, many had departed to the larger towns for seasonal work and selling.

When we arrived at the entrance of one Bassari village, an older woman was supervising the gathering of mangoes off a large tree with a long forked stick. We were terrible at the task. Then her grandson showed off his own technique by climbing up instead. We think he ate more than he returned with.

The houses of the Bassari villagers in the plains typically had roofed terraces outside their round houses. There they would work, greet others, or even sleep in the cooler air. After a bit of talk on the veranda, we were invited into this one by a mother and daughter so we could get a feel for their simple, but sufficient accommodations. Though they often sit on mats or short stools, we were graciously invited to use the only furniture, their beds.

Every day is washing day on this river in Bassari country, even in the dry season. The women here rinse the clothing in the water and slap it on the rocks. Nearby some villagers were using shallow pans to sift the stream for gold; others panned in round holes dug down a meter or two in the river shoals.

The villagers send their children into town for early education. Most continue to the upper grades in the nearest cities. This is a class in a school for over 700 village youngsters, evenly divided between boys and girls. It might look crowded, but the students are clearly learning math, French and Arabic, as well as other topics.

They were eager to write their names on their slates for us and very orderly even with our disruption. When asked to sing the Senegalese national anthem, they rivalled any chorus. In thanks, we left a gift of a soccer ball and pencils, as well as a donation to the head of the school for other materials.

The post Villages old and new in Senegal first appeared on Adventurephiles. (To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Senegal, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.)

Along much of the Gambia River, and its encasing country of The Gambia, the landscape contains a unique concentration of burial sites marked by hundreds and hundreds of mini-Stonehenges, stone circles up to 2000 years old. It’s no wonder that these sites have been given World Heritage status.

We visited the largest of these Senegambian clusters at Sine Ngayene in Senegal, with over 50 circles visible and over 1100 stones, weighing up to seven tons each. We explored them with the local guardian, whose father had assisted the original archeological teams over 20 years ago.

The stones vary greatly in size and you can’t see the buried part, but many are quite large.

The stones are laterite, an iron-rich rock that was mined quite a distance away. We guessed that many had been knocked over by shifting ground or other people. Yet, a large part of each stone is below ground, buried to provide stability. The current guardian said that lightning strikes – attracted by the iron in the rock – toppled and cracked the stones. But we weren’t so sure about that explanation.

The burial sites were sacred for the tribes when they were constructed, and the people seemed to live close by. According to the guardian of the site, the villagers still consider it hallowed in a way and would never harm it. However, we had to share the site with a group of goats. But we realized that they perform a useful function, chewing down the dry grasses that might catch fire.

This site is special due to the great number of stone circles, but also the presence of the double circle below, with one ring of stones inside another ring. The builders must have considered it important because it was placed at the crux of three branches of circular tombs in a Y-formation. Archeologists found evidence that this marks a double burial, of a king and a queen.

Each stone circle had a portal to its east marked by two stones, a symbolic doorway. This was one of the most evident examples.

The post Villages old and new in Senegal first appeared on Adventurephiles. (To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Senegal, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.)

Right at the start of our visit to Senegal, we explored Bandia, near the capital of Dakar in the west, and then, toward the end, vast Niokolo Koba in the east.

Bandia

On our first full day in Senegal, our visit to Bendia made for a terrific start to our extensive visit to the country. Our expert guide uncovered many favorites and some new animals during our visit, but it was all a blast.

Welcome to Bandia!

“This way. No, this way.” Patas monkeys show a moment of indecision about where to see the animals.

This pond at Bandia reserve, normally much visited by the animals, shows off its large baobab tree. One can see many baobabs at Bandia, including some quite massive in girth. Aptly, the baobab is a symbol of Senegal – and the fruit makes a delicious snack or juice.

Barry and Alioune demonstrate the size of this historical baobab. In prior centuries, the animist Serer people of Senegal buried their griots (or prophetic story tellers) in the hollows of large baobab trees. They stopped the practice decades ago, but this tree at Bandia still houses the bones from one burial.

One of a pair of black-headed lapwings that squawked at us in defense of the eggs they laid on the ground. We quickly left them in peace.

The Forest Buffalo, a relative of the fiercer looking Cape buffalo, looks gentle enough, but is still not an animal you want to party with. Even today guides tell you what the colonial hunters of centuries ago knew: these are the most dangerous wild animals in Africa.

The giant eland (or more formally, the Western Giant Lord Derby Eland) is beautifully colored with a shaggy neck, but is most distinctive for its elk-like size and corkscrew horns. It’s only found in four western African countries, including Senegal. This herd joined in with some zebra, including a rare albino zebra just noticeable at the right toward the back.

The Cape Eland, which is smaller and more simply horned than the Giant Eland.

Bandia has several families of giraffes (as well as impala). Here one group feeds off the tall trees.

Red-billed hornbill hunting for fruits

One of a pair of white rhinos at Bandia. The two have not wanted to mate, so no offspring.

A striking, if furtive, Great Painted Snipe stays alert at the pond.

Niokolo

Niokolo Koba is a vast reserve in eastern Senegal that now stretches into the country of Guinea Conakry as well. We visited this UNESCO World Heritage site about two weeks after Bandia. We learned it had expanded greatly over time due to its success at sustaining an extraordinary variety of wild animals.

Several ecologies - savannah, wetlands, forest – foster nine varieties of antelope, hippos and crocs, hundreds of bird species, and numerous cat species including lions (hard to find, but we did locate a civet). On safari, even in the dry season, we found it enchanting.

The main route into Niokolo begins in woodland and savannah. Here is one attractive allee we admired on the way.

Abyssinian blue roller finds its place in one tree.

On a marshy plain, the smaller cape antelope lopes along with a larger waterbuck past Senegalese geese.

A bushbuck

Savannah landscape of Niokolo Koba

An intensely curious Cape Antelope

A ghostly figure, the Oribi antelope

Red throated bee-eater

Waterbuck showing off its shaggy coat

Our only sighting of a roan antelope one morning

The very eastern part of the Gambia River is close to its source. This portion lies just downstream from a makeshift wood footbridge that connects to Guinea Conakry. In rainy season, this whole area is underwater.

Alongside the bridge of the Gambia River, Egyptian plovers attracted our attention...for obvious reasons.

Termite cathedrals abound in the park, built from spit and clay

Red billed firefinches at the outskirts of the park, enjoying a drink near a spot where we too enjoyed a drink.

The post Delightful Safaris in Senegal first appeared on Adventurephiles. (To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Senegal, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.)

Senegal had been under the control of the French since the early 19^th century. For centuries earlier, they, the Portuguese, and others enslaved and exploited the region’s African tribes, themselves founders of several enduring empires in their own right.

Despite independence in 1960, the legacy of colonial rule is evident in language, politics, culture, and urban design. We found this legacy especially poignant at two UNESCO World Heritage sites: Gorée Island, from which slaves were transported to the west, and Saint-Louis, where the French long segregated the villagers in their administrative capital.

Gorée

How can we make sense of the small island of Gorée? For some three hundred years here, European slave traders persisted in human trafficking of barely imaginable barbarity and torment.

The island was a natural prison off the coast of Dakar, the westernmost point of Africa, surrounded by expanse of ocean and a ready harbor for slave boats. It was one of several gruesome gateways sending slaves to the Americas and Europe. Only a lucky few survived their common lot: death, torture, maiming, and separation.

Historians debate how large a role the island played, but numbers don’t change how we felt at the House of Slaves memorial here on this World Heritage Site. Yet again we confronted the horror that results from one group of humans treating another as lesser people. After slave trade ended, the French used the island as a fort, garrisoning troops in the round turret building at the left. Though they also transformed the island into a beautiful place, Gorée still reminds the world of its old inhumanity.

This former trade-slaving site is the main memorial and museum on Gorée Island. The traders lived upstairs and penned the slaves below in dank, crowded cells – like animals.

The passage between the stairs leads to the doorway through which people were herded onto the boats heading to the Americas and Europe, never to return. Today, however, that doorway welcomes the descendants of those who survived the ordeals of the trip and their enslaved labor.

Three images of slave-trading horrors. Two 18th century drawings (middle and right) of the slave trader house that is now a memorial. To the left, a scene from Alex Haley’s Roots with the imprisoned Kunta Kinte: those chains and metal collars are historically correct.

The “Door of No Return,” at the water’s edge of the slave traders’ house – with only the vast sea and the Americas beyond - has become a point of meditation, sadness, and remembrance for descendants of those who left in chains.

The packing method for Africans on the ironically named “Aurora,” or Dawn. For this was more truly the dawn of a tortuous voyage across the Atlantic, and a horrible death or barbaric life.

Rich slave traders built sturdy homes out of rock to boast of their profits from the human trafficking, often in the shape of boats, like this one.

Gorée is now a place where visitors can feel welcome, where local merchants and artists offer goods – as well as hospitality. This woman told Nancy that she should take care of her husband, or she would steal him away as her other husband. Perhaps she forgot his qualities, because later she did not even recognize Barry.

Below is just one of the lovely colonial era streets for the French after the slave trade ended.

Many African artists now work on the island, taking advantage of the many tourists who visit.

This man demonstrated his proficiency in sand painting after three years of training. By hand, he sifted onto his worktable various colors of sand from locations around Senegal. Then he applied a natural glue to a board to “print” an image. After drying in the sun, the result was a glossy and permanent finish with brilliant colors. Behind him are some examples of his work.

A monument to hope rises from the highest point of Gorée Island. It’s the prow of a slave trading ship sinking in the sea, symbolizing the end of those gruesome centuries of inhumanity. More generally, it expresses hope for the end of all such evils committed by one people against another. The holes of good make the ships of evil founder.

The renowned Senegalese artist Kalidou Kassé expresses a similar wish in this work we saw at Dakar. “Porte de l’Espoir” (Door of Hope) captures the grimness of the Door of No Return at the slave traders’ house with its orange, red, and black tones. But the artist also brightens the coloration while centering bright light in the doorway.

Saint-Louis

The UNESCO World Heritage city of Saint-Louis, the largest city of northwest Senegal and former capital of the country, is divided into two distinct districts by the Senegal River and the Atlantic Ocean. On the eastern island, the French built their colonial houses and administrative buildings. With the decline due to the shift of the capital and commercial activity to Dakar in 1958, this central city deteriorated. More recently revived by tourism, it remains a quiet, lightly populated place. To its east, on the mainland across the river, the modern city has expanded widely – an urban sprawl.

The other district to its west – a long, slim barrier island - is very different. There the French had segregated the fishing villagers. Yet that part of Saint-Louis still buzzes, as villagers pursue their traditional life. We were reminded of the liveliness of street life in late 19^th century cities. The densely housed population fills the residential streets at the north, while the frenzied fish trade continues to the south. To us, the central city showed a faded charm, but the liveliness of the fishing island was fascinating.

