Desert and western film tours: Almería and Wadi Rum

The westerns most people remember from the 1960s were not all shot in America. Sergio Leone made much of his Dollars trilogy in the Tabernas desert near Almería, in the south of Spain, where the dry badlands could pass for Texas or Mexico. The town built for For a Few Dollars More in 1965 still stands as Oasys MiniHollywood, and Fort Bravo nearby keeps its own western street. On our Andalusia tour you walk down those streets, and on the coast of Cabo de Gata you reach Mónsul beach, where Sean Connery scares off a fighter plane with a flock of gulls in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Jordan is the other great desert on our list. David Lean filmed part of Lawrence of Arabia (1962) in Wadi Rum, and since then the red valley has played Mars in The Martian (2015), the moon Jedha in Rogue One (2016) and Arrakis in Dune (2021). We cross it in jeeps driven by Bedouin guides from Rum village and spend a night in a desert camp. Petra, two hours north, adds the Treasury from the end of The Last Crusade.

Desert trips are about light and heat. We start early, stop in the shade at midday and come back out for the late afternoon, when the rock turns red. We do not run these tours in July and August. In spring and fall the days are warm and the nights are cool, cold in the Jordan desert in winter.

The western sets in Almería are theme parks today, with shows and saloons, and some guests love that more than they expected. The landscapes are protected areas. We stay on tracks, take nothing away and leave the camps as we found them.

Both tours mix the films with the places themselves. In Andalusia you also have three days in Seville, with Naboo and Dorne in the old city. In Jordan you have Petra, the Siq and the Monastery, a whole day on foot in one of the most famous ancient sites in the world.