LAND OF STAR WARS AND LOTUS EATERS

So, well, where did we leave off? I believe it was with Sus and Jules’ arrival and our planned trip to Carthage, that most famous of cities. It is only a short train ride outside of Tunis so extremely accessible and convenient. It covers an area of about two kilometers along the coast and some bit inland, which I do not have the exact details on. The main bit, central, forum area is called Brysa Hill and commands spectacular views (excellent views seem to be a thing in Tunisia) along the coast. There is not much remaining of the ruins in general and sadly, they are spread quite far apart and surrounded by modern buildings and neighborhoods, which means you have to pick your way through neighborhoods to get to the parts you really came to see. This is not meant to be picking at Carthage and saying that it is not an absolutely phenomenal place, because it really is extremely amazing. Thankfully they have done a few models of what it must have looked like so you don’t have to completely use your imagination, and WOW! We didn’t have enough time to see the entire thing and the weather was not quite cooperating so tromping two kilometers and zigzagging back and forth in the rain that kept appearing did not sound like such a fab idea so we settled on sticking pretty close to the center section and doing a good job of checking those bits out before we had to head back to catch our overnight but.

What we did see though, was:
-A lovely amphitheater surrounded by a wooded area that was once one of the largest in the Roman Empire, holding 36,000 spectators.
-Cisterns that held the Carthaginians’ water supply and, I believe were the third largest in their time. As cisterns go, they were most certainly the most impressive ones that I have ever seen and probably ever will see.
-A reconstructed Roman Villa with views that beat just about anything I have ever seen. Hell, the house didn’t seem too shabby either with a lovely courtyard, mosaics and all. The scattering of chipped and broken statues didn’t hurt the ambiance any either.
-The Antionine Baths (old Roman baths) located right on the sea edge. It was the largest outside of Rome with a 22m by 42m frigidarium (cold room) in the center. Most of it has crumbled but you can still wander around the underground portion of it and see how high the floor must have been. One lone column has been resurrected and it reaches 15m high. This was, for me, by far one of the most amazing places on the visit.

After our wander and getting a bit damp, we headed back in to Tunis to shift gears and head for the overnight but. Definitely not one of the better overnight bus journeys but really, you never expect them to be all that great anyway. The driver had a nasty habit of speeding up and then slamming on his breaks, pitching us forward and almost off the seats onto the floor. Oh, should explain that we did get lucky in that all three of us had two seats to ourselves, which is why we were almost pitched onto the dirty sticky floor as we could actually lie down a bit. While I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep, I did learn that, yes, in fact, I could curl up completely on two seats and only have my head a touch in the aisle (it only got smacked a couple of times). I believe I gave Sus a bit of a shock when we had a pee/food break in the middle of the night and well, the line for the women’s bathroom was just a bit too long so, what could I do but sneak on into the men’s toilet. Clearly it was unoccupied at the time so no fear of bumping into anyone, just the shock factor for all the nice little Muslim women queued up. I do realize that this was not quite the appropriate behavior but given that there were four women ahead of Sus and I, and they were all looking at each other waiting and rattling the door handle in hopes that whoever was in there would come out, it did not seem promising that I would be peeing any time soon unless I took matters into my own hands. That said, I ducked right in and right out before the woman came out and was back on the bus trying to get a quick nap in before the driver took over again and had us tossing about.

Our destination, which I do not believe I mentioned yet, was Tatouine, a little town in the middle of nowhere but surrounded by Ksours (fortified Berber strongholds consisting of many ghorfas (literally, room; especially a long, barrel-vaulted room built to store grain). Both Jules and I were quite sure that we needed and wanted to head to this town but upon arrival at 5:30am, we became quite uncertain what in the world we were doing there. We had just sat down in the bus station waiting room, opened our Lonely Planets and read, “There’s no photogenic medina to explore and little to recommend this town…” followed by how grim accommodations in the town were. Not a bonus at 5:30 and we both thought, huh, and then voiced “Why are we here again?” Sus was not particularly pleased by this as we had dragged her out there and assured her that there was quite a bit to see and do. In fact, we did find a nice little hotel that was not at all grim AND there was quite a bit to do in the area. When I say “quite q bit” I mean many, many ksuors to go see.