A view of colonial Saint-Louis across the Senegal River. The 1897 iron bridge looked like an Eiffel creation, but was developed by another company.

A street of typical colonial buildings here. The wrought iron balconies and two-story buildings – a style intended for a tropical climate - have reminded visitors of the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana. These date from the mid-19^th century, while those in New Orleans are late 18^th century.

A restored and likely adapted house in the old colonial island of Saint-Louis.

Another street in old colonial Saint-Louis, with an eclectic hotel and typical 19^th century colonial buildings.

This artist was presenting an exhibit he called Animals of the Future in a white-washed colonial structure that is used now as a cultural center. He had caught us in passing and asked us to return to view his art.

When we did, we found that not all his works were animals, but they all seemed to be dancing figures. One reimagined one showed an elephant with human legs as if it jiggled at a dance contest. In the foreground are a male-female couple entwined in their own dance, which - like the other figures on the table - were made of a pliable wood that could be roughly handled or dropped without damage.

A typical cart heads through the junction that divides the commercial fishing section from the residential section of the fishing village island.

In the lively residential section of the fishing village on the western island of Saint-Louis, horse carts generally transport people about. Though the French once forced native Senegalese onto this island, the villagers largely live here still, thronging the streets like the sidewalks of the lower east side of New York back a century.

We were graciously invited one evening to join a local family for the Iftar meal to break the Ramadan fast. They served the Senegalese national dish of spicy “broken rice” and fish, with bitter aubergine (a sea-going version of eggplant), tomato, and other vegetables. Here one of the women in the family puts the components of the dish together.

In Senegal, by tradition, only the women cook, never the men. As is usual, the preparation is on the ground where the cooking pots go.

Invented by a cook in Saint-Louis, this has become the Senegalese national dish: thieboudienne (chebu jen). It was delicious.

During the day, fishing boats dock at the quay. In their vivid decoration, the boats display traditional symbols and designs, as well as personal tributes by the owners to spiritual leaders or honored family members.

A fishing boat pulls onto the long, thronged village quay and is assailed by buyers bidding for the catch. As the background shows, similar scenes are repeated throughout the day in a continual hubbub.

The men fish; the women sell the fish. On the long quay of the river estuary, you experience an unending buzz of delivery, sorting, and selling. With another boat just pulled onto the quay with its catch in the background, this group of sociable friends tried to persuade us to buy - even though we told them we had no kitchen.

On the Atlantic side of the village island, sea-going boats also deliver the day’s catch to a throng of competing buyers, noticeable by their containers and those disc-topped hats that help them balance the containers on their heads. The fish is sold off the beach or salted and dried for preservation in the sun.

These boys practice the skills they will need as fishermen in the future, against the backdrop of southern end of the colonial island. As in other labor-intensive trades, the persistent tradition is to have many children to help with the work as they grow older and earn money when the parents can’t.

The post Tracking Colonial Rule in Senegal first appeared on Adventurephiles. (To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Senegal, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.)

The towns are just large enough to obtain what you need, but remain tranquil. The villages define picturesque, boasting the friendliest people and boldly painted facades alongside the coal-black lava cliffs. Black sand beaches are quiet and seductive, even when the surf’s up. And, to top it all off, we could drive and hike the most spectacular mountainous landscape.

Along the Sea

Porto Novo, as seen from our ferry to the neighboring island of São Vicente, is the largest town on the island – yet relaxed and quiet too. The mountain backdrop looks lovely, but gives no hint of the unique pleasure of its canyon terrain.

As one heads from the ferry at Porto Novo along the eastern coast of Santo Antão, the drive winds up and down the steep cliff-sides, with luscious views over the sea and, surprise, the most colorful towns ready to greet you around the bends. These are the splashy colors of Janela, which means window in Portuguese.

Often wind-whipped, waves beat against the basalt cliffs sweeping mist up the ridges.

Ribeira Grande nestles gently on the northern shore of the island, our gateway to numerous hikes and drives up the mountains, plus a most pleasant place to stay and relax.

At an outdoor café in Ribeira Grande, we discussed with some residents the merits of the two local alcohols made from sugar cane: the vodka-like grogue and rum-like pontche. We didn’t mind trying a few.

Our apartment sat within a cane field and garden, from which we enjoyed delicious just-picked papayas and bananas – as well as gorgeous flowers like these.

Late afternoon along the shore of Ribeira Grande, our village on Santo Antão island. That’s a part of the town perched up on the conical hill. The road leads to the last accessible town on the northeastern coast, nearby Ponta do Sol, which is famous for its sunsets, mainly because it looks westerly.

This was our destination after a long drive through the surprisingly diverse landscape of the mountain peaks and canyons. Once we crossed the firmest part of this striking black beach, the small fishing village of Tarrafal offered a welcoming café.

We saw some lovely wild birds during our stay, but this rooster greeting us at Tarrafal still got out attention. Or were we thinking of the symbol of Portugal, the cockerel? Roosters here generally make their presence known throughout the villages. The residents primarily fish as a livelihood, but many grow their own vegetables and fruits – and eggs.

At the tops

The shoreline was splendid, but the true grandeur of the island is revealed higher up in its incomparable mountain landscape. Or really three landscapes: deep ravines dividing high volcanic peaks, high plains, and nearly mile-high evergreen woods.

The highest peaks reach about 1600 meters (a mile high). The ragged ridge lines are often separated by dizzyingly steep canyons. At least five ridges are evident at this viewpoint. Whole towns and isolated farmhouses perch on what flat land there is.

More ridgelines and ravines near the top of the island.

One of the most popular hikes is down from Cova, the volcanic crater in the midst of the island. This viewpoint at 4200 feet above sea level (1300 meters) looks over the fertile farmland of the crater hundreds of meters below.

We were astonished to discover a broad altoplano, high plains grassland set against volcanic cones, sprawling before us after we descended a bit from the peak of the island.

This little fellow was grazing near the road over those high grassy plains. In the distance, its elders eyed us suspiciously for stopping near him.

This lover of woodlands, the grey-headed kingfisher, does not rely on fish to eat…and finds Santo Antão’s mountains as appealing as we did.

The clouds had gathered around the island as we returned from our drive up and over the island’s heights. As we turned through a pass, this vast green ravine opened up before us – and caught our breath. For a sense of scale, notice the tiny road going across.

The way to Cha da Igreja, a small coastal town with an 18^th century church at its center. The road twists down from a high point of the island through terraced farms to the sea.

A view up the valley along our hike to Xoxo, a small village above our town of Ribeira Grande.

A colorful set of buildings up-valley from our town of Ribeira Grande stands boldly beneath those high peaks.

The famous landmark of Xoxo, where we hiked, is a lone vertical column of rock rising from within the small village. Near it, though, was this curiously geometric papaya plant reaching upwards as well, with a faintly visible moon to its upper right.

The post Antão – and How! first appeared on Adventurephiles. (To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Cape Verde, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.)

Surprises, surprises…or why we love to travel. We planned to visit Cape Verde as an adjunct to our visiting the three countries on the bulge of the western African mainland – Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau (click here to read about those countries). Because of Cape Verde’s old colonial ties to Portugal, regular non-stop flights could deliver us in about four hours from Lisbon to Praia, the capital of the country on Santiago Island. We were thinking, nice, let’s relax for a few weeks on some tropical islands and contribute to the economy of a poorer country.

Before arriving, our first surprise was the country’s geographical weirdness, a circle of 10 volcanic islands with a diameter of about 150 miles (250 km). Even with two weeks, we had to make some choices. Once we arrived at the capital on Santiago Island, more surprises. Here tropical Cape Verde (or ‘Green Cape’) was mostly arid, more like sub-Saharan African savannah surrounded by Atlantic Ocean. Lastly, we discovered a flourishing economy despite the colonial legacy and a lack of natural resources. Good leadership in a stable democracy has created growing prosperity for its people.

We looked forward to more surprises during our visit to Cape Verde…and found many.

Praia

We are accustomed to warm hospitality from the people of African countries. Cape Verdeans are just as welcoming. One of the first locals we met was Jorge, tender of the historic 19^th century lighthouse in Praia, the capital of CV on southernmost Santiago Island.

Exuberant and warm-hearted he not only gave us a lighthouse tour, but pointed out highlights of the island from up top, while recounting local history, ethnography, and personal experiences with the Presidents of Portugal and CV. Thanks, Jorge!

That elegant 19^th century lighthouse at the edge of Praia where Jorge gave us his tour. The spiraling staircase has kept its wooden steps, though the (“don’t touch, don’t touch”) electrochemical lamp is modern.

Serving shipping activity and transport has remained a source of wealth on Cape Verde since the 16^th century, though the rocky shores often proved treacherous to vessels. Even today with modern equipment, this night light is still a comfort to captains.

A colorful commercial street in the heart of the Plato (Plateau), the rocky plateau where the central city sits.

This graceful set of high school buildings clearly dates from Portugal’s colonial days here, but after independence CV governments have kept it in sparkling condition for educating students.

A quiet residential street on the Plato of central Praia shows off charming homes and gardens.

On a nearby bluff, we found an appealing middle-class section of Praia filled with restaurants, mini-markets, a Hot Bread bakery chain, banks and other services – as well as charming new apartment buildings like these.

Sucupira is a large open air market to the west of central Praia, whose rocky plateau looms over it. Here we found a medina-style tangle of lanes and shops for residents. We were dazzled by the tropical colors on display from stall to stall, as with this sandal shop. But the quality and pricing of goods demonstrated the relative prosperity here.

View down from Praia’s plateau over a canopy of trees alongside the Sucupiru goods market. All those white vans on the streets comprise part of the extensive mini-bus transport system serving small communities on Santiago. Praia has sprawled across neighboring hills to accommodate immigrants and villagers moving to the capital.

The main food market in Praia occupies a 100 year old open-air structure off a pedestrian mall along the spine of the city center. The tightly packed stalls laden with fruits and vegetables are an age-old style of shopping, as is this cranial method of carrying heavy loads.

From the second level, we had a top-down look at the market during a quiet period of the day. The lull gave the woman below us a chance to check her phone for pricing information or Whatsapp messages. We enjoyed how CV vendors even make their produce stalls so colorful.

This woman had just climbed the steep staircase with her balanced load. We saw many women about town doing the same thing with products just as fragile as these eggs.

Cidade Velha (Old Town)

In the mid-15^th century, Santiago was just an uninhabited island off the western African coast. The Portuguese then turned it into a major trading outpost – 50 years before Columbus went to the Americas. The colony was centered on Ribeira Grande, or the World Heritage site of Cidade Velha (“old town”), along the island’s southern coast.

