Tunisia - Enter Africa!

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Tunisia was one of the parts of our trip that was an afterthought which became an obsession! we wanted to go to somewhere in North Africa and started by thinking about Morocco but were advised that it probably was not the safest spot! obviously Algeria and Libya were out so Tunisia it was... so armed with this thought we went to the travel agent and asked for it to be included in our round the world ticket... here is where the problem begins... funnily enough one world does not fly Tunisia to Egypt! but by now it had become an obsession for us to go and so we paid the extra sector flights and hopped on the plane!!

so given that we have paid a lot of money to go to Tunisia we were absolutely determined to get everything possible out of it!!! great way to approach a holiday!

Tunis is the capital and so we flew in there, planning to spend a couple of days and then heading for the desert which is considered the heart of the country. The first problem that we encountered was that this was the first country where neither of us spoke the language!! Arabic is the first language and we definitely don't speak that... but french is the next language and what everyone speaks!! my problem is that although i studied french for approximately 10 years at school... i also have not spoken french for about 10 years now (that makes me feel very old!!) so the limit of my knowledge is Bonjour and merci!

somehow we managed with sign language and my limited french to get to our hostel... not bad considering the price we paid for it! Tunis is split into two main areas... first the Ville Nouvelle which is basically a mini version of Paris... big wide streets with trees planted down the middle and outdoor cafes spilling onto the pavement... tall white buildings on each side... large sidewalks... very clean! then as with Istanbul you get the real Tunis which is the medina, or old town! This is a walled in area of narrow streets that really shouldn't have cars in them but do!! the hamams (baths) coffee shops that serve mint tea, lots and lots of shops selling every souvenir under the sun including many many stuffed camels which i thought were quite cute but Dave threatened to burn if i bought one!!

The first morning we took a walking tour through the medina... no street signs mind you so we did get lost a few times but got to see what Tunis would have looked like before colonisation... always interesting for me as i have a bit of a thing about colonisation as anyone who knows me well will attest to! This was also my first experience with virtually a total male society... in public anyway... we would walk through the streets and every single cafe table would be men sitting around and chatting...quite an interesting experience as a white chick walking through... even with Dave it felt very intimidating!

anyway... Tunis was lovely... not hard to get around... not too hot... the only problem was the french which most tourists were combating by being french... in fact we only met two English speaking tourists on our entire trip through Tunisia!!

One of the things that we had been recommended was a little coastal town called sidi bou said... basically the greek islands with a twist!! so off we headed on the train.

Sidi bou said was a little coastal town on the Mediterranean sea... beautiful blue water and the same blue and white houses... the only difference was that they had intricate metal work grilles covering the windows... this really made for some pretty pictures! However that was pretty much all there was there so we took pictures, looked at the ocean and headed back to Tunis!

The next day I had decided that we needed to go to Hammamat beach. This is basically where all of the package tours from England go! a resort town on the eastern coast of Tunisia... boiling hot, white sand and lots of fancy hotels!! Not really our cup of tea however my grandad, who fought in the war in North Africa, had two weeks of leave on hammamat beach during the war and so i wanted to go and see it... don't think that it looks like it did then but it was something i really wanted to do!

We wandered around the old medina (which he would have seen!) which was really lovely with less souvenir shops and more places where people actually lived which is always appealing! had lots of drinks overlooking the water and got scammed by some strange man trying to sell us carnations! still... it was a nice relaxing day... in fact I think that every day in Tunisia has been relaxing so far!! maybe that is a good thing as next stop is Egypt and i think that we will be running hard trying to see everything there!

Tunis for one more night and then we headed off south... we wanted to go and see the Colosseum at El Jem which is supposedly the third biggest Colosseum in the world...think gladiator in north Africa where the lovely Russell crowe fights for the first time before going to Rome!! anyway... it is not really an easy place to get to... we could catch a train there... but then we kind of got stuck there and had to figure out a way to the next destination... but this was good for us... intrepid travellers that we are... so we set out!!

El Jem was fantastic!! the Colosseum was smaller than the one in Rome but it is huge!!! and the best bit about it was that you could walk onto the arena floor, through the galleries, onto all of the levels etc so you really felt that you were there! definitely a highlight of the trip south!

however once you have seen the Colosseum there is absolutely nothing to do in el jem so off we trekked to the "louage" station! now... this is a new mode of transport for us! basically a louage is a minibus which has a fixed destination but only goes when it is full! so the idea is that you get to the station, tell the people where you are going and get into a random van which sits there until it is full... the aim is that you get into one that is almost full so you don't wait for too long but true to form we got into one that was completely empty... it was around 4pm at this stage and we had to get somewhere to sleep that night... unfortunately we were going to have to catch two louages to get to our destination so two stops with waits of an hour or more at each station! still... it is not a bad way to get around and very very cheap...

We arrived in Gabes at around 9pm at night...wandered around getting lost and finally found a place to rest our weary heads... so we are taken to the hotel room and the man taking us discovers that there is no lock on the door... well there is a lock but no bit on the frame for the lock to go into! so off he treks to find the missing bit... we sit there for about 20 mins as he fiddles with it... trying to screw the thing back on... however it is really not working... the clincher comes when he has locked the door with two of us in the room and him outside and then he can't unlock the door... so he hands dave the screwdriver through the window and dave prises the door open and we change rooms!

The reason that we are in Gabes is to go to a place called Matmahta... this is were a group of people live in underground troglodyte houses to escape from the heat. If you have seen star wars you would have seen them... and yes you guessed it... we were not going for cultural anthropological interests sake... we were going to take pictures of where star wars was filmed!!

we caught the local bus to the town, dodged the touts and headed straight for the hotel to see the film set! the set has now been converted into a hotel, and you can actually stay there if you want to spend your night underground in the complete dark with no doors on the room and no electricity! needless to say we decided to just take some pictures!!

if you have ever watched star wars, episode 4 and 2 you will recognise these homes. It is where luke lives with uncle owen and aunt beru... where he drinks the blue milkshake etc! so they have basically taken a traditional troglodyte house and added some plastic bits to make it look space agey! it is quite tacky really but still a cool place to have seen... nothing on what we are to see later however!!

We left matmahta pretty quickly, probably only 30 mins all up... bad tourists we know!! and headed back to gabes trying to catch the last bus of the day to Tozeur, heading into the desert!!! we made it with seconds to spare!!! enter the sahara....

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Photos

Hammamet Beach
thought that the boats on the sand were exquisite!!

Greek islands with a twist
don't you love the scroll work?? pity that we didn't get blue skies!

Star Wars home again
check out the space agey plastic stuff in the niche in the wall!!