East Morocco

The sleepy, isolated eastern edge of Morocco has been on the way to nowhere since the Algerian border was closed in 1994. With the ceasing of official border traffic there has been a corresponding downturn in the area's tourism industry and both Oujda and Figuig are, for the moment, border towns without a border. To a certain extent, the situation is eased by a lively trade in contraband, as petrol, which costs half as much in Algeria, flows fairly freely across the long and porous border and chickens, apparently, head the other way. The area has little of the geographic excitement of further west, with date palms and sub-Saharan scrubland descending slowly into desert, but it does have an open and welcoming society, and a lack of the hassle of other parts of the country.