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In the southern part of Tunisia, the architecture and landscape is famous due to the many fans of the Star Wars movies. Dad and I feel kind of foolish neither of us have seen any of the Star Wars movies, but now we have seen where they are filmed! (Don't worry, we plan to watch the movies soon!)
We traveled in southern Tunisia after leaving Douz and heading toward Djerba. Almost immediately after leaving Douz, we found ourselves in the middle of the Chott El-Jerid, a huge salt lake. This is where Luke Skywalker contemplated the two moons in the first Star Wars movie.
It was kind of strange how we drove right out of the sandy desert into the even more desolate landscape of these salt lakes. This is where we were really exposed to the special effects of desert mirages. Other than a few kitschy roadside stands and a salt manufacturing plant, there were miles of nothing.
Matmata is a very small community inhabitated by Berbers who live in underground troglodyte dwellings. It is also famous for being the setting for the home planet of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars.
It was an interesting day
when we pulled into Matmata. There were no tour buses in town and the community seemed to be asleep--not many businesses open, not much activity, no signs of tourism. Frankly, seeing us drive through town may have been the most exciting event. Then, our driver took a wrong turn in his attempt to take to us to one of the sights and we quickly became aware of where the excitement was located.
Community members had gathered outside the police station in protest. They were burning tires in the street and seemed to be creating a scene. These seemed like a pretty big deal in such a tiny little agriculture community.
We really did not think too much of it, wrote it off as part of the revolution and minded our own business. After seeing the dwellings and what-not, we continued our journey through the mountains and tiny communities of cave dwellings. But, before we could get too far out of town we noticed the road we needed to take was blocked by a bunch of rocks across the road. Our driver went down another road and eventually talked to a young goat herder who told him that it
was okay to pass despite the roadblock.
We turned around, drove around the rocks and tried to dismiss our thoughts about false roadblocks, what was going on in Libya and the protest we just saw in Matmata. Our journey turned out to be uneventful and when we got to Medenine our driver reported the situation to the local police. All our driver kept saying was "suspicious." Oh, really??
Once we got to Djerba and were able to talk to some other travelers we discovered that the protests in Matmata had really heated up and the public transit vehicles were not traveling in that area because of the fake roadblocks. We were also told that several caches of weapons from Al Qaida had been discovered in the cave dwellings which resulted in several people being arrested. Okay, maybe not staying in Matmata was a good decision!
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Pankaj Saraf
non-member comment
https://profiles.google.com/sarafpankaj143/about
Oh it' is so nice,,,like view ,snaps,,and place