Friday, February 26, 2010

Ça Gère l'Étagère!




And now, Tipaza. A small town 70km from Algiers along the coast, known for ruins from the Roman period. Back in ye olde times it was a fairly extensive port town, crashing down the hills to the sea. The site, the ruins still there at Tipaza, was much larger and more beautiful than I expected. Here are some photos:




























And just a short skip from Tipaza is the Mausoleum of the Mauritanian, also called The Tomb of the Christian. No one knows when it was built or why. It is a big circular pyramid. We climbed to the top of it, of course.









That last picture features Ahcène crouching, Hilary the woman in the back, Mounira the woman in the front, and of course myself, the range of mountains off to the left. They too are Glycinards. It was a great day of sight-seeing in Algeria, completely unexpected.

Then some asshole rear-ended us at a stop sign. As it was a rental car and this is Algeria, this was not what you would think of as routine. Turns out the guy's insurance somehow doesn't cover accidents, or some such thing. So we had to have him follow us back to Algiers to the rental agency, where they would go over the damage and figure out how he would pay. Ok. What we didn't count on was the dude's old pickup breaking down on the way. After poking around for quite a while in the engine (alas, my Civic training didn't get me very far) we managed to take some identity cards as collateral and went on our way. Sitting in the car behind the broken-down truck:


So five hours and 60km after we got hit we were back home. So I can recommend without hesitation visiting Tipaza, but not renting a car or driving in Algeria. Maybe you can chopper in.

2 comments:

Barb said...

Crummy accident and aftermath, Brock - hope it's all gotten worked out. But - what beautiful sights at Tipaza! Awesome pictures!

Jessica said...

I agree completely, Barb. That water looks positively scrumptious -- to swim in, not to eat.