The travels of Tim and Megan: Desert Safari, Tunisia

Thursday

Weeks before our trip, we had booked in for a two-day desert safari tour of southern Tunisia. We were up very early on Thursday for our 6.15am pick-up. It was slightly unfortunate that we were one of the first to be picked up, so the bus drove around another 10 or so hotels in Port El Kantaoui and Sousse for the next hour collecting the rest of our tour group. Then at about 7.15am, we left Sousse and headed south down the coast towards El Djem.

El Djem is a town of 18,000 people in the Mahdia district of central Tunisia, about midway between Sousse and Sfax. It is famous for its Roman ruins, including the stunning amphitheatre, capable of seating 35,000 spectators. Only Rome's Colosseum (about 45,000 spectators) and the ruined theatre of Capua are larger. The amphitheatre was built by the Romans around 238 and was probably mainly used for gladiator shows and chariot races. It is the single most impressive Roman monument in Africa. Until the 17th century it remained more or less whole. From then on, its stones were used for building the village of El Djem and were transported to the Great Mosque in Kairouan, which we would visit later in our tour.

We arrived in El Djem a touch after 8am and went straight to the amphitheatre. The day was very grey and dreary and it actually started to drizzle during our tour. We spent about 45 minutes exploring the amphitheatre at our leisure. We were free to roam around the second tier of seating, down on to the ground level where the fights and events took place and even below ground where the cages of wild animals were located. We were amazed at how well it had held together, being not far off 1,800 years old.

We were back on the bus before 9am and on we rolled towards Tunisia's second largest city, Sfax. En route, we were treated to all manner of interesting facts about olive trees, picking olives, exporting olives, olive oil, the history of olives, which other countries grow olives, you name it, we learned about it. Olives are a major export for Tunisia and we passed thousands upon thousands of olive trees on our bus journey, so it seemed like a good thing to talk about! There was plenty of driving on our two-day tour - we covered something like 500km on day one! We had a cafe stop on the outskirts of Sfax for about 20 minutes and then continued driving south towards our next destination, Matmata. We did not miss anything by not exploring Sfax - it is a largely industrial city and suffers from bad pollution as a result.

We arrived in Matmata (Star Wars country) around midday and we went straight to a hotel restaurant, where we had lunch. Lunch was surprisingly good. We had fresh bread and salad to start with and then we had a Tunisian specialty - a "brik a l'oeuf" - a fried egg in a pastry envelope, which requires great skill when eating, to avoid spilling egg yolk down yourself. These were delicious! Then the main course was cous cous and chicken with vegetables.

Matmata is a small Berber speaking town in southern Tunisia (the Berbers are the native people of North Africa west of the Nile Valley). Some of the local Berber residents live in traditional underground "troglodyte" structures. After lunch, we visited a troglodyte cave dwelling on the outskirts of the small town.

The pit dwellings in Matmata follow a regular design some 400 years old. Most are based around a circular pit with vertical walls, 7m deep and 10m in diameter. Their construction takes advantage of the relative softness of the local sandstone, which is easy to dig into. First the pit is excavated, making a central sunken courtyard, then caves are dug into its sides at the level of the courtyard to serve as rooms. Smaller rooms are usually also dug at a higher level, with steps leading up to them, and these are used for storage. The insualtion of the earth provides cool temperatures in summer and warmth in winter. This type of home was made famous by the original Star Wars movie, where a hotel near Matmata (the Hotel Sidi Driss) was used as the home to Luke Skywalker, his Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen. Many other parts of the Star Wars movies were filmed in various locations around southern Tunisia.

The cave dwelling that we visited was home to a Berber family, who didn't seem to mind our big group trekking through and being nosey! It had a long narrow passageway from the main entrance that led into the central courtyard and then it had about six or seven rooms spaced around the courtyard, as well as a storage space higher off the ground. The rooms were all so amazing - very clean, very tidy and they looked incredibly comfortable (see photos below). There were a few bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room, as well as the storage room and a working area, where an old Berber woman was grinding wheat (with a little help from Megan!).

Our final destination of the day was the town of Douz, in southern Tunisia. Douz is known as the “gateway to the Sahara”. In previous times it was an important stop on the trans-Saharan caravan routes. Today, it is a destination for tourists who are interested in seeing the desert, and a starting point for desert treks by camel, motorcycle, or four-wheel-drive vehicle. Douz is a major palm oasis and, as such, is a large producer of "diglat noor" dates, another big export commodity of Tunisia.

By the time we arrived in Douz, the grey sky and drizzle had gone and the wind had died away, leaving perfect conditions for a camel trek in the Sahara desert – one of the highlights of the trip! We now had a perfect backdrop for our desert photos! Our bus pulled up in Douz, right on the edge of the desert, and we all piled out and headed for the camels. We chose not to get dressed up in Arabic robes and head scarves, as some of our tour group did – we had done all of that in Egypt!

Our camel ride was a lot more fun than the one in Egypt had been – it was for a longer amount of time, the ground was a lot softer and flatter, making for a smoother ride and our camels were a lot more docile than the rowdy Egyptian camels! We were also camel riding pros this time around – which comes in particularly handy when it comes time for your camel to sit down! They basically collapse their front legs first and then their back legs follow, meaning that for a few seconds you are tipped right forward – if you’re not holding on tight, you will get “flipped over the handlebars”!

