Leaving Alger - overheating bike and customs

The hotel was nice enough about our money problems, and after a friendly farewell, we headed towards the port.
Alas, the traffic was terrible, and we seemed to have messed up with the road works via the smaller roads rather than the highway as recommended, so ended up more or less through town.
Could not even pass by the sides of the cars, cause they already were 3 wide on a 2 lane road.
It was nice and warm, and the termperature was rising....air cooled engine.
By the time my bike hit the max mark, I was getting worried, stopping the engine whenever I could. During start, there was a terrible metalic sound just prior to running normally, like knocking, so stopped doing that. We soon hit some open stretch and I got it cooled a bit again. All the time I was wondering how the coppers were doing this, as they are running with the same engine.

Police was heavily present, but in the capital, it was more to make things go smooth and we got to the Ferry Port entry point, where organization was less evident. Did not want to stand in line by the side of a busy through road, and Andre did the standard bike manouvre. Some police objected, others waved us to come on in and pass the security checks. The following first bits were fine, filling out the standard forms and standing in line.
A new booth opened up and we quickly got to the front and moved on to customs....
Anything to declare?  No no, nothing...and after a quick open of the luggage for appearance's sake, another chap came by with a funny handheld device with an antenna. No issues with the currency we had worried about

It pointed to my home farmacy kit and they asked if we had any drugs or explosives. Andre was very impressed with the device but I was more sceptical. How to detect a chemical with a radio signal with such a small (mobile phone size) device?

Anyway, they did make some more enquiries and we were let through. A customs officer who had chatted to us about soccer, and our trip, put us to the side so we did not need the line, and once the vessel was empty and ready to load, we got pushed into the cue again in the front.
Some police objected, but others waved us through, onto the vessel and quickly parked our bikes and took the basic luggage off.
Ran off to our cabin, now with a window!!
And then to the bar. We both argued for the duration of the trip if this was the same vessel or not.

Leaving a few hours late was fine, we were comfy and seeing the port do it's work from closeby was entertaining.



We saw the Tugboats were a standard Damen production line model and Hollands Glorie filled us with pride.

Quickly met some other Algerians, including one granny who had lived in Rotterdam and got to the bar for a few drinks.
What amazed me is that they are quite negative about their own country and happy to stay abroad. Overall, pretty strong characters, but I guess those would be the ones keen to leave the country.

Supposedly Alger was run by the Turks for over 5 centuries, so that and it's large city size may explain it's different character to the rest of the country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algiers