There they could profit from transport around Africa, as well as with Europe and the emerging American lands. Sadly, they traded not just products, but people captured from the continent, enslaved and hauled across the seas.

In the late 1500s, Captain Francis Drake razed the town, but failed to capture the place for England, as the wily residents fled into the hills. In the early 1700s, French forces finished the job, overwhelming the cliff-top fort and destroying the other buildings, including a just-completed cathedral over a century in the making. The Portuguese moved eastward to the cliff-top town of Praia and held on to the island until 1974.

Banana Street was the main street of Ribeira Grande, or Cidade Velha, back to its origins. It features low-lying stone buildings like these and leads to several churches and an old convent. You could guess rightly that it was named for the banana trees lining it in the old days.

The restored Rosario Church (and original cathedral) from the 16^th century is charming on the inside, though little of its older features remain, as well as impressive from the outside.

Various tombstones line the floor of the Rosario church and are also displayed along the verandah outside. This one, memorializing Senhor d’Almeida, was the oldest one we found. The year 1546 can be deciphered at the bottom of the inscription.

Finished in 1470, some 550 years ago, the Conceiçao church of Cidade Velha has survived only as a ruin far beneath the promontory on which the revived fortress stands. Higher in the same valley is the restored Rosario church from a century later (earlier photo) and even further up are the remains of a Portuguese convent.

São Felipe Fortress above Cidade Velha

The view over Ribeira Grande from the cobblestone pathway to the fort of São Felipe. The original old town sat at sea level to the right of this newer plateau. The black ruin atop the plateau is what remains of the sizable 17^th century cathedral destroyed by the French. Though much visited by tourists from the capital, the town remains a fishing village.

This is the main entrance gate through the stonework walls of the fortress of São Felipe, lovingly restored by Spanish archeological teams. This gate is beloved by the residents of Santiago Island as their access to the structure, and attracts wedding parties even today.

The top of the old fort looks peaceful now after the superb restoration by Spanish experts, but was horrific when the French forces overwhelmed it. The restorers brought a few cannons along to show off the use of the parapets. We wondered if they would return and heft this hardware into place.

After climbing up to the fort and wandering around it in the hot sun, we descended to this little way-station, a great spot to rest and cool off. The welcoming host made Barry a delicious buzio (fish stew), to go with his cold beer.

We wondered how the owner could make any money, as a broad parking lot for the fort, accessed by a different road, now lets most visitors bypass the stall.

From the fort, you can view the whole of this canyon, which carries water down to the old city and provides for extensive agriculture as well – bananas, cane, cabbages, and fruits like papaya or mango. You cannot see the water because it moves underground for most of the year. We found several dams along similar ribeiras around the island, retaining excess water and controlling the flow to the farms. In the background, rise the mountains of the island’s central spine.

The Island Landscape

The Cape Verde islands offer a magnificent landscape – really two landscapes. At sea level are the long coastlines, with their black or white sand beaches, churning or gentle bays, and lava-rock formations.

At their heights, islands like Santiago offer an equally enticing experience. The old volcanic peaks push their often unusual shapes into the sky. There, despite the arid climate, the mountains capture moisture risen from the seas and channel it through the surprisingly fertile valleys beneath.

Coast

Fishing villages still dot the coasts of Santiago Island, nestled between the foamy water hitting the shore’s volcanic rocks and the ubiquitous cliffs and savannah. We were delighted to encounter this small village of Porto Mosquito with its colorful residences. We thought the smiling little girls in white frocks underscored the well-being of the place, while the wandering pigs showed this was still a local village.

Huge murals of sea-life by the artist Lantuna decorated most walls in the rest of town. When we stopped at its fishing port, villagers at the beach greeted us repeatedly. Another pig body-surfed onto the black sand. And a friendly young man pointed out the famous bird rookeries nearby.

Seemingly ancient are the practices of the fishermen, who still launch their wood boats from beaches like this onto the encircling Atlantic. Here numerous fishermen have hauled their large boat up on shore while young boys look on. Another boat beside it is labelled Jesus de Nazaré. These kids not only played in the tumbling surf with little supervision, but also traipsed barefoot along the volcanic rocks.

The old lava has turned into black sand here, an attraction not just for locals, but for the many tourists visiting the islands. Some slightly older children took a lengthy swim offshore to a bobbing boat so they could play fishermen or pirates or some other adventure.

A moment of meditation on the seaside lava rocks at a locals’ spot for swimming in a natural basin. The wave action was a bit too strong for a swim this day.

Tarrafal offers one of the best wide beaches on the island, with one section covered with fishing boats and another with bathers. And we couldn’t forego the beach bar with cheap caiparinhas made from the local sugar cane alcohol, grogue.

Whipped frothy by winds, the churning sea crashes around these rocks near the Cuba basin of Tarrafal, whose headland floats over its distant bay.

Here we stopped at the descent into the bay of Tarrafal, where we enjoyed the beach and lava pools. That arid set of hills gives no sense of the nearby valleys where water runs underground for agriculture.

Heights

Most days in the spring the moisture from the sea keeps the distant peaks hazy on Santiago Island. These gleamed in the sunlight one day.

The Serra Malagueta, famous for its hikes and charming peaks.

In other places, like Iceland and Ethiopia, we discovered how hot lava somehow hardens into hexagonal “organ pipes.” On Santiago, these are mostly hidden, but a road up to the tallest part of the Serra Malagueta exposed this fascinating feature.

A lower section of crenellated hills and valleys on Santiago.

At around 1400 meters (4600 feet) above sea level, Santo António is Santiago Island’s highest peak. Below it is a typical farm along the middle of the island.

One of the most famous sights on Santiago Island is the massive “baobab” tree, though it’s really a kaopak. The top is about 25 meters (80 feet) high, with a buttressed trunk about 30 meters (100 feet) around. The two hour hike to the tree passes through one of those fertile valleys beneath the arid hills.

This is the very fertile valley we walked for the Baobab hike – with its farming of cane, bananas, fruit trees, cabbage and carrot patches, and more. It showed us how much water can be captured despite the dry climate.

In the best valleys for water run-off, small dams like this control distribution to the farms below.

In the mountains, we also visited a small community with two distinctions. One is that they are dedicated to making art like these colorful prints; the other is that they abjure modern distractions like TV. Their houses were made of lava rock or thatched roof and cane plants, with few interior walls.

The post Ancient Seas and Eyries of Santiago first appeared on Adventurephiles. (To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Cape Verde, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.)

Our comments below sum up what we saw in the people, the land, food and drink, money matters, driving, and - the oddest element - our accompanying security.

People

• It’s a largely middle-class population, relatively well-off and seemingly content. Algerians seem well off compared to neighbors like Tunisia. We detected many signs that economic opportunity was available to most, especially the young who are sadly too often neglected in other countries. The land is resource rich due to oil reserves and fertile plains, Algeria meanwhile has clearly invested in infrastructure, power generation and delivery, as well as providing housing. It’s hard to find a highway that is not edged by power transmission lines. The newer developments on the outskirts of this and other Algerian cities may look like unimaginative public housing, but there is so much of it sprouting everywhere to accommodate growth.

• The people take pride in their cultural achievements and long history. We saw many parents inculcating that pride in their children at history museums. Education is clearly a priority here anyway.
  
  In Algiers, for example, we joined carfuls of locals on a cable ride up several hundred meters from the Botanic Garden, itself a vast natural space for educating children. Many family groups then roamed through the Military Museum. From detailed models of fortified cities and key battles, children learned about the glories of the Muslim empires that dominated Algeria and the region from the 7^th to the 15^th centuries. The history lessons went even further back to the Numidians who preceded the Romans.

• Welcoming with few tourists. Our experience with other Islamic countries is how friendly and eager to host are their people. Algerians demonstrated this character quite strongly, we felt, especially because they see so few tourists given the restrictions on moving around the country and rebellious unrest in the far south. Algerians were as delighted to see us engaged with their culture as for their children to learn.

• Among the recurrent themes is their heroic war of rebellion to gain independence, especially from the French takeover under Napoleon III in the 1830s. Even before that, however, Algerians needed to confront Spanish invaders and accommodate the Ottomans.
  
  So one quickly notices how Algeria honors as martyrs the tens of thousands who died at the hands of the French especially after WW II, as well as militants like Emir Abdelkader over 100 years earlier. One memorial in Algiers is the grassy space extending from busy Martyrs’ Plaza. The old mosque at the back dates from the Moorish period at the end of the 11^th century.
  
  Elsewhere around the country, posters or tributes honor specific individuals, instrumental in gaining independence or killed by the French during the conflict. Notably, attached to the fences around most parks are large portrait photos of these heroes to ensure that people recall the country’s difficult struggle.

• The Military Museum also honors the long fight for independence starting with Abdelkader onward through the liberation from France. More dramatically, across a huge plaza on the same plateau, families visit the soaring monument that honors as martyrs those killed in the war for independence.

The Land

Algeria is a large country on the map, though the preponderance is desert. Overall, we found a surprisingly diverse landscape, with enough variety to engage anyone who visits here, encompassing:

• Mediterranean – coves and lengthy beaches like southern France; with frequent bluffs and headlands even in cities;

• Rolling hills and fertile valleys, making Algeria a bountiful grain producer;

• Limestone mountainous terrain, arid forests;

• Sierras linked to the Atlas Mountains;

• Saharan deserts of creamy sands and oases; and

• High desert of mountains and scrubby flatlands.

(For other photos of the landscape, see the other articles from Algeria. Click Here.)

Dining and Wining – Food

You’ll never go hungry on the road. And it’s all dirt cheap (heh, heh). So many truckers use the major and minor roadways that restaurants, cafes, superettes are plentiful even in the countryside. But best yet are the hut-like stalls along the roads, notably at choke points that slow traffic, each packed with seasonal fruits and vegetables from nearby farms. Or the smaller pop-up shops by local farmers with the freshest of yields.

November seemed to be the time for oranges, gorgeous cauliflower, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, and bananas (!!). And it’s all good for you too…bio and grown naturally, we’re told. Similar stalls sometimes offered other local products like clay pots or long colorful dresses. Those last items, we thought, might suffer a bit from the dusty conditions stirred by trucks on the road.

Despite the wonderful food for sale at these stands, we had no kitchens for cooking. At first we despaired at finding cooked options for vegetarians, what with the meat cravings of Algerians. After a while, however, we discovered how veg-friendly the cuisine could be. Many restaurants offer an array of veg dishes – regional variants of shakshouka, other local specialties of vegetables cooked with grains and sauces, overcooked beans, white bean soup, puree, potato and onion, harissa or hamissa, fresh salad. We learned how to eat quite well. Cities offer these same options mixed in with more formal restaurants as Europeans might expect.

