Algeria

Algeria - officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria is a country in North Africa, and the second largest country on the African continent, Sudan being the largest. It is bordered by Tunisia in the North-East, Libya in the East, Niger in the South-East, Mali and Mauritania in the South-West, and Morocco as well as a few kilometers of its annexed territory, Western Sahara, in the west. Constitutionally, it is defined as an Islamic, Arab, and Amazigh (Berber) country.

Politics - The head of state is the President of the Republic, who is elected to a 5-year term, renewable once. Algeria has universal suffrage. The President is the head of the Council of Ministers and of the High Security Council. He appoints the Prime Minister who is also the head of government. The Prime Minister appoints the Council of Ministers.
The Algerian parliament is bicameral, consisting of a lower chamber, the National People's Assembly (APN), with 380 members and an upper chamber, the Council of Nation, with 144 members. The APN is elected every 5 years.

Geography - Most of the coastal area is hilly, sometimes even mountainous, and there are few good harbors. The area just south of the coast, known as the Tell, is fertile. Further south is the Atlas mountain range and the Sahara desert. Algiers, Oran and Constantine are the main cities. Algeria's climate is arid and hot, although the coastal climate is mild, and the winters in the mountainous areas can be severe. Algeria is prone to sirocco, a hot dust- and sand-laden wind especially common in summer.

Language - Algeria's largest and official language, Arabic, is spoken natively in dialectal form ("Darja") by some 80% of the population, and, as in the entire Arab world, used in the Modern Standard Arabic variant in the media and on official occasions. Some 20% of the population, identified as Berbers or Imazighen, are native speakers not of Arabic, but of some dialect of Tamazight. Many Algerians are however fluent in both languages to some degree. Arabic remains Algeria's only official language, although Tamazight has recently been recognized as a national language alongside it. The Ethnologue counts 18 living languages within Algeria, splitting both Arabic and Tamazight into several different languages, as well as mentioning the unrelated Korandje language.

Since the start of the violence, Algeria is not much of a tourist destination. Very few travels still head south over the big routes through the Sahara. These routes were always the main travel attraction, although Algeria has a lot more to offer. Some of the finest Roman ruins in the world, old Arabic cities, good beaches. If things clear up a bit, you should definitely consider going there. A stay in the country will make it easy to understand why the French wanted to stay there so desperately.

You can encounter a wide variety of landscapes in Algeria: desert, meadows, dunes, sahara, oasises, forests, oueds to name a few. There is also more than 750 Miles of coasts and beaches..