Two millennia ago, the Roman army marched into the highlands of what is now northeast Algeria and built a garrison they called Cuicul to advance their empire’s colonization of North Africa. The soldiers attracted native Berbers who traded woolen and leather goods with the garrison. Gentle slopes also bore a thriving wheat and olive trade. Cuicul prospered and grew.

Yet when we traveled to Cuicul in a police motorcade 2,000 years later, hardship was the biggest signpost. As our three coaches rumbled nonstop four hours from the port city of Bejaia, along the Mediterranean coastline, up a steep gorge, through an eight-mile tunnel, across vast plains and through tiny villages in the Atlas Mountains, we saw fields that lay fallow from drought and the overgrazing of sheep. Young men loitered, jobless, in large numbers outside tiny roadside shops.

And there was danger here. Internecine bloodshed claimed up to 200,000 lives across Algeria in the 1990s, when Islamic extremists massacred entire villages and the military-controlled government abducted thousands of suspects. Large-scale violence has ebbed, but remote areas around Cuicul remain a stronghold of Al Qaeda-linked militant fundamentalists, and attacks are common.

Three white police minivans flashed their lights and blared their sirens as we rolled past shepherds in sparse pastures, peasants in mule-drawn carts and women in concealing Muslim niqab veils. Before we left the city, a protective retinue with rifles and walkie-talkies blocked intersections and waved us through. The motorcade drew quizzical, if not concerned, looks, occasional gestures of welcome and far fewer distasteful alternatives.

If travel is as much about the journey as the destination, then the road to ancient Roman ruins like Cuicul, now known as Djemila, is a fitting beginning for this story of a remarkable UCLA Alumni Association–sponsored trip to Algeria and Tunisia.

Don’t Rock the Kasbah

Like many in North Africa’s dizzying series of invaders — from the Phoenicians in 1000 B.C. through the Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks, French and others — we arrived by ship. Our floating safe house was Corinthian II, a 297-foot “mega yacht” with room for 114 guests, including 17 from UCLA Alumni Travel. Departing from Palermo, Sicily, on Nov. 9, the comfortably appointed vessel, blessed with an attentive staff and fine food, steamed us to eight ports in Tunisia and Algeria.

And, as with many other Association adventures, our trip into history was illuminated by academic star power. Bestselling author and UCLA Professor of Geography Jared Diamond, who studies the evolution of civilizations, and Carleton College Professor of Classics Nancy Wilkie, past president of the Archaeological Institute of America, were also with us in North Africa.

In one of his three lectures aboard Corinthian II, Diamond discussed Algeria’s longstanding over-reliance on vast oil and gas reserves, which has driven up wages, prevented investment elsewhere and made the country more susceptible to corruption and civil strife. “It’s the curse of natural resources,” he told the group.

This type of travel demands a certain surrender — to the security arrangements of host nations, to the schedule set by the tour director, to the insight of guides whose voices were amplified in the earpieces we wore, and to the realities of guided, group travel, which allows limited opportunity for lingering and unscheduled roaming. (Many of us sought out unscripted moments with guides, museum docents and shop clerks — unsurprising for a learned group dominated by veteran travelers. “We don’t do once-over-lightlies,” said Ted Stern ’55, a retired real estate investment executive from Montecito, traveling with his wife, Kay Stern ’61, a retired public relations executive.)

Travelers also surrendered to a diplomatic spat between the U.S. and Libyan governments. The original itinerary included Libya, home to well-known ancient Roman cities such as Leptis Magna, but officials withheld visas in retaliation for the U.S. turning back 100 Libyan professionals. The travel company warned us this might happen and added excursions in Tunisia.

Complicating matters was the heavy security in Algeria, which still roils from the aftereffects of its civil war. Wherever we went, the Algerian government insisted on a police motorcade and, when on foot, armed guards. Still, the omnipresence of uniformed guards with rifles slung across their backs left an odd aftertaste.

We were refused access to the Kasbah in Algiers, a disappointment to many but consistent with U.S. State Department recommendations. At one point, a mother and daughter unaffiliated with UCLA stomped away from our group on the steps of the main post office in Algiers, shouting about being held prisoner as guides gave chase.

“It’s kind of sinister, all the police watching us,” said Eleanor Moore ’53, of Piedmont. “It kind of makes you wonder what would happen if they weren’t here.” Others on our journey felt the tight security served to attract, more than deter, violence. “It didn’t make me feel safe,” Kay Stern said.

The armed escorts underscored the eagerness of Algerian officials to reestablish tourism after years of unrest. “I consider you pioneers, coming to our country,” said one of our guides, Said Chitour, a journalist in his early 40s.