In the photo above, as often happened in Algeria, the people at the table just visible on the right soon started a conversation with us, curious about who we were and pleased to welcome us. And see also our article about Ghardaia, where we dived in at a truck stop (Click here).

For meat eaters, these offerings can be supplemented by roast chicken or skewers, fish, meats including thoroughly cooked liver – all grilled on an ashen BBQ on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. In case of serious hunger, every table features a large bucket of baguettes to complement the food.

Large portions cost only 200 to 300 dima (a few dollars or euros) per hefty serving. While coffee shops seemed to be exclusively male, most restaurants catered to women also, notably when the advertised a salle familiale, a separate area for mixing of the sexes. Interestingly, patrons usually receive no final bill, but pay for the food as they leave with an honor system: we would recite to the cashiers what we ate, and they toted up the price.

Drink

As with many other Muslim countries willing to accommodate tourists and less religiously observant residents, alcohol can fe bound around most towns – though not easily at first. The international hotels and some higher end restaurants offer wine and spirits, though most eateries do not. Sugar and fruity drinks are plentiful. It may seem odd, therefore, that Algeria has quite a few vineyards and a brewery. These make a pretty good product. There seems to be enough market that some of the fertile countryside, normally dedicated to grain production, is profitably dedicated to growing grapes and perhaps hops as well.

For home consumption, you need to find the few Wine Shops around town. You typically find these at a somewhat hidden, no frills recessed – often detectable by the swarm of young men or vehicles in front of it. In stricter towns, you need to dare visiting the industrial zone, the one that everyone warns you about. But, even in these less savory locations, no one troubled us; rather, they were amused and pleased to see us join in. The Sin tax makes the alcohol expensive for locals: at the hideaway stores, the lowest price wines cost $5 to $8, a lot relatively to food costs, with superior wines much higher. Half liter beers cost $3 to $5, about the price of a good meal in a local restaurant. In some towns, where limitations are stricter than Algiers, the price might soar higher.

Money

Early on, we discovered how tricky it is to determine prices. That’s not because merchants aren’t forthcoming; it’s because they speak of money in a kind of shorthand, including the name. Appropriately, ‘dima’ is the more frequently used street name for the dinar.

Let’s say this 200 dima coin (or about 1.50 USD or EUR) would cover your cost of a purchase. The seller would typically ask for 20, lopping off the last digit. An Algerian with a bit less command of French or English might ask for 2000, confusing the terms ‘hundred’ for ‘thousand’. It took us a while, after becoming accustomed to costs, to get over the confusion. Fortunately, the cost of goods and services proved relatively low for travelers like us. Not quite 20, but certainly not 2000.

Algeria was quite reasonable in cost compared to European countries despite an artificially elevated official rate controlled by its central bank. The gap fosters a market for money changing that is quite public. In certain busy squares of the major cities, you can find a host of money-changers offering better deals than the official exchange rate of 140 per dollar during our visit. If you shop around, you can get an exchange rate of perhaps 200 dima per dollar. Yet, there is a huge caveat in taking advantage of this currency market. It seems that many of the dima bills you receive will be counterfeit. You need a sharp-eyed local to tell the difference. With prices moderate anyway, we stuck with the official rate.

Driving

Algeria has developed a lot of good, well-maintained roads, though perhaps with not enough highways to handle increasing traffic. Traffic inevitably halts and stutters at towns, as the many trucks – moving at slow in-town speeds and delicately easing over road bumps – clog things up. In cities, jams last all day long.

Oddly, road bumps also frequently interrupt the highways, slowing traffic movement there too. You cannot rest in auto-pilot even at highway speeds, or a bump could do some damage to your vehicle.

Cars abound though young people say they are much too expensive, at least to buy new.

Fuel is very cheap, about 30 cents per liter ($1.20 per gallon), as Algeria produces quite a lot itself.

Those roadside power lines everywhere, even in the desert, demonstrate also the intense commercialization of resources like oil and gas, as well as population expansion.

The Oddest Element: Security

There do seem to be a lot of police around. So many are posted on city streets keeping an eye out for something, most noticeably when high-level visitors come to town. Police checkpoints are all too frequent on highways and secondary roads, especially as one heads southward away from the Mediterranean. We saw a lot in Tunisia as well, but Algerian checkpoints seemed even more plentiful. They appear to be enforcing rules and registration requirements, but we’d also heard about governmental concern about terrorists and rebels, especially in the far south. The checkpoints exacerbate the slowdowns in traffic; nor do the traffic police help much with the clogs despite their game efforts.

Perhaps the oddest feature of our trip though was the added layer of “protection” given to us outside of Algiers. You can’t really travel much here without an escort on the roadways, or extra checking at airports. Officials explain that this is for our protection, as there have been some headline incidents long in the past. Someone is surely worried given how much money and personnel hours were expended on just two foreigners like us.

At Timimoun airport in the southern desert, official personnel took our passports to copy and then handed us over to a green and white jeep with a couple of officers. At the edge of town, we needed to register ourselves again, but then were not tailed for the most part as we visited the town, dunes and outskirts. Yet, on a day when we were walking on our own, a team of two police followed us into the desert, through a village, as well as over ravines and water channels.

With the exception of uniforms, that was how it generally worked as we walked through cities. A plainclothes policeman accompanied us, often volunteering information or steering us toward our destinations.

Between cities and while entering, a police team from each jurisdiction sequentially led us to our destinations.

So, at the border between police districts, we dropped one security force, a vehicle with say 2 or 3 police, and picked up another. The handoff sometimes went smoothly, with remarkable coordination of timing, other than saying hello to the new team and supplying it with another one of the dozens of copies of our itinerary. But quite often we needed to wait for the next team. A half hour could go by while we idled alongside a desert road, or sat tucked into the curve of a large traffic roundabout, or warily stopped at a highway ramp. On some days we tallied up to 30 different policemen (yes, almost always men) in up to a dozen teams leading the way for us. The photo shows a stop near a reservoir where three different vans and their police collected for us.

This security blanket has to hamper tourist interest in the country, but for us eventually it just became a necessary feature of moving about. Unlike in Tunisia, we were not allowed to drive ourselves, perhaps to make sure we conformed to the security rules. But we saw few, if any reasons, to be concerned. Quite the opposite: everyone welcomed us warmly and graciously.

Our drivers, however, seemed to like the system as the police created places for us to park in the cities (plus watched the car). On roadways, they did their best to cut past traffic jams, with a variety of sirens blaring. The larger the vehicle, like a Mercedes van, the more it could push its weight around. But amusingly many drivers paid little attention to the noise (not an ambulance, so ignore it?). Many traffic jams would not open up for us, even with the sirens. We thought we should be waving at onlookers curious about the police activity and wondering about the VIPs within our car.

Police were not stern or forbidding in any way, generally greeting and sending us off with many smiles. When we found a common ground in our broken French or their broken English, we had some very pleasant conversations. They were as intrigued with us as were so many other people we met across the country. On one walk into a national park, a security man followed us and then joined in to comment on what we were seeing, sharing an appreciation of its natural beauty, and talked politics with us. In the cities, they often acted as informal guides. Many even located the hidden alcohol depots for us despite their grey-market.

We did adjust to the situation, as we had to, but not without a kind of creepy feeling at times. Early on, in Oran, when our accompaniment first began, we were instructed to let our driver know if we went for a walk on our own. Without bothering to alert him, however, we went off to see some neighborhoods, have lunch, and take a promenade on the bluffs along the sea. The next day we admitted what we had done, and, we said wryly, missed the security guys. He claimed we were surely followed. We were astonished, thinking back, that someone could have followed us the whole day without our noticing. Was there really a shadow on our trail? And how could we not notice them when we made a mad dash across a six-lane highway to return to our hotel??

The post A Brush with Algeria: Marks of Culture first appeared on Adventurephiles. (To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Algeria, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.)

With its creamy, wind-blown sands, the Great Western Erg desert can seem a forbidding landscape. For millennia, though, the town (Tim) of Mimoun, or Timimoun, has been a prosperous crossroads for trade here – blistering hot in summer and icy in winter.

For it’s all about the water in the desert oases, the reason people ever stopped here or created a town amidst vast stretches southward even in Algeria, as well as west into Morocco and to the rest of the Sahel. A few smaller oasis settlements can be found nearby, but you must go hundreds of kilometers away to find another desert location like Timimoun that can sustain many residents – as well as nomadic traders or tourists.

Water

You can tell from afar when you’ve arrived at water as you see the sudden effusion of greenery. Here, we are in the midst of the oasis with the desert sands sweeping the horizon. The green is the palmerei, the palm forest. Enough water below the surface also delivers surprising fertility for other crops – oranges, pomegranates, and many types of vegetables – in addition to the ubiquitous dates of the palms. Whole settlements could survive in the past on the rich nutrition of those dates as a staple. Today, a very different resource can found other settlements, industrial towns built over oil and gas reserves producing a very different kind of crop.

Natural springs at some villages can be channeled via clay pipes toward various parts of the village.This is a water distribution system for one village in the area, a method typical of desert communities across northern Africa and the middle east. A natural spring (yes, locatable by its abundant date palms) bubbles water to the surface throughout the year. The village added clay channels to direct the flow to various parts of the village.

Birds like this Great Grey Shrike and ring-necked doves know a good deal when they see it, so they too proliferate around the oasis.

Sand

Wind forms waves of sand into swells and hollows, always shifting but, for a brief time, frozen for us in spectacular patterns.

Nancy ventures around a huge hollow in the sand of the Great Western Erg…in search of an oasis or a camel? Our Range Rover at the time was perched quite precariously, to us, at the top edge of a similar dune.

The side of one massive dune demonstrated the complex patterns in the sand generated as wind and gravity interact.

Town

In the old city, buildings crowd the narrow streets, built of a mix of red clay, straw, and palm trunks for strength (vs. the sandstone, limestone and stucco materials common to the north). We wriggled through the lanes to view the medieval mosque, the finest example of the local style to us, with its cave-like, seemingly windswept interior (reminiscent of Georgia O’Keefe’s desert imagery).

The minaret of the ancient mosque can barely be seen from the narrow lanes. But its tapered form evokes ages past: defensive turrets for perilous times, markers for mausoleums honoring village founders, and the summons for prayers offered up to heaven.

Timimoun has long featured a distinct architecture with roots in the burnt red clay around it, one apparently akin to Sudanese methods. This old city gate, now just at a junction of a side road, demonstrates the sloped-side towers and geometric decoration of the Saharan desert builders. Interestingly, the building visible through the arch on the side street, appropriately adorned with air conditioners, is currently the most evident look of the town, an adaptation by French colonial builders using stucco-covered blocks painted dark red and white. They set the newer parts of town on wide boulevards, turning their backs on the methods of the old town, with its narrow lanes to shade streets against the desert sun.

