04.03.10:

The town of El Kala was undoubtedly a rather pleasant one, a sleepy fishing village that would have gone down will with the tourists before the civil war of the 1990s that ripped Algeria apart and set the tourists packing, presumably for Morocco instead.

In the centre is a dilapidated old cathedral, beautiful in it’s worn, craggy features and down in the water are hundreds of little wooden fishing boats, much as it would have been in the past and yet still is today. I filmed some kids playing football (they demanded!) in the streets and grabbed myself a cup of coffee before jumping a taxi back to the border. No Algerian Security Services this time, just a clear run back to Tunisia.

A boat would be leaving from Tunis for Italy at 8pm tonight and it had my name on it.

At the border I was thankful that my English-speaking friend wasn’t there, it would have been just too awkward to explain that I couldn’t stay in his country any longer, he was so keen for me to come in, stay for a while and have a great time. In the shared taxi back down the mountain to Tabarka in Tunisia I got chatting with a lovely guy called Achraf who worked in Algeria and told me that I had really missed out not seeing Annaba – apparently, nothing new had been built there since the 1950s. Sounds like my idea of heaven. Could you imagine a concrete-less town? Hell, I’ve been around the world and (I-I-I-) I can’t find my unmarred city.

But that will have to be an adventure for another day. By the afternoon I was back in Tunis. I met up with Claire, giving her a towel I bought to say sorry for flooding her flat. We then went on a most excellent adventure in search of food and beer. After saying my goodbyes, I headed back to Dja’s place, catching him when he finished work to say ta-ra and grab my backpack.

A taxi to the port and a purchased ticket saw me doing all I needed to do to get on with The Odyssey – I was FINALLY heading back to Istanbul after a completely unwelcome, immensely costly and time-consuming back-track.

Well it’s taken me the best part of a year, but I’ve done it, I visited every African nation it is possible to visit overland. Eritrea will have to wait until I manage to find some way to get there on a boat, but for now I’m done with in this infernal, infuriating place.