Hi Tom, I’m really surprised by your experience, because mine was almost the opposite!...
Bike trip in October/November 2024 with a paraglider on the luggage rack. Briançon/Genoa/Tunis/Béjaïa/Algiers/Oran/Marseille. (And 5 days in Kabylie).
I wanted to return to this country I’d traveled through by hitchhiking via Morocco (back when the border between the two countries was open) in November 1991 (a few months before the civil war) and see if I’d still find the incredible welcome I’d received back then. I wasn’t disappointed!
My guiding thread: the Mediterranean, a few contacts with paragliders on the ground, and day-by-day travel. I slept on the beach, in a paragliding school’s storage room, in small hotels where locals go, and especially in these youth hostels that form an incredible network across the whole country. (A remnant of the communist era)
For a price that defies all competition (between 10/15 euros), I sometimes found myself alone with the caretaker in large buildings with a sea view. And when the hostel was closed, someone would call the caretaker to come open it.
I made friends with young students from Béjaïa, with whom I spent three days and stayed in touch.
As well as with an executive who worked in oil and his girlfriend, with whom we toured Algiers before ending up invited to a restaurant, and an offer to stay at their place—which I declined because I’d found a small hotel in the lower Casbah that I particularly liked. I also loved Algiers, the Mediterranean counterpart to Marseille, the only cosmopolitan city in France that hasn’t (yet) been too affected by gentrification.
As for the paragliders, they’d drive me up to the paragliding takeoffs with their clients and bring me beers to the storage room where we’d spend evenings talking about society, politics, and of course the Black Decade, which left its mark on hearts and minds!...
A little advice from an old-school traveler (60 years old): put your phones away, and maybe you’ll be a bit more open and available for encounters... Try to be present with yourself, and you’ll naturally be present for others. I’ve been traveling by hitchhiking, bike, and sailboat for over 40 years and never brought a phone with me. (In fact, in France, I only own an old flip phone.) It forces you to communicate with everyone, like before!
That didn’t stop me from wandering from Turkey to Yemen via Iran (though I’d advise against it now), hanging out in the Stans, biking through West Africa, and crossing the Mediterranean and the Atlantic by sailboat, etc...
Maybe I’m at an advantage because of my job as a mountain guide, the experience of all these years of travel—I’m good at connecting with anyone, from any social class. I tend to avoid my fellow countrymen (Westerners in general, though I still run into them in remote lodges) and try to blend in with the locals. Sitting on a sidewalk chatting for two or three hours, I remember—it was in Morocco, I think—I went back to the same old shopkeeper in some souk three days in a row just to enjoy remaking the world. Pure happiness, and I don’t even remember what he was trying to sell me, or if he did either...
To echo your point, yes, the visa is a hassle to get. I’d asked for a month and a half, and they only gave me a month... You really have to gather all the documents. The hotel reservation photocopies (one is enough) must be legible. I ran into a real gatekeeper at the Grenoble consulate who made me have the hotel reservation resent (which, by the way, I never even stayed at) because the ink wasn’t clear enough! They sent me the same one back, and it worked, but I had to come back the next day.
That said, all of this stems from the terrible relations between France and Algeria. Yes, in the wilaya (department) of Béjaïa, I was escorted by the police, but that didn’t stop me from going out that evening to get a beer (they’d gone back to the barracks) and asking them to put my bike in the trunk of their car while I took off paragliding. They even bought me an orange juice at the landing zone. (I’d struck a deal with them: either they took my bike down and went home quickly to their families, or my bike stayed up the mountain, and I’d have to hike back up to get it, making their day much longer!)
Military, police, and locals were also concerned about my safety in Kabylie, where a guide was kidnapped and murdered (Hervé Gourdel) 10 years ago now. That said, I’ve experienced worse—though after two days, I went into a police station to make a scene and demand explanations, but it didn’t help.
Okay, I’ll stop here—sorry for the long reply! But to sum up: go to Algeria, one of the warmest welcomes I’ve ever experienced (along with the Iranians), and if the regime ever falls, go to Iran.
Cheers. Safe travels.
Phil...