The more contemporary minaret in Ottoman octagonal style from the relatively recent history of the town.

The daily outdoor market is surprisingly robust in goods and foods, particularly considering we’re in the middle of the Saharan desert. We bought superb oranges, beans, and capsicums from this stall. A short walk away an old bearded vendor with a broad smile doled out very tasty roasted peanuts.

Our inn at Timimoun combined modern comforts with the color and feel of the nomadic or caravan tent life. Our camel…err, Range Rover…idled contentedly outside.

Beyond

An old village, founded on a rocky mound by a small oasis near Timimoun, had climbed 50 meters or so upward over time into a maze of narrow passages and rooms, all constructed of the red clay of the region. More recently, after the need for security through height waned, the villagers moved to the flatland near the oasis (close to the old mosque and founders’ mausoleum), leaving these crumbling vestiges behind.

By the 16th century, area rulers aimed to build ksars, fortified villages, in the vicinity of Timimoun as protective outposts. So, across the desert expanse, nobles and their extended families constructed residences like these atop natural hillocks, creating surprisingly elaborate arrays of rooms. Once inside, we could look out over the remains of the walls, or through crumbled gaps filling with sand, and we could hail the neighbor’s stone villa about a half kilometer away. The electric lines, which run all across the region today, illustrate how Algeria has invested in extensive infrastructure to support commercial and residential activity.

The post A drop to drink – the Great Western Erg first appeared on Adventurephiles. (To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Algeria, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.)

During our first week in Algeria, we walked and rode extensively around Algiers, the bustling capital along the Mediterranean. We were impressed by a city (and people) with a depth of heritage, prosperity, and pride.

They welcomed us in ways large and small – treated not as strangers, but as honored guests. On our second day, after eating in a small local restaurant whose menu consisted of just a handful of items, one of the regulars insisted on buying our meal. “We are honored when you visit our country,” he said.

The City

The city itself was equally welcoming. The old parts of town seemed in good shape, with the Ottoman castle atop the Casbah under reconstruction and other buildings in the medina, as well as early 20^th century French colonial buildings, well maintained.

The flat part of central Algiers runs about a half kilometer from the sea. The terrain then rises gradually in the old town up to the Casbah and more steeply to bluffs in other places. Here, along a corniche road high above the sea, is a splendid view looking north over central Algiers, with the Casbah hillside sloping down on the far left. The harbor for this northern and western part of Algiers is still quite busy commercially, little changed in that regard since the Phoenicians of nearly 3000 years ago.

It’s not obvious – except perhaps at the lower fringe of the picture – that there is quite a lot of steep hillside parkland across the city. Such parks begin on one set of streets and climb up to another level, where you’re just as likely to find the next steep park.

One advantage is lots of exercise, but the main plus is that the parks offer a ready refuge, surprisingly isolated from the noisy car jams on the streets.

By contrast, the splendid Jardim Botanique is a huge swath of flat land near the Mediterranean west of the center city, with towering trees like palms and planes, gnarled pines, and diverse flowering plants.

Throngs of families and older students head there, especially on weekends and holidays. Below this staircase is a very formal part of the garden, occupying perhaps just a tenth of the much wilder remainder.

In the flatland, including one stop at the Jardim, Algiers has been able to put run a sleek and quiet subway system, with plans for extension to more of the sprawling city. When we first tried to use it, we looked a bit lost and uncertain of how payment worked. Two young women stepped in to help us and talk with us for several stops.

And extending the metro is a very good idea, even if it only serves the flatland. Up on the hillsides, the tangle of roadways makes traffic blockages inevitable. Often you’re better off climbing up and down the many stairways (and parks) that link levels of town to reach your destination…a kind of pedestrian metro.

The imprint of history is everywhere in the city, especially in the old medina, where inevitably a visit to Algiers begins. Flanked by an Ottoman building being restored on the right and a French colonial one on the left, the grand 17^th century Ketchaoua mosque at the edge of the flatland just below the medina has itself experienced the changes in rulers and religions.

Begun as an Ottoman mosque about 500 years ago, it was converted to a church by the French, and then converted back to a mosque in the 1960s after the war of independence. Christian decoration added to the church was then subtly transformed to befit the mosque. As with most mosques, entrance was restricted to Muslims even outside of prayer times.

At the top of the old city and the hillside medina above the mosque sat the Casbah, which just means fort. A UNESCO World Heritage site, its protective walls once enclosed the whole hillside down to the sea, including the medina – the narrow streets of the old market and residential district. From there the city began to spread.

Dating from early Phoenician and local Numidian settlers, the medina’s streets rise and fall, twist and turn, tumble up and down staircases across the hillside until one reaches the surprisingly narrow commercial and harbor flatland below.

An overview of the current fort of the Casbah. Today’s buildings largely date from the Moorish and Ottoman periods. Long neglected, it is mostly closed for restoration. We could at least view the charming mosques marked by the towers in the photo and auxiliary rooms used by the guard of the local ruler, the Dey. But we could not visit the elaborate internal courtyard of the Dey, the huge rotunda called the Gunpowder building, or the hotel used to house subordinate governors when they came for meetings and paid tributes.

The rulers at any time period needed to ensure water for their people. So water stored at the top of the Casbah was channeled to numerous fountains along the way down, like this Ottoman era basin at a junction of medina streets.

However unequal the wealth and power of Algiers’ residents in the past, custom limited the overt display of these differences.

Palaces in the medina are barely noticeable from the streets, displaying the same whitewashed walls and decorated doorways as other buildings. However, once inside, the splendor is on display.

Here is the interior courtyard of the Mustapha Pacha palace from the Ottoman era in the 17^th century. The palace was large enough to occupy two buildings spanning a narrow street.

The streets of any medina in the Maghreb are also lively marketplaces. In Algiers, we found the people there very hospitable. Stalls line the streets (and even impede passage when they can) to offer throngs of buyers anything they need to buy. This colorful stall was less busy than many of the clothing ones. Turn a corner and you’re at the food stalls. With its French connection, Algeria maintains a tradition of fine cheese. We spent 20 minutes tasting delicious soft and hard cheeses at one counter (the local camembert and goat cheese are rightly renowned). The welcoming owner kept presenting us with other delicacies to try.

For many kilometers along the northern part of the city, the bluffs overlooking the Mediterranean are lined with these elegant French colonial buildings. By the early 20^th century, the French formed a majority of Algier’s residents. It’s quite a spectacle from the sea level. This section is near a large fishing port where vessels of various sizes deliver their daily catch to the fishmongers and wholesalers nearby.

Within nearby districts like Bab El Oued (or River Gate) just north of the Casbah, vintage colonial buildings like this are still fully occupied. Their wrought iron porches are usually festooned with drapes that shade the interior and ensure some privacy. Often the day’s laundry emerges to dry in the sunshine. Though some looked a bit run down, most seemed kept in good shape even though this was one of those districts that the locals like to warn one about.

And it was no less friendly. At a local park, a half-dozen pensioners were preoccupied with a game of dominoes but were pleased to talk with us when we drifted over to see what was going on. Even the top player according to the group (with the hat on the left) stopped playing for a while to find out more about us.

On another day, we managed to find a table at a very, very busy restaurant in the downtown Algiers district. To our left, two slender sisters had ordered, to their surprise, a couple of platters heaped with chicken wings, french fries, and other heavy foods. Over time, they ate most of it! Soon, they were joined by a young male friend whose arrival stirred an hour-long conversation with us about life in Algeria and in travel, plus a lot of smiles.

Museums

Algeria has long been at the confluence of numerous cultures, old and new: Phoenician, Punic, Numidian, Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, Arabic, Christian, Spanish, Ottoman, and French – to name a few. Unsurprisingly, it has accumulated numerous treasures that draw on that 2500 year heritage, displayed proudly at its many museums. Here are just some of the special pieces we found around the capital Algiers.

Museum of Antiquities

From the 4^th century BC, some 2300 years ago, comes this water jug from Algeria replete with Phoenician or Greek figures.

The Museum of Antiquities displays a thrilling collection of coins from the Numidians of 2300 years ago through the Ottomans up to 200 years ago.

This shows the profile of the notable Numidian king, Juba II, whose successful 53 year reign spanned the birth of Christ. His wife was the daughter of Antony and Cleopatra (yes, that Antony and Cleopatra).

In this striking mosaic, Oceanus, god of the sea, is surrounded by nymphs on seahorses and other marine creatures. The inscription exudes confidence in its quality and exorts us to take joy in the work, noting the envious hearts of those who see it. “For in this work we surpass our ancestors” and, along with the building around it, “the highest summit of art shines agreeably. Be happy.” But why doesn’t Oceanus look happier?

3^rd century Roman ceremonial mask in bronze from Algeria

One room at the Museum of Antiquities shows part of the collection, with a Grecian-style statue of a one-legged Hercules in the foreground.

This mosaic was discovered along with that stone casket. The inscription on the casket quotes the entombed Cornelius about his own death precisely at the age of 28 years, 10 months, 12 days, and 9 hours. The mosaic suggests the death occurred after some effort to avoid it.

While ducks and pheasants keep watch over medicinal bowls, and with the support of sea giants, a doctor does his best to cure Cornelius, who did look very unwell. The swaddled figure at the top, sadly, shows the outcome. The Greek epigram below the circle adds enigmatically, “I was not. I have been. I am not. I don’t care.”

From the Byzantine period, this odd architectural fragment shows the biblical Daniel, calm and even celebratory, about to tame some feisty lions.

Bardo

Ironically, we were unable to visit the famous Bardo museum in Tunis with its collection of magnificent antiquities. That was too close to off-limits government buildings there.

The Bardo is not nearly the same in Algiers, but at least it was open. The museum is a former palace that explains the lifestyle of imperial Muslim tribes and the Ottoman era.

Its exhibitions included a wide-ranging collection of African sculpture from around the continent, with extensive explanation of how the masks, totems, and other objects were used. This striking “Contest between man and beast” comes from Burkina Faso, in western Africa.

The African displays included a variety of stringed instruments from around the continent. One seemed to have dozens of strings to sound out.

This delicate gold belt from Algeria was likely featured in a wedding ceremony, but now gleams at the Bardo.

Museum of Islamic Art

A 10^th century bowl from Iran, in the Museum of Islamic Art, served up a strangely modern set of images.

This 11^th century preaching pulpit from the Almoravide empire graced the Grand Mosque in Algiers. Set on wheels, it was moved into the mosque along a rail from a storage niche – as in many other old mosques.

The Almoravide empire was based in Morocco but extended across southern Spain and Portugal, as well as northern Africa. The Islamic museum took us through the various Islamic eras from the 8^th to the 20^th century, with interesting artifacts from most of them.

