Blogs from Tunisia, Africa - page 28

At the conference now. This place is fantastic. Its a five star resort with all the trimmings. Best of all, the price included all my meals to I get a buffet for every meal. The desert bar is amazing, about 10 different high quality deserts each meal. I am getting quite fat. On the flip side, the actual conference is a bit disappointing. Many of the presentations are in french - thankfully however I can read the slides, so its not too bad. The whole thing has been a bit of a flop - terribly organised, nobody knows what is going on - I have a feeling most people will not return again. I have met a number of French guys, so I'm not too lonely. It has been interesting discussing French politics - I have ... read more

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 ... read more

While Andrea was working in Kuwait, i decided to take a well need week off and relax in Tunisia... read more

The Camel trekking was a new experience for me. We departed from Douz (known as "the gateway to the Sahara"), soon we found ourselves in the middle of the sand. What a view! The sand itself was very fine. The only thing that annoyed us terribly were the flies, you can't imagine how many flies there are in the desert. During the day, it was rather hot, but when the sun went down, it soon became much colder (and happily for us, the flies disappeared). We slept in our sleeping bags, while the camels were sitting next to us. Fantastic to see all those stars... After a good night's rest (both for us and the flies ;-) ), our guides were baking bread in the sand which was a very tasty breakfast... I found it sad ... read more

A ksar (plural: ksour) is a kind of a fortified village. The main priority was to preserve and protect the grain crops produced in good seasons. Typical ksour in the Maghreb contains fortified granaries, bath, oven, shops,... Most of them have one continuous wall, also used for protection. On our trip through Tunisia, we visited lots of them. We also saw some hilltop villages. They were built using the natural caves on the hills. They became of place of refuge for Berber tribes. On the top there usually was a ksar where the food supplies were held. In 1955 dinosaurs fossils were discovered in Tunisia. This explains the dinosaurs you can see on the road... We spent the night (in Bedouin style tents) at Ksar Ghilane, a small oasis at the edge of the Grand Erg ... read more