Hi there fcaeiro - good to meet you again. Glad you got home safe and sound. We got our radios back in Mostaganem. What ferry did you get to go home?

An update for anyone interested - just spent April in Algeria with 3 mates on motorbikes – covered about 7500km in a round trip from London. Here’s our experience…….

VISAs – Applied in UK, France and Australia, straightforward if you follow their instructions. Hotels were booked online to cover the period of our visit

ARRIVAL – Ferry from Marseille to Algiers easy enough – took about 1.5hrs to get on, pushing to the front of each queue ????. Took about 4 hours to get out of Algiers port, mainly down to spending 3hrs trying to get the “TDP”. We did have the work experience lad in our booth though - apparently you can do it online, so worth investigating. Lots of backwards and forwards and bits of paper being stamped but c’est la vie.

INSURANCE – got it before we left port for a nominal sum, but still probably not worth the paper its written on. Driving standards seemed pretty good and better than London!

PEOPLE – lovely people, genuinely friendly, always wanted to know where we were from and what we thought of Algeria, loved to take photos of bikes (they ALWAYS asked permission), never felt we were being ripped off even though we were obviously tourists. Whole place felt very safe and welcoming across the whole country. Once out of Algiers, did not see a lot of women/girls around though – the ones we did interact with tended to be in museums or pharmacies.

COUNTRY – Its big! Fuel not always available where you expect so big tank or spare bladders needed (~400km+ range).Took 4-5 days to get from Algiers to Tam, mainly on the TSH.

ROADS Roads OK but sometimes diversions. Saw about 10-20 young men each day walking northwards on the TSH. Thought the driving standards were great - everyone seemed quite careful. Riding in Europe feels more dangerous to me!

ESCORTS – got as far as El Menaa alone but from there to Tamanrasset we had a gendarme escort doing tag every ~200km – all very friendly and accommodating – OK to stop for photos/ coffee etc. We were allowed to camp a few hundred metres away from the checkpoint if necessary. We met a 4x4 group who’d wanted to camp in the desert and the gendarmes had just camped with them about 200M away! At Tam we’d hired a guide so were let off the gendarme escort but our guide had to report to gendarmes at most towns/ checkpoints. All slightly inconvenient but didn’t really stop us doing most of what we wanted. On our way back we were “solo” again once north of Hassi Ben Massoud

INFRASTRUCTURE – very little in the way of “tourist” infrastructure; gas great at 20p/litre! Food and hotels cheap – /wine available occasionally if you ask the right person! We got local Mobilis SIMS for our phones for ~50 Euro for unlimited data - pretty good coverage considering size of the country.

OVERALL – Great country, wonderful people and scenery but BIG – don’t be scared to visit and don't expect too much in the way of tourist infrastructure (which is great, right!!). We never felt uncomfortable anywhere (except for the odd bout of food poisoning!). Everyone was great, helpful and even authorities reasonably accommodating; however do be prepared to put up with escorts if you go south. People say you can try to go round checkpoints etc but I reckon it would be quite difficult and you WILL get found out at some point when a random patrol stops you and asks where your guide is, which could lead to difficulties.

So visit highly recommended but be prepared to go with the flow..........