This Koran excerpt from Algeria is one of the many examples of Arabic calligraphy displayed at the palace of Hammouda Pacha in the Algiers Casbah. As figural art was limited to geometric adaptations of plant life, Islamic artists devoted much effort to beautification of the language itself.

An intricately carved semi-circle, set above a doorway in the museum, demonstrated the sublime skill of Moorish artists.

Musee des Beaux Arts

An unexpected treasure trove is on view at the huge Beaux Arts museum, whose 3^rd floor terrace enjoys a panorama over the Jardim Botanique and parts of the city.

The museum offers an extensive collection of excellent work by European Impressionists and Modernists.

• Rodin, Pissarro, Gauguin, Degas, Millet, Vuillard, Derain, Utrillo, Fantin-Latour, Caillebotte, Bonnard, Monet, Renoir, Picasso, Maillol

  

It also displays quite a bounty of earlier Western art back through the medieval period – gifts, we presumed, from French collectors and philanthropists before Independence.

• Barnaba da Modena, Florentine Renaissance, Corot, Levy, Delacroix, Carpeaux, Lorrain, Ter Bruggen, Rembrandt, Courbet, David, Guardi, Piranesi

There are great examples from other Western painters who were particularly drawn to the exoticism and cultural differences they found locally:

• Delacroix, Bourdelle, Lazerges, Sintés, Dinet-Etienne,

Plus French/Algerians drawing directly from local influences:

• Lebourg, Belmondo, Rayess, Demagh, Boukerche, Adane

And, just in case one was bored, charming Ottoman-era prints intoxicated with color and mysticism, old maps of Algiers and its fortress Casbah, as well as Algerian and African sculptors on the lower floors.

We expected to stay an hour but dawdled for nearly three instead. And we were glad that the ousting of the French after independence had not effaced interest in their legacy within the museum.

With colonial buildings all over town, Algerians seem to have reconciled themselves to accepting what still had value for today’s citizens, while never forgetting the troubled legacy of colonial occupation.

The post Up, down, and all over town: Algiers first appeared on Adventurephiles. (To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Algeria, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.)

One of the key philosophers of Catholicism, Augustine (354 to 430 AD) was an African, a Berber/Numidian by heritage. His geographical travels brought him to Carthage (Tunis) for school and Italy for religious training. His spiritual journey took him from a lustful married man with a mistress to a profound religious philosopher. In his mid-30s, after returning to Africa, he became bishop of Hippo Regius (modern day Annaba) for nearly 40 years, dedicating himself to preaching and writing.

He tells his own story of human failings and redemption in his remarkable book, Confessions, while also brilliantly expounding his philosophy of fundamental issues like the nature of time. As he was dying, Vandal armies spared the city, but returned afterwards to raze it, except – it is said – for his cathedral and library. Time has done the rest.

(To read about our visit to two other coastal cities, Oran and Bejaia, click here.)

Hippo Regius, the home of Saint Augustine.

The ruins in this frame comprise only about a third of the excavated site, in all about 500 meters (1700 feet) square. The most important section, to us, is marked by two semi-circular stone walls (about a third in from the right edge and in the middle vertically). The left of the two was an apse for Augustine’s church-like house.

The tall columns at the end of the street mark the meeting place of the Forum. High above the site floats the late 19^th century Basilica of St Augustine. In Augustine’s day, the town sat at the coastline but the sea has receded since then.

View of Augustine’s home from beyond the semi-circular apse. Inside this space we felt most connected to him as we touched the same stones he had.

Another extensive portion of the Hippo Regius site shows the outline of the large old basilica, where the bits of columns stand. Here, at the semi-circular apse toward the back, Bishop Augustine would have led services and preached.

This animated mosaic came from a villa built while Augustine lived in Hippo Regius. It vividly depicts a hunt for animals like deer to feed the predators held in a pen by a wall of shields. The large cats would be used in gladiatorial games at a venue like the walled one on the right. The wildlife shown here were common in Augustine’s time.

This marble head of Vespasian from the 1^st century at the Hippo museum portrays him as a kinder, gentler emperor – whatever the truth might have been. He seems to have been a reformer and a builder of Rome’s Colosseum among other things. But he rose to fame as the military leader who quelled rebellion in Jerusalem. The head of Theodosius, the last emperor of the unified Roman Empire, would have replaced Vespasian’s on statues here when Augustine moved to Hippo.

No, this is not a selfie of Barry’s reaction upon reaching Hippo Regius, but rather it’s the Mask of a Gorgon. At many intersections, likely crossed by Augustine himself, fountains delivered water through marble busts like this, with customary half-shut eyes and serpentine wind-blown hair. At one meter high (over 3 feet) and at 320kg (700 pounds), it was no push-over for the Vandals. It was found intact as late as 1930.

We were lucky in our timing to see the charming interior of the late 19^th century Basilica honoring St. Augustine, the one atop the hill overlooking the Saint’s old town. It was closed to host the Swedish ambassador just before we arrived. The church is an apt blend of Roman, Byzantine, and Arabic styles. The attendant was pleased to show us around and discuss the current display about the Bible and other holy books.

Annaba today

We came here for Augustine’s Hippo, but found modern Annaba a delightful seaside town as well.

Along the coast, for quite a distance north of the center of Annaba, we could find lovely bays and seaside communities like this. At the peninsular end of the road, in blustery wet weather, we also admired a rugged splinter of rock delicately supporting the lighthouse.

You might think you were in Paris, with these French colonial buildings lining a leafy boulevard. Our hotel was within a similar building. Its narrow wrought-iron balcony let us peer out at the busy street despite the rains. The very commercial harbor lies in the mists at the far end.

Numerous cafes and gelato shops (such as L’Ours Polaire, or The Polar Bear) nestle under the broad trees of that very French main boulevard, with plenty of seating for local families in the evening.

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Almoravid to Zianide via H & M

Much attention is given to the remarkable remains of Roman and Byzantine cities within Algeria. Three locales around the country show the remarkable ebb and flow of Islamic empires during the first half of the second millennium, before the Ottomans occupied the region in the 16^th century.

In Tlemcen, we traced the rulers of North Africa (and parts of Europe) from A to Z (Almoravid to Zianide). And two UNESCO World Heritage sites enlightened us about H and M (the Hammadids at Beni-Hammad and the Mozabites of the M’zab Valley).

A to Z (Almoravid to Zianide) in Tlemcen: a half millennium of rule

Tlemcen is the second largest city of western Algeria after Oran. It has been, moreover, a very important seat of empire and religion. For three centuries before the Ottomans, Tlemcen was the capital city of the Zianide empire of northern Africa and a key trading center. The Zianide empire’s Citadel and palace still stand, now impressively restored. Before them, other Islamic rulers like the Almoravids strengthened the town. The city’s religious importance is evident from its numerous mosques in various Moorish imperial styles, from the Almoravid to the Zianide. We admired the still sturdy watchtowers of these old mosques, as well as the beauty of the more secluded 14^th century mosque that evolved around the holy man, Sidi Boumediene.

Today’s Tlemcen

Steep bluffs overhang the old city of Tlemcen, providing striking views across the city.

City managers recently developed a broad plaza atop the bluffs, accessible by a cable car system that was just like those in ski country.

From the top, with some difficulty even with binoculars, we could yet identify the location of minarets and palaces we had visited during the day.

The quality of the photos from the cable car suffered from a common ailment in the sandy areas of Algeria, murky windows. We could barely see out of the windows on the train from Algiers to Oran and found the same problem on our ride here. We passed over some poor neighborhoods which locals warn one about. You can, however, in this photo detect the grand park at the start of the climb, closed currently for some reason, but originally a grand water basin developed by the Almohads in the 12^th century.

Algerians are not just welcoming, but effusively so. We ran into these two men atop the bluffs overlooking Tlemcen. Inevitably, we started to talk…and were soon invited to share dinner, to be helped in several cities by their relatives, and be fast friends for life.

Yes, they don’t see a lot of tourists from outside Algeria, but hospitality to strangers is integral to the culture from Berber times on. (Sorry for the fuzzy photo; none of our cameras handled the low light very well.)

Down below, in the old marketplace or medina in Tlemcen, we called this man Habib Popeil for his ability to attract cooks with his slicing devices and his winning smile. We had seen similar displays in other Algerian markets, but this man was by far the best.

Our other market highlight was trying several street snacks from medina vendors. One, called Carentika, was a baguette with a yummy spread of chickpeas and oil inside.

A host of plane trees shade the main square of Tlemcen, named for Algeria’s first freedom fighter Emir Abdelkader. In the plaza, this boy seemed to be practicing how to drive in Algeria – whirling about rapidly and just skirting various pedestrians. He stopped suddenly before hitting us.

We were somewhat disappointed, but also grateful, to discover that a parent was guiding the vehicle remotely.

Old Tlemcen…

The Citadel of the Zianides

By the 13^th century, the Citadel or El Mechouar, a fortified palace in the center of Tlemcen, became the residence of the Zianide rulers of the Maghreb for three centuries. Its imposing walls mask what had been a luxurious interior, one restored in recent times. This is the central courtyard around which countless rooms accommodated the leaders and their guests.

Restoration of the interior of the Citadel, the Zianide palace, has aimed to reproduce the old details of tilework and carving. We love the delicate, intricate decorative arts that grace Islamic building – this carved wall was mesmerizing. Overlapping circles define various other shapes, including tiny Seals of Solomon, with inscribed Koranic text throughout wishing us peace and welcome.

Mosques of Empires and Sages

On one side of the plaza with the young driver, sprawling discreetly over a huge area behind its simple façade, sits the most prestigious mosque, the Great Mosque of the Almoravids from the 11^th century. We were not allowed to visit that one. But, on the other side of the plaza, a museum in Tlemcen’s former city hall displayed various treasures of the old mosques that have not survived, such as this charming wooden passageway at the museum from Al-Tansi.

The early 14^th century Mansourah minaret rises 40 meters (over 130 feet) from atop a staircase, an imposing sight from the road. The back end of the minaret is open so you can see traces of the inner stairway as you stand in the vast walled area of what was the adjacent mosque. People look very tiny in that open space. Encircling walls below the bluffs of this plateau defined the Mansourah section of the city, which was eventually integrated into Tlemcen.

This 14^th century minaret still stands as if new in the older part of the city called Agadir. The former prayer house and school are now just open spaces nearby. The brickwork decoration is still attractive, and also conveys meaning. The five arches at the top announce that the mosque is open both for regular days of prayer and special days as well.

The one mosque we could visit was part of a 14^th century complex devoted to the holy man Sidi Boumediene, who followed the Sufi sect. We had waited an hour for prayers to conclude but still could enter the courtyard and open walled prayer area only due to the graciousness of its caretaker. While we waited, we wandered through other parts of the complex including parts of the madrasa school. There we admired the beauty of its domed interior.

