Erg Ouzina

Ouzina is a village and a modest erg in the hammada south of Taouz, out towards the Algerian frontier, and its entire recommendation is the absence of everyone else. Where Erg Chebbi at Merzouga now has dozens of camps along its edge and quad bikes on the sand, Ouzina has a handful of auberges, a scatter of houses and dunes that nobody else is on. The dunes themselves are lower and less dramatic than Chebbi's, but the setting is more convincingly desert: flat black hammada in every direction, no light at night, and silence. Getting there is the barrier - it is piste from Taouz or across from Alnif, and it needs a four-wheel drive and someone who knows the route, since tracks braid and change. Fossil beds and rock engravings are in the surrounding hammada, and the frontier zone means an official presence and checks along the way.

What you actually see

• A small quiet erg - lower dunes than Chebbi with nobody on them.
• Black hammada - flat stone desert in every direction around the sand.
• A handful of auberges - the whole tourist infrastructure of the place.
• Real darkness - no settlement light for a very long way.

When to go

October to April; summer here is dangerous. Two days.

Honest expectations

Access is by piste only and needs four-wheel drive and a guide - tracks braid and are not signed. It is close to the frontier and there are checkpoints; carry documents. There are no shops or fuel. Summer temperatures are lethal to the unprepared.

Nearby

Taouz is north; Merzouga and Erg Chebbi are north-west.