We took a bit of a nap and then headed out to face the world. After debating tourist vehicle or taxi, we negotiated a taxi for a few hours to take us to Chenini, Ksar Ouled Debbab, Ksar Ouled Soltane and Douiret. They were all quite different in feel and levels of repair (or disrepair). The first one we visited was being converted into a four start hotel of sorts, which is probably a good thing as it looks as thought it might have been a bit of a circus environment before. There were a number of fiberglass dinosaurs about that appeared to be in various stages of disrepair, a few missing limbs. At one point, we opened a large door (clearly an entrance or exit at one point) which lead to a few more dying and falling apart dinosaurs and rows and rows of these ghorfas. It was like walking out of the modern world back in time to a deserted city. Our next Ksar was completely abandoned and wonderful to wander about. The homes were carved out of the sides of the mountain and crept up to the very top, which looked like a bit of a crumbling castle. Our taxi driver had grown up there, which was quite nice, as he took us on quite the little tour about the city and showed us his old house as well as gave us a bit of history on the place (all in French, of course). After that, we went off to a ksar that was mostly abandoned but in which a few people still lived and finally we ended with a much re-constructed one that had some fantastic ghorfas for us to poke about.

We finished the day, as usual, trying to find somewhere appropriate for women to sit and eat dinner, which we found after a few tries and several streets later. Lovely restaurant owner, again, people here are wonderfully friendly in the right places and we had a tasty roast chicken dinner. Oh, I should in fact mention that the name of the city, Tatouine, is in fact the inspiration for the name of where Luke Skywalker is from.

My, I have forgotten one very special thing about Tatouine…it is famous for Corne de Gazelle, a cookie that could just about kill you with sugar and oil. While it seems near impossible to get a sit down meal in a little restaurant without it being packed with men, sweets appear to be quite easy to get your hands on. This cookie is absolutely insane…the insides are chopped up almonds, sugar and sesame wrapped with a dough, deep fried for 10 minutes and then soaked in honey for 20. Divine, assuming you only have one, well, one a day that is! Thankfully they turned out to have a wider range than just Tatouine and we at them throughout the trip. Since I am on about food, I probably should mention that we did manage to figure out the food system and get fed quite well. The little stand-up fast food shops proved to be quite safe but limited to shwarma/kebab sandwiches, pizza, tuna sandwich things and roast chicken with frites. While generally tasty, they really greasy and prove to be a bit tiresome after a couple of days. Oh, and the tuna in Tunisia, is all canned.

The next day, we headed off to Matmata, a city famous for its Troglodyte (Berber underground dwellings) as well as for being the setting for Luke Skywalker’s home planet. They filmed some scene there in one of the dwellings, which is the main reason that most people trek out to this little town in the middle of nothing. It took a couple of Louages (shared mini-van things) to get there but we made it mostly without incident. We did have a moment when coming out of the gas station, the back doors to the van flew open and out went Jules’ bag and up went our voices as we went, “AAAGGGGHHHHH” not knowing the words for, “My bag has fallen out the back!” in French. The city really did not have much to offer but a few crater like holes in the ground with rooms/dwellings off of them and the Star Wars set place. We basically faffed about, had a beer at the Star Wars bar and then settled in to our little cave room.

The cave hotel was quite charming but did have a few tour groups tromp through who all found us quite a novelty. I think we were the only people staying there as high season hasn’t quite started up yet. At one point an entire group of Tunisians came through and we invited a couple of the women peeking in to step in further and have a look and before we knew it, the entire group was piling on in and asking us who we were and where we were from. Felt a little like a caged animal. Even more so when one of the women came back in and said, “Which one is the American?” and Sus and Jules pointed at me and she checked me out a bit, then said, “OK” and walked out.

Dinner was included with our hotel room that night and for being the only guests they sure put out quite a spread. We had a table set out down in our little crater hole under the stars. They started us off with a lovely tomato based soup followed by a briq (egg fried in a pastry type empanada shaped thing). After that we had a massive bowl of lamb couscous that we barely made a dent in and finally several little cookie things that were fried honey dough stuff stuffed with fig compote. It was lovely to have a nice relaxed dinner and not have to worry about where it would be and if it was an OK place for us.

We headed off fairly early the next day to the little island oasis of Jerba. It was about four hours away so we wanted to get in early enough to enjoy the afternoon and have a couple more good days after that as Sus had to head out that Sunday. Another fairly uneventful Louage trip although we did seem to have an excessive amount of police checks. It got more and more excessive as we got closer to the island, which did seem a bit odd. At the ferry landing we were stopped three times in a matter of ½ mile for police ID checks. It wasn’t really clear what was going on as they didn’t really seem to look at them very intently and no one seemed to be in charge of anything. The best we could make out was, despite all the uniforms being rather ill fitting, that the men with the poorly cut, too big, leather jackets and knee high boots (very Gestapo looking) were more important than the ones without the jacket. We did get honored, at the final check, by a man we think was a very very very important member of the force rather than just the very very important leather clad members. He had the leather AND a very bright white patent leather sash/belt thing, two badges and a nice pair of Ray Bans on. We found out later that it was some Jewish pilgrimage week and that several years ago there had been a bombing during this time so they are a bit cautious about it now.