We almost didn’t need to visit the mosque itself, given the splendor of the doorway.

While the interior of the Sidi Boumediene mosque may appear somewhat plain, it does feature elaborate etched decoration. And the carved stone adorning the outer doorways was equally engaging. The chair to the back right of the old mosque is where the imam sits to lead the prayers. The caretaker clearly enjoyed showing us the features, one of which was a wood pulpit that he would roll out of its storage bin during prayer. Our museum post from Algiers showed an even older pulpit like this.

Our final visit was the burial place of the holy man, a vault adorned with this lovely tiled canopy.

H – Hammadid empire at Qai’a of Beni Hammad

You can drive or hike through the 11^th century center of the Hammadid empire at the World Heritage site of Beni Hammad. All around you can marvel at the hilly landscape about 1500 meters above sea level, where violent geological forces pushed up subterranean layers into vertical striations.

Wealthy and powerful from caravan trade, the fortified city (qala’a) was also a nexus for artists and scientists. But invading Arabian forces forced Beni Hammad to be abandoned less than 100 years after its founding. Then the Almohads leveled it in the middle of the 12^th century.

The palaces and walls are all but vanished, with the exception of a portion of one palace peering out over a deep canyon at the upper reach of the old city.

Otherwise, the lone marker of this seat of power is the stalwart and often imitated minaret that still overlooks the ageless landscape.

M – The Mozabite people of Ghardaia

Over 1000 years ago, the Mozabite people (of the Ibadi sect of Islam) began to settle in the fertile M’zab valley, a large oasis in the midst of the Algerian desert, and soon occupied five rocky hills surrounding that valley. Each hill turned into a walled city, a fortress (ksour) topped by a mosque and minaret that also acted as watchtower, looking out for danger and networking with the other towers.

In this overview of the M’zab Valley, the life-giving palm oasis spreads between the five hilltop towns, the Pentapolis. The watchtower in the far center marks Ghardaia, the largest ksour (fortress town), which has sprawled into the valley as it grew, all but connecting each town. The hill to its left is another of the towns. We are standing at the high point of Bonoura with its tallest mosque just below and a fourth town beyond that.

In building the towns, the Mozabites knew what worked well for desert living. Emanating from the tower, constricted lanes wound in circles and radii down along the hill. Over these natural wind channels loomed thick clay block buildings affording plentiful shade for residents and heat absorption against the desert sun. In the buildings, cave-like apartments ensured privacy, with doorways only accessible indirectly and never located opposite others on a street . Wells distributed and preserved water for the community.

Not only was the physical layout of the cities distinctive, but so was their social structure. Committees of the mosques – including women’s committees – managed the religious, social, and administrative needs of the town, as they still do today.

For their preserved antiquity, the valley and its five towns, the Pentapolis, have been named a World Heritage site. During our visit, we felt transported to another time.

Pentapolis

Ghardaia, the largest of the five towns or Pentapolis, still looks ancient in its original central section upon the hillside. This narrow lane, climbing by steps to the central mosque and minaret, is quite typical of all the towns.

Over these natural wind channels loomed thick clay block buildings affording plentiful shade for residents and heat absorption against the desert sun. Privacy was ensured by the small windows, by doors that did not face each other on the street, and with L-shaped access to cave-like apartments.

Notice the texture of the wall on the right, which is roughened by palm leaves as the wall is made. That method disperses the sunlight despite the crowded lanes and breaks up rainfall to avoid torrents.

At its base, Bonoura’s peripheral buildings and original walls present a formidable facade built right on a natural rocky outcrop. Of all the five towns, this one shows from afar most like a fort, topped by its tapered minaret and lookout tower. Here you can most easily see the uniform clay construction that forms the tightly packed buildings, mounting in circles all the way to the top. The green at the base is the wide channel to handle the flood waters during rain and connects to the palm oasis.

Beni-Isguen is one of the smaller ksours of the Pentapolis. We are high atop the old principal watchtower, whose shadow was lengthening at the end of the day. The dry hills in the distance remind us that we’re in a desert. Within the encircling walls near us, you can perhaps detect the circular lanes radiating from the top. As is typical, the town is tightly packed with clay buildings – some unpainted and some brightly tinted when viewed from above. Most of the tapered minarets of the five towns are just as crowded by other buildings, so the broad plaza below us is unusual.

El Atteuf is the oldest of the five towns, a steep climb or descent through the labyrinth of streets shaded from the desert sun by tall buildings, which are most visible from this hillside cemetery at the edge of town. At the bottom right is an old mausoleum that is said to have guided the work of the famous architect Le Corbusier, along with the cave-like building style of the towns. Learning from the molded clay, natural shapes, and adaptation to desert conditions apparently altered his methods.

The Ancient Lifestyle – today

Both the men and women traditionally swath their bodies and their heads in white robes like these. After marriage, however, the women wrap their faces as well, with the exception of a space for one eye to keep watch on where they’re going.

As always, in the desert, water is the main concern. Wells throughout the towns of M’zab could collect rainwater when it came and give access to the oasis water otherwise. As people drew water from a well in any of the towns, spillage would flow to the adjacent space where one or more date palm trees always grew – thereby providing extra shade and nourishing dates. No water is wasted. This is one of the larger wells we saw in the five towns, appropriately at the center of Ghardaia, though the plaza had been enlarged in more recent times.

In each of the hilltop towns, markets like this bustled at the foot of the hills, level places for trade and exchange that left the main hillside town above secure and quiet. Only people on foot and donkeys would carry items up the winding streets, as they still do (with the addition of motorcycles now). The central market plaza, to which lanes like this entered, was also the site for meetings by village leaders in a stone semi-circle. There, in a public forum, they might adjudicate matters or make important decisions for the town.

What appears to be just some rocky rubble marked by white huts is actually a traditional cemetery for the desert Mozabites, where the shards mark the places of burial and the huts are sites for sacrificial gifts.

Within the hilltop towns, we saw many schoolchildren, boys and girls, in school or heading home afterwards. And we were pleased that all of them seemed quite joyful. This impromptu photo in Ghardaia captured the delight of two schoolgirls matched by the brilliance of their uniforms.

This restaurant was part of a large truck stop, whose various services supported long-haul truckers on the desert road connecting to the M’zab Valley. The staff was a bit perplexed as we quizzed them on the food they were offering, large vats with perhaps a dozen or more options. Yet clearly they were thrilled to meet some foreigners willing to dive in.

Generally across Algeria, we found it easy to locate vegetarian food. A typical restaurant would offer a set of prepared dishes buffet-style without meat, or some local specialties like lubiyah (white bean stew). Separately it would display various meats and skewers ready to be cooked on a cylindrical grill out front. A bucket of baguettes always accompanies the meal, which typically cost under 5 dollars for two. The soup that Barry is pretending to scoop was vegetarian.

The post Algeria’s Islamic Centers, from A to Z first appeared on Adventurephiles. (To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Algeria, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.)

Constantine is known as the City of Bridges for it needs at least nine bridges to traverse. But it could just as well be called the City of Ravines for the chasms traversed by the bridges, the City of Rock for the huge outcrops on which its buildings perch, or the City of Viewpoints for the innumerable vistas over the rippling landscape below. For 500 years, the Ottomans and the French colonists crafted today’s city. But the rock, ravines, and vistas – the reason for all those bridges – have remained the same.

Bridges and Ravines

We awoke to this view every morning, with the newer colonial town to the left and the old city just behind the long Sidi Rached bridge of 27 arches. Toward the back there is also an unoccupied promontory. Notice the tiny white mosque balanced precariously on an outcrop beneath the longest arch. Out of view to the right is the newest bridge in Constantine, a non-Calatrava Calatrava-like bridge that runs over a kilometer long.

Our favorite bridge over the Rhumel River gorge is this 100-year old suspension bridge, Mellah Slimane, whose stanchions look a bit like a slimmer version of the Brooklyn Bridge’s. Only foot traffic on this one, which connects a busy thoroughfare on the far side to the old medina at the near side. The medina’s rocky ledge looms over the bridge, some four stories (20 meters) higher. After bouncing gingerly on the bridge, we chose to climb the stairs to the top and skip the line for the elevator.

Seen from a distance, in this reverse view, the pedestrian-only Mellah Slimane suspension bridge clearly spans an impressive part of the main gorge. A host of buildings in the medina seem to be elbowing their way to the edge for the view.

You can walk or drive to the Sidi M’Cid bridge, which crosses from old town to new town, by way of several tunnels cut into the rock, each of which offers a different panorama. To its right, the falls flow under a roadway far below and the lovely landscape stretches to the horizon.

This dizzying view comes from an opening in the tunnels carved through rock to reach the Sidi M’Cid bridge. We are peering down into the falls of the Rhumel River as it emerges from the city’s gorge. The next photo shows the view from the road bridge below.

The reverse view of the Rhumel River gorge, from below, with that Sidi M’Cid bridge spanning it.

Looking toward Constantine over the main gorge from Sidi M’Cid bridge with the Bab El Kantra Bridge farther on. The latter was the oldest one we walked, a mid-19^th century French transformation of an earlier 18^th century Ottoman bridge. The city, named for Emperor Constantine in the 4^th century, somehow retained its name throughout numerous imperial changes.

Old and New Constantine

Ahmed Bey was the last Ottoman governor of Constantine until 1848, a few years after the French occupied the area. In his palace, there are hundreds of cedar doors to attract the eye, as well as elegant marble columns filling the spacious interior. But we were especially charmed by the wall containing the Bey’s travel blog of images from important places he had visited. This is Istanbul, for example, the Ottoman capital city.

Though dating from the mid-19^th century, the palace of the last Ottoman governor is still in very good condition. Located next to the old town or medina, it features this and two other lush gardens that define different living and greeting sections of the palace.

Several long streets run parallel thru the busy medina, each connected by narrow passageways like this.

The impressive façade of newer French colonial buildings arcs away from the old medina. The adjacent plazas contain formidable bank buildings and a grand theatre. You wouldn’t think it now, but Constantine could also be considered the City of Malaria, for here in 1880 a French doctor made his Nobel-prize winning discovery of the disease’s cause.

This stunning view of the flowing landscape and rocky walls supporting Constantine is at a French memorial arch perched on another rocky outcrop. Though it still lists the hundreds of Constantine residents of all faiths who died in World War I while fighting for France, it’s informally repurposed as a memorial to the fighters for independence against France.

This is the interior of the Abdel Kader mosque, the largest and newest in the city, as massive as this open space implies. Most older mosques are closed to non-Muslims. We were allowed to marvel at this one, though Nancy was asked to wear a scarf and robe to enter. Unlike in older mosques, women have exclusive access to an equally large space for prayer, socializing, and study. Prayer times are posted in LCD lights on the wall.

