Stuck in a stinking hole

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I'm finally in a hotel in Tunisia after a gruelling 30 hours of travel. First flew to Frankfurt for 9 hours, then sat in the airport for 4 hours, then 2.5 hours to Tunis in Tunisia, then 2 hours coming through immigration (the queues were huge - why the heck are so many tourists coming to Tunisia). Then had to travel for 7 hours to get to Gabes, a town in the south of Tunisia from where I would start my travels.

Getting to Gabes was like a neverending nightmare. I had to catch a louge (long distance taxi) from Tunis which was quite and experience. Basically you turn up at a Louge station, which is basically a big shed with lots of little vans. Each driver is constantly yelling out their intended destination - when they get 8 people, they head off. So I first had to sit in this big shed for about and hour until my driver had acculmulated 8 people.

We then started our journey in a rather crowded little mini-van. The trip was nice, as I got to see the countryside, however the driver and 3 other passengers insisted on smoking, and the stupid lady at the back kept whinging about being cold everytime I opened the window, so I had to sit for 7 hours trying not to choke.

To make matters worse, I think the driver took a wrong turn or something, because after about 3 hours, one of the passengers started arguing with the driver about the route he was taking. I couldn't follow the entire argument (I only have basic french skills) but basically the driver kept saying the route he was taking was better, even though it meant going along a single lane road rather than the highway. The passenger guy kept aruging for the next 3 hours until finally the lady at the back yelled at him, told him to shut up and turn up the radio.

We finally arrived in Gabes at 9pm. I was a bit anxious because I hadn't booked a hotel and didn't really want to walk the streets at night looking for one. I got a taxi to one of the better hotels listed in the Lonely Planet - unfortunately it was full, so I got the cabbie to drive me to another one. This one looked okay from outside, but when I got to the room - blurk - but I was too tired to care. I flopped down just relieved that the journey had ended.

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