Algeria’s Shifting Sands

• Five off-the-radar UNESCO Sites: Roman ruins of Djémela, Casbah of Algiers, Timgad, M’Zab Valley, and Tipasa
• Travel Algeria’s Mediterranean coast, through the high Tell Atlas Mountains, and into the heart of the vast Sahara Desert
• Insider Algeria tour experiences, including a Tuareg cooking demonstration and a conversation with an Imam in Constantine
• Stunning architecture styled by a colorful history of Roman, French, Moorish, Spanish, and Islamic influences
• Optional extension to explore the cultures, landscapes, and traditional villages of Tunisia

Algerian novelist Assia Djebar called her country “a dream of sand.” The sweeping Sahara Desert dominates the broad North African nation, but conceptually it is just a small piece of all that can be discovered here. With a turbulent past of conflict and colonialism, a crossroads of cultures is experienced on this exploratory Algeria trip.

The whitewashed walls and winding streets of the Casbah of Algiers introduce Algeria’s capital city, while Phoenician, Roman, and Byzantine ruins in Tipasa unravel bits of the complicated past. Travel along the Mediterranean coast to Spanish-influenced Oran. Head into the mountains to visit Berber villages, delve into Roman archaeology, and roam the ancient cliffside town of Constantine. Desert oases like El Oued skirt the edge of the Sahara, and between dunes the isolated Mzabite people practice a way of life nearly unchanged since the 11th century. In the heart of the Sahara, meet a camel herder and dine in a desert grove of date palms at Timimoun. Return to Algiers with a more complete picture of the ways Algeria has changed throughout the centuries.