Billion Dollar beaches

Thursday being our weekend, Del and I hired a driver -- for about $11 an hour -- and had ourselves taken about 42 kilometers out of Algiers to Zeralda on the sea.

This was not what we expected but very interesting. The entire area around here is under construction. We found that that a Dubai sheik has invested some $22 billion into this area and the cranes and construction crews are everywhere. Villas, condos, hotels and water slide parks are being erected all at one time. While we felt we were at a construction site, in a few years, this place will compete with Miami. The model is taken from the Mediterranean coast just on the other side in Europe and plainly there's a bid here to attract European vacationers in the future.

But for now, the beach belong to locals. And it is very odd. The place is full of young people, of course, and they were strolling by the water and necking along the sea walls as any other beach. And the guys were in shorts and bare chested, of course. But nearly all the girls and women except for a few westerners like me were in scarves and long robes. Some in black robes. Well I don't know how they stand it. Not just the sexism, the heat.