In a narrow array of lanes tucked below the hotel district, hundreds of craftsmen painstakingly pound and etch copper by hand to make enormous serving pieces and decorative items.

We found one young artisan that also made copper teaspoons, perfect for Nancy’s international spoon collection. He happily personalized it in a few minutes, carving Constantine ALG on the back, with two hearts.

Beyond Constantine: Other Northern Cities

During our visit, we stayed in two other towns in the northern part of Algeria while touring the region: Setif and Batna. They aren’t really “touristic” in the dramatic way of Constantine, for there are few historical sites or spectacles within them, but they were a pleasure to see.

Pleasant boulevards and shopping districts cross near Setif’s magnificent museum and large shopping mall. This is the anomalous highlight on one street, an 1898 French statue of a naked nymph at the site of a natural spring. Toss a coin, we’re told, and you will return to Setif.

Also, in the center city of Setif, a large formal park invites residents all day and into the evening, particularly at the easy-going amusement center connected to it. We rode the modestly thrilling roller coaster.

Batna is renowned for its broad plazas and extensive spice market. If you can’t find it there, you don’t really want it. But it’s also known for its many tea spots, whether cafe-like or informal stalls like this one, with added entertainment value. The tea is very intensely strong, so don’t skip the sweetener.

The Batna theatre anchors this end of a long pedestrian plaza that entices residents as well as visitors, even in cold weather.

In each of these towns, we enjoyed something fundamental within Algeria today, the appealing urban lifestyle of its people.

The post Constantine: City of Bridges first appeared on Adventurephiles. (To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Algeria, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.)

Algeria is a large country which seems at first divided into two zones, a coastal landscape and vast desert. We found that Algeria offered much more diverse ecologies and terrain than this simple division.

In this post, we share our pleasure in three very different natural landscapes – limestone hills in the northwest, high plains and thermal waters at the Aures Mountains, and the canyonland of the Rhouffi Valley.

For more on coastal Algeria, click here. For more on desert and oases, see our articles about Timimoun and Ghardaia.

Limestone hills and caves of Tlemcen

We discovered a natural treasure in the forests of Tlemcen National Park near the city that was once a stronghold of Muslim empires before the Ottomans and an important religious center.

Here, amid a striking landscape of limestone hills and sandstone canyons, numerous caves wind deep underground. We were told that Beni Add Ain-Fezza, the one we visited, is the second longest in the world, meandering all the way to Morocco about 60 kilometers away.

Other stories talk about smuggling goods across the borders, or refuges for freedom fighters against the French. We could not confirm any of these tales, but someone did decide to permanently block passages deep within.

Fortunately, visitors can still access the colorful caverns closer to the entrance.

Below are some views of the limestone landscape near the caves.

The lighting in the cave was well done, but these (and the other interior above) show the actual colors in the cave formations as revealed by the lights.

Organ pipes? Melted candles? These formations are often seen in limestone caves, but always dazzle us.

One of the most unusual formations we have ever seen, the massive end of a fallen stalagmite

One uses a lot of imagination while observing cave formations. Under a canopy of limestone icicles, the solitary statue looked like an Easter Island moai to us.

This year-round spring spills into a pool surrounded by creamy red rocks.

This impressive sandstone wall looms over the delicate waterfall.

Near the cave, an old railway line still traverses the red sandstone cavern above the waterfall. The bridge was made by the Eiffel of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Only hikers use it now while enjoying the trails of the park, but it ought to be a more accessible local attraction in the future.

Hot Springs in the High Plains, Aurès Mountains

In this beautiful land of productive valleys and sheep farming within northeastern Algeria, one can hardly turn around without finding the remains of Roman cities. Those are the attraction for most western tourists, but we discovered a natural delight just as appealing. The Hammam Chellala thermal waters at Guelma create colorful ripples and icicles and steps as they spill over a plateau, a dazzling site adjacent to soothing baths using the same water. But we were so unusual a visitor that the local manager wanted to do a video interview with us for our feelings about the site. We gave it a five-star review.

Aures Mountain valley

We’re very exuberant about seeing the calcified drippings of the hot springs cascade.

Hot steamy rivulets pass through the whitened plateau over the cascade. As they head to the rear, they form large steaming pools which spill slowly over the edge.

We almost missed this extraordinary display of sulfurous steppes. Several people climbed that narrow walkway between the hot flows.

A flow of calcified stone from the upper right on the plateau demurely drapes the colorful curtain wall. That’s a peak of the Aurès Mountains in the distance at the left.

Algerian visitors enjoy the same colorful features we did, but also tend to follow a local ritual. As this man is doing, they boil eggs in one of the accessible sulfur hot pots, often purchased from the egg seller nearby, and then eat them together. This man’s family noticed our interest in the cooking and offered us one of their eggs, along with many smiles and greetings. It was tasty. Perhaps they also appreciated how concerned we were about the son’s zeal for lunging at the waters, which boil at 98 degrees C (208 F) at the surface.

An oddity…two hot pots at the surface show very different coloration. Below on the right is an old mound that was once actively spurting waters.

People wandered all over the hillside and plateau of the sulfur cascade, as the ghostly figure at the top suggests. Many skittered down a channel to see this feature. The whole formation seemed to result from a bit of clutter added by staff, but the impact on visitors justified the intervention. It does show well various calcified formations. And a mist of water droplets drips down engagingly from the cavern on the right.

View of the cascade from one side with a cloudburst of sulfurous mist at the top plateau.

Canyonland

The Rhouffi Valley is a richly varied desert landscape amid the grandeur of a mountainous region. In a day’s trip along its length, we oohed and aahed over its oases, the range of peaks pushed upwards by subterranean forces, its deep gorges, and its fade into sand dunes. At the heart of the valley, eons of geological change have left a vivid sandstone gorge to explore, Les Balcons, sadly now abandoned by its long-time cave-dwelling community.

A typical landscape here, with the desert edged by metamorphic mountains whose old layers have been shoved vertically into dramatic striations.

A broad valley en route to the Rhouffi Canyon community still flourishes with a palm tree oasis. We thought it elegantly graced by the bulbous mountains on the far side.

More desert and mountains in the Rhouffi Valley. Confused at first because signage along the way said ‘Ghoufi’ valley, we soon realized that was just another option for transliterating the name in English.

This mountain pass has quite a history to it, beyond its impressive gateway. It was a passage used by Roman legions in the 2^nd century AD, and marked for future travelers with a Latin declaration carved into the rock. It’s also the site of a monument honoring those native Algerians who initiated the revolution for independence on 1 November 1954 by attacking French settlers here.

El Kantara means ‘the bridge’ in Arabic. And that’s the apt name of this small river crossing within a narrow pass carved by the menacing mountains around it. Those peaks rise up to 120 meters (400 feet) high, but seem to be splintering along their seams. The bridge spans eras as well. Long an important transit point for trading caravans, the bridge dates from the Roman occupation of 2000 years ago, but was rebuilt in 1862 by French forces under Napoleon III. A more modern railway cuts through the rocky pass now, above the bridge.

We are atop the pathway leading below toward the canyon homes of the Rhouffi cave dwellers, the cultural highlight of the valley. Along this ridge you can reach some of the brick structures of that old community, now abandoned. The valley floor, where the mosque sits, is 150 meters below (500 feet). We checked that dimension during our walk down and back up. They’re a bit hard to see, but on the far wall you can perhaps detect a number of entrances to the community’s caverns and brick houses. They’re just above the tree line at the edge of the sandstone rock, on surprisingly wide ledges some 75 meters up.

Several Algerian visitors asked us, “So how does this compare to your Grand Canyon?” We had to explain that the valley floor here was just 150 meters deep (500 feet), while the US canyon was 10 times as deep. But, to us, the statistics didn’t subtract from the beauty and history of the place.

This is the valley floor where a community occupied cave dwellings and brick structures for four hundred years. People lived on ledges facing this sweeping cliff and above the mosque to the right. Since 1970, the community has gone. Their life-giving palms were burned in sectarian conflict and the water flow that sustained their valley dried up.

The cave dwelling people lived on those ledges between the sandstone layers and the tree-dotted area. The largest structure there, however, was reportedly an Intercontinental Hotel from the mid-20^th century, detectable across the canyon in the photo below. It was a rugged 5-star experience, with brick caverns reachable only by foot or donkey and shared bathrooms. We climbed the 75 meters (250 feet) up from the valley floor to see what remained: walls of stone and brick, but not much else.

So we can confirm that the views along the canyon were incomparable. The Rhouffi cave-dwelling community – and those who dared to stay at the Intercontinental Hotel – enjoyed this panorama.

As we drove away from the cave-dwellers’ canyon, the gorge narrowed and rose toward us, but the afternoon colors seemed even more spectacular.

The post Natural diversity in Algeria first appeared on Adventurephiles. (To enlarge any picture above, click on it. Also, for more pictures from Algeria, CLICK HERE to view the slideshow at the end of the itinerary page.)

Oran and Bejaia showed very differently, with one “turning its back on the sea” in the words of Albert Camus, and the other thoroughly directed toward it. Annaba, the third, held special significance for us as the home of the religious philosopher St. Augustine (Click here to read that post).

Oran

To us, Oran, a major shipping port and commercial center, seemed to share characteristics with Marseille just across the Mediterranean: a city mingling the glamor of wealth with the roughness of a port city. It’s an odd landscape, with the city built high above the water on bluffs. As a result, the French-Algerian writer Albert Camus, whose masterpiece The Plague is set in Oran, felt that the city had relinquished its shoreline to commercialism and industrial activity, in effect turning its back on the sea. Hardly its best promoter, he also called the city the capital of boredom. To him, however, Oran represented the modern world, with all its materialism, pettiness, fearfulness, and moral failings, but ultimately also the potential for resilience, courage, and love. During our stay, we observed Oran’s modern flaws, but experienced plenty of its embrace.

The drive to Oran from Algiers is not so long, maybe four to five hours. But our agent here suggested we take the train, for a local cultural and visual experience. The recently built train car was quite comfortable and clean, though we needed to endure some very rambunctious children for most of the trip. Other Algerians brought food along and picnicked at their seats; we fit right in, as we brought some bread, cheese and fruit for the same reason. As for the visual experience, that was not so fine. The Saharan dust seemed to have permanently coated the windows, so we could see very little outside unless we peered through the exit doors. When we could see the passing landscape, the gentle hills, farmland, and stations were quite attractive.

One other reason to take the Algiers to Oran train is the opportunity to see Oran’s neo-Moorish Gare-Centrale from 1913. It imitates mosque design and alludes to all three Abrahamic religions inside, though Islamic motifs dominate the halls and stained glass windows.