JOURNEY TO NOSTOS

Week 20 — Algiers to Oran

Along the Mauretanian coast, where Rome builds on older shorelines

Route
Algiers → Cherchell (Caesarea Mauretaniae) → Mostaganem → Oran
(Optional inland breath: Tlemcen)

Endpoint: Oran
(Sets up the final approach toward Morocco’s north coast and the Pillars of Heracles.)

7 days • 2 bases • westward run • restraint week

At a glance

Bases
Mostaganem (3) • Oran (4)

Hellenic anchors

Caesarea Mauretaniae (Greek substrata beneath Roman form) • coastal polis-to-port logic • Hellenic memory carried by names and routes

How to use this week

This week is a deliberate westward glide, not a series of conquests.
Enter at Algiers, or enter at Cherchell if you’re already west of the capital. The emphasis is on one major ancient stop, repeated sea-walks, and arriving Oran with energy intact.

Prologue — The Western Drift

After capitals, the coast often looks ordinary.
That ordinariness is the point.

Between Algiers and Oran the Mediterranean becomes a working seam again: agriculture behind, ports in front, small cities balancing survival and trade. Hellenic traces do not announce themselves loudly here. They persist in the shape of settlement, in harbour logic, in the old habit of building where land and sea can speak to each other without shouting.

Rome thickens what came before.
But the coastline’s intelligence is older than Rome.

Route logic

Short drives • repeat bases • one ancient commitment • long sit-time baked in

Day by day

Day 1 — Algiers (closing posture)

Overnight: Algiers

Focus
Leave the capital cleanly.

Hellenic layer
The Hellenic world here is mostly inheritance: route, harbour logic, coastal exchange.

Do one thing properly
One final sea-front walk at dusk.
Stop early.

Day 2 — Algiers → Cherchell (Caesarea Mauretaniae) → Mostaganem

Overnight: Mostaganem

Focus
One ancient pause, then onward.

Hellenic layer
Cherchell’s coastal-city form carries older Mediterranean habits even as Rome monumentalises them.

Do one thing properly
Cherchell: one contained circuit only—museum/ruins OR harbour edge, not both.
Arrive Mostaganem with daylight and walk the waterfront.

Day 3 — Mostaganem (slow coast day)

Overnight: Mostaganem

Focus
Working-port rhythm.

Hellenic layer
The Greek lesson here is not “ruins” but repeat life—net mending, markets, harbour timing.

Do one thing properly
One long sea-edge walk.
One café hour that runs long on purpose.

Day 4 — Mostaganem → Oran (arrival day)

Overnight: Oran

Focus
Arrive without extracting.

Hellenic layer
Oran sits where the west begins to feel like a threshold again—winds, headlands, the sense of narrowing options.

Do one thing properly
Harbour orientation loop.
No museums.

Day 5 — Oran (no driving)

Overnight: Oran

Focus
Walk the city into your body.

Hellenic layer
Coastal cities are read by their edges: fort line above, sea line below—two views, one settlement.

Do one thing properly
Morning hill viewpoint.
Late-day corniche walk.

Day 6 — Oran: the “two views” day

Overnight: Oran

Focus
Scale and seam.

Hellenic layer
The Mediterranean as boundary-maker: the same principle that begins at the Pillars returns here as an approaching thought.

Do one thing properly
Repeat one walk from Day 5 at a different hour.
Let repetition do the work.

Day 7 — Oran (handoff day)

Overnight: Oran (or short reposition east/west depending on next week)

Focus
Prepare for Morocco and the strait.

Hellenic layer
Westward movement as cultural method: the Greek habit of reading coasts as chains of possibility.

Do one thing properly
Market hour.
Final sea-edge sit.
Early night.

Navigation

← Previous Week — Algiers (and Tipasa / central coast)
Next Week → Oran to Tangier
Back to North Africa — Weeks 15–20

Optional: the long-form read

In the manuscript, this week becomes a quiet study of how Hellenic coastal intelligence survives without Greek dominance—in harbour shapes, repeated labour, and the human scale of a sea-edge life. (Paid)