The town’s relative obscurity means that the welcome here is genuine rather than rehearsed, the café culture is for locals rather than visitors, and you are more likely to be invited for tea by strangers than to be sold anything.
20. Jijel — The Green Coast
Algeria’s northeastern coastline between Béjaïa and Skikda is sometimes called the Corniche Jijelienne, and of all Algeria’s coastal provinces, Jijel’s is possibly the most scenically dramatic — a coast of limestone headlands, dark cedar forest dropping to turquoise coves, sea-cave grottos you reach by boat, and beaches that locals insist are among the finest in the Mediterranean, a claim that is difficult to argue with.
Jijel city itself is small and port-town functional, but the coast around it is the point. The Cavernes de Kef El Amar are stalactite caves near the coast accessible by a short hike. The beaches of Ziama Mansouriah and Kotama are long, clean and, in September, close to deserted. The cedar forests of the Biban mountains just inland are a hiking territory that has barely been mapped for tourism, with waterfalls, wild boar and the remnants of ancient Berber settlements half-hidden in the trees.