Shortly after we left the country, in fact, the Salafist Group for Call and Combat — which grew out of that war — claimed responsibility for an attack on two buses carrying employees of an affiliate of U.S. conglomerate Halliburton. The Algerian driver was killed and nine people were injured when assailants threw a bomb and shot at vehicles on a highway connecting Algiers and Tipasa, where we had passed just weeks before to reach seaside Roman ruins. And in February, the group, since renamed Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb, staged several bomb attacks targeting police east of Algiers that killed six people and wounded more than a dozen.

In the Footsteps of Rome

Besides the disconcerting armed presence, we faced a daunting schedule. Dawn wake-up calls, all-day excursions and late-evening returns were common, leaving little time for dawdling. The next day, the ship would deposit us at another port and we would repeat the drill. “This is a real test of endurance,” said Walnut Creek, Calif., retiree Sally Adams (a Berkeley grad traveling in UC-tandem with Moore) wearily but cheerfully at one breakfast.

But our perseverance was well-rewarded by a glimpse of Rome’s remnants in North Africa. Buses delivered us to ancient Roman cities, whose well-preserved ruins offered glimpses at the ingenuity, artistry and ostentation of that ancient empire’s colonists. Most sites included the civic and public structures typical of prosperous Roman settlements of the second and third centuries: theaters with pitch-perfect acoustics; baths and fountains whose water was sometimes conveyed from faraway springs; forums adorned with marble statuary and commemorative tablets carved in Latin; and sturdy temples with columned porticos and pitched roofs.

In Dougga, Tunisia, we watched the Temple of Saturn turn electric shades of orange with the sinking sun, as sheep grazed among the ruins and the Islamic call to prayers rose from a nearby mosque. Even the elderly among us, some with hiking sticks, made a point to climb the steps of a 3,500-capacity theater to gain a better view of the verdant valley below. “The Romans knew where to build,” said Eduardo Rubenstein, an anesthesiologist on the faculty of UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine.

Many of us ascended three stories of exceptionally steep stairs in the amphitheater at El Djem, Tunisia, to gain a bird’s-eye view of the structure that rises abruptly from a plain dominated by olive orchards. As pigeons fluttered in the ramparts, we imagined 40,000 spectators screaming for blood as gladiators fought for their lives against lions, leopards and each other in a stadium almost as big as Rome’s Colosseum.

When not breathless from climbing, we were mesmerized by breathtaking mosaics. Amid the colonnaded courtyards of Bulla Regia, Tunisa — the only place in the world where visitors find ancient Roman villas with below-ground floors built to ward off the heat — a freelance docent sprinkled water on the ground to remove dust and reveal vibrantly colored mosaics.

Most of the hundreds of mosaics we viewed were recovered from ancient sites and hung on museum walls — most notably at the Bardo Museum, which houses the world’s largest collection in Tunis, Tunisia’s capital. Some measured more than 30 feet on each side — thousands of naturally colored tiles no bigger than a fingernail pieced together in fabulously detailed depictions of harvests, hunts, chariot races and gladiator games. Gods and goddesses also figured prominently, especially Neptune, god of the sea, in scenes reflecting maritime bounty. Many travelers were stunned and slack-jawed by their beauty. “You just want to applaud,” said John Keffer, an entrepreneur and business executive from Maine who has funded UCLA professorships.

There and Back Again

Cuicul/Djemila was especially moving. Hard-eyed soldiers with rifles and walkie-talkies blocked intersections and waved us through as we left the city. Costumed attendants served hot tea and sticky baklava on the bumpy bus ride. At Cuicul, small drum-and-ney (ancient flute) corps played folk music as we stepped off the coaches. After we traipsed the ruins, servers presented an elaborate feast featuring whole roasted lamb and couscous in a traditional kheima tent setting, with large pillows ringing low tables. When the advance team ran out of colorful rugs to create the tent, a local mosque lent extras. Even local boys rolling in the grass near the ruins paused to smile and ham for our cameras.

The golden hills offered a bucolic backdrop, and the sloping site provided perspective on an ancient 100-acre city that once had approximately 12,000 residents. Most grandiose among its structures was the Triumphal Arch of Caracalla, completed in 216 and dedicated to the emperor, towering over a crossroads in decorative splendor. In Cuicul’s marketplace, we saw holes carved in rock walls that once held the poles of measuring scales, cavities in tables that vendors used to measure grains.

Says Alvin Markovitz, who served a hematology internship at UCLA, “This takes some of the sting out of missing Libya.”