In the past two weeks my feet have taken my imagination past dilapidated seaside resorts filled with rough, chiseled faces whose eyes hint at evil, past lonely old French cemeteries with large clumps of unmarked graves and--a testimony to a time when the French and the Algerians were bitter foes--no gravestones left intact, past tiny villages of mud and barefooted childen crowded around water wells, past stooped-back women with everything from babies to firewood on their backs, past dark-faced men whose twitching eyes speak of the unspent energy burning inside them. Surely I couldn't have picked a longer and more rugged way to cross north Algeria than its coastline.

I know my body has suffered greatly, because of the times I have been burnt, frozen, and soaked in the past 26 days and 550 miles that have passed since I resumed my worldwalk. But I don't really care so much about all that, for this is the stuff of which realadventure is made. This is learning in the best way, in a classroom that knows no limits save those of my imagination.

Unlike the coastlines of places such as the USA and Spain, that of Algeria is virtually undeveloped and sparsely populated. Here nature still rules mightily, and the twisting narrow roads have led me--at one time or another--through the like of Nepal, the Pacific Northwest, Norway, China, Central America, and even Ireland. All that on just a tiny piece of African coast! Just think of how many other natural jewels must exist on this continent. I suspect there are more than enough to fill any explorer's, or writer's, or dreamer's treasure chest.

For me, the lands of Homer's Ulysses, Robert Louis Stevenson's Robinson Crusoe, Frederick Forsyth's soldier mercenaries, and James Michener's hero-warriors are no longer fiction but a part of my everyday life. They have gone from being words in a book to being the dirt under my nails, the rain soaked into my sleeping bag, and the reason for the blisters on my toes and the cold in my sinuses.

...spooky, vine-covered mansions of rich Europeans who tried, but failed, to exploit the fertile valleys and lowlands tucked between sandy beaches and sudden mountain ranges. Those former fortresses of stone and silk are now but the playgrounds of snakes and migratory songbirds...long-haired billy goats scampering up steep hills, their little girl herders scolding those goats that that can't resist taking an extra nibble...the moanful wailing of the Koran over the loudspeakers of some faraway mosque in the cold darkness of a clouded dawn...

What a shame, in my opinion, that so many people will settle for a world of words or video images, rather than take the time and effort to see and feel the real thing.

Exploring North Africa has been anything but a picnic. In fact, it's been one daily challenge after another. Everything here is so different. It's taken me nearly this long to adjust to the land and the people. But the bags under my eyes, my peeling nose, the rips and dirt in my gear and clothing have been worth it. For isn't anything that's really worth having usually gotten only after much effort? Africa is proving that the pursuit of firsthand knowledge isn't the easiest thing in the world...but when you do find it, it is usually worth every sacrifice that had to be made.

Steven