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Algeria - tourism -- Places --

Algeria

After having been neglected during many years, Algeria destination has experienced a renewed interest. This evolution has been marked by the appearance of new products beside the traditional stays of discovery and relaxation, while the Algerian government is setting up a strategy of development for tourism by the year 2015. Algeria has many assets. On the geographical level, four great types of relief following each other from the north to the south of the territory. Alongside the Mediterranean sea, there is a coast bordered by beaches and coves, prolonged inside by the plain of Tell and its valleys where is concentrated the main part of the arable lands and the principal major cities like Algiers, Oran, and Constantine... there are two East-West directed mountainous chains: the Tellian Atlas formed by the mounts of Tlemcen, Ouarsenis, Titteri, Djurdjura, Babor, Bibans and Edough which culminates in Lalla Khadidja (2, 308m), and the Saharian Atlas with the solid mass of Aures culminating with the mount of Chelia (2, 328m). In the middle of the Atlas, a zone of semi-desert high plateaus, field of the esparto grass and of breeding and whose profile of a basin explains the presence of shotts (salted lakes) up to 40 meters below sea level, the shott Melhrir. There is also the Sahara, its rock plateaus, its arid plains, its sand areas, the great Western erg, the great Eastern erg and its oases like Zibans, the valley of M’Zab, Touat, and Gourara... Finally in the extreme south, Hoggar, there is a succession of high plateaus spread out in steps, dominated in the centre by surprising relief and the Tahat mount, with 3 003 m which remains the highest summit of the country, and where there are some salted lakes like shott Ech-Chergui and shott el Hodna... To these natural charms is added an archaeological inheritance of a great value.