In Jerba we opted to stay in the city center area, Houmt Souq. We stayed in an old funduq, or old lodging house for the traveling merchants and their camel caravans. Despite Lonely Planet describing Jerba as Homer’s land of the Lotus Eaters, we all found it a bit tired and tatty, although still worth a visit. The city center was very much geared toward the package tour day trips from the beaches with endless souvenir stalls selling fairly sun faded and worn looking trinkets. They were worth a wander but not really worth a purchase. We stayed on Jerba for a few days just taking in the scene, wandering the city in the morning and heading to the beach in the afternoon. It was quite a lovely long stretch of beach although not the best tended for trash duty and also quite lined with large hotels for the package holiday makers. We were a bit disappointed our first day as we stopped in at the first public beach but the next day we found a much nicer spot further down, although not without a minor annoyance.

As we were on a public beach, we did not have the protection of the hotel security guards who, in a large part, keep the local Tunisian men from chatting up the tourists on the beach. The first day, we did a fair job at giving off enough evil eyes to keep them at bay but on the second day (it was just Jules and I as Sus was feeling a bit poorly) we did not do such a good job. We had decided to walk a fair bit down the beach to see what else it had to offer, which of course, meant we were prime targets for a chat up. Well, the guy did have a bit of useful info, namely that there was another public beach just a bit further down, but when he picked up his buddy along the way, we knew we might have a situation. All in all it was not too bad, more awkward. We chose a nice little palm umbrella to station ourselves under and they just sort of decided to join us. That mean that neither of us felt comfortable stripping down to our bathing suits – figured that might give them more incentive to stay. Jules opted for the “yes, I am asleep, please leave me alone” approach and I opted for the “oh, so sorry, just really want to read my book”. It seemed a pretty good tactic but alas, for some reason they still thought just sitting there was a good thing despite the fact that we were both ignoring them and when asked questions, were quite short. Finally, after about 20 minutes, they got the hint and wandered off and we were free to enjoy our afternoon. You may be asking yourself why were just didn’t tell them to bugger off, well, they were actually quite nice and had been friendly enough and seemed to just want to chat so being rude did not really seem like a nice approach and neither of us could really figure out how to politely say, “leave us alone” apart from what we were already doing. In any case, it turned out to be a lovely afternoon at the beach and the water was warm and fantastic and beautiful and everything that it should be.

Other than beach, we found a nice little restaurant to eat in where the owner adored us and was just thrilled to have some foreigners popping in each night. We did try to eat at other places but Jerba seemed to close quite early and when we did go to the other restaurants they were either down to just fish (didn’t work for me) or closed for some reason like, well, it was Saturday night – who knows! One problem might have been the fact that we had the tendency to eat quite late as we got distracted with other things in the early evening like finding a nice café tucked away from the noise where we could have mint tea and a sheesha pipe without being stared at by a large group of men. In fact, we found quite a wonderful little place with a balcony and fantastic people watching and the boys that worked there were quite happy to continually ply us with the local cookies to compliment our mint tea. All in all, quite nice!

On Sunday (last Sunday this would be), Sus had her flight out back to London leaving Jules and I with another five days or so to wander about Tunisia. The two of us headed to the louage station where we grabbed a quick kebab sandwich to go with the hope that the louage would leave soon. Unfortunately we had about a 45 minute wait before we were full of people and then the two of us got a bit ripped off with the price. Basically they wanted us to pay the entire fare up to Tunis when we were going about three hours short of Tunis. Took a bit of back and forth and Jules and I getting ready to get out of the van before he lowered it 3DT. It wasn’t quite enough but as we had already waited 45 minutes and didn’t really want to wait for another van to Kairouan or a van to take us to another city where we could switch, we decided not to be too stubborn and just stayed on board. Also, we probably would have had one hell of a time getting anything at all if we had gotten out of that louage as they all talk to each other and I think we would have been black listed. And so, off we finally went.

Just on a side note before I go, did I mention the toilets in this country? I think I may have gone a step down…well, a step down from Morocco but maybe still a step up from India. We were forced to come up with a rating system though – those that make you want to vomit and those that don’t. It was always a good feeling when one of us came back from the loo and the response was, “didn’t make me want to vomit!”