The desert scenery was spectacular – not only the rolling sand dunes for as far as we could see, but the smatterings of palm trees here and there and the broken down remnants of what had been a Berber village many years ago.

The Sahara (also known as “The Greatest Desert”) is the world's largest non-arctic desert. At over 9 million square kilometres, it covers most of northern Africa, making it almost as large as the United States or the continent of Europe. Surprisingly enough, we only covered a small part of it on our camel ride! The Sahara's boundaries are the Atlantic Ocean on the west coast of northern Africa, the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea on the north, the Red Sea and Egypt on the east, and Sudan and the valley of the Niger River on the south.

After the camel ride, we boarded the bus and drove to a nearby hotel in Douz, where we were based for the night. We freshened up in our rooms and then had a drink in the lobby bar before dinner. We were also treated to a beautiful sunset over the Sahara. Dinner was very nice and we got to chat to a few different people for our tour group. Then we had a ridiculously early night, as it had been a long day and we had another one coming up on Friday, starting with a 4am wake-up call.

Friday

Our wake-up call actually came through at 3.50am! But we set our own alarms and got a sneaky extra half hour of sleep. We grabbed some “take away” breakfast from the hotel dining room on our way out to bus, that we ate at a more reasonable hour. The bus departed Douz at 5am and headed west across the southern region of Tunisia towards the salt lakes!

We drove through the middle of the largest of the three salt lakes in south-west Tunisia, which is called "Chott El Jerid". It is the largest salt pan of the Sahara at around 7,000 square kilometres. Due to the extreme climate with annual rainfall of only 100mm and temperatures reaching 50 degrees celcius, water evaporates from the lake very quickly. In summer Chott El Jerid is almost entirely dried up, and mirages are common! Chott El Jerid was also used for various scenes in the Star Wars movies.

Our bus pulled up on the side of the road next to the salt lake so that we could watch the sun rise (the benefit of being up at a ridiculous hour). We snapped a few photos as the sun rapidly appeared above the salt lake, which was truly spectacular. A few minutes further down the road, we stopped again to get a better look at the salt lake in a patch where there was a small amount of water and also piles of salt that had built up (see photo below). Then we were back on the bus and bound for the first proper stop of the day at the oasis town of Tozeur.

Tozeur is a large oasis with over half a million palm trees. The dates that grow on these trees are mainly exported from Tunisia and are well known throughout the date-eating world. On arrival in the centre of town (at around 7.30am), we were greeted with around a hundred horse and carriages, which smelt lovely. Our tour group was split into lots of four and we were "treated" to a tour of the town. Unfortunately, out of all the horses on display, we landed the one who had eaten beans for breakfast and proceeded to fart through the entire journey. Not the most idyllic of rides! However, we did get an opportunity to see some of the beautiful architecture that is unique to Tozeur. Most of the buildings are made from brick, but some of the bricks are arranged in geometric patterns, protruding slightly from the building. They looked really cool.

Our horse and carriage took us into the middle of a palm tree plantation, where we got out and gladly walked (away from our horse) amongst the huge trees. As is often the case with these tours, we were ushered to a clearing to be shown a demonstration! This demonstration was on how they artificially polinate the palm trees to increase the harvest of dates. We even had a young Tunisian boy literally run up a palm tree (in bare feet) to show us how this is done! The idea was that we would all buy a punnet of dates or some jams/marmalades that they produce in Tozeur after the show. Then our rotten horse took us back to the town centre and we upgraded transport into super jeeps to head up into the mountains!

We drove 55km, over terrain that the bus would have struggled with, to the mountain oasis village of Chebika. The landscape around this village was amazing - a rugged, rocky mountain range forms a back drop to the village which, aside from a small oasis of palm trees (thanks to a nearby waterfall and stream of water), is otherwise completely surrounded by barren, stoney desert, for as far as you can see. We walked through the village and climbed a small hill to get a view back down to the village below and the vast desert beyond it. At this point we were only 6-8km from the Algerian border.

After enjoying the stunning views from the hilltop, we walked down the other side of the village to the waterfall, which was small and unspectacular, but still pretty enough. There was time for an ice-cream before jumping back in the super jeep and carrying on. The next stop was at the cheesily-named "Panorama Canyon". To be fair, it was a pretty large canyon and the views were really impressive. We snapped a few photos there and then the super jeeps took us back towards Tozeur. It was still only something like 11.30am when we got back on the bus and it already felt like the longest day ever. We had a little nap while we carried on, north-east now, towards the city of Gafsa.

We stopped for lunch at a hotel in Gafsa. Gafsa is a city of around 90,000 people, making it the 9th largest in Tunisia. From what we could see of it, it looked pleasant enough. Lunch was really good - more of the same type of thing (rice, pasta, salads and meat/stews) - plenty to eat and pretty tasty. After Gafsa, the bus drove for an hour and a half and then we had a comfort stop at a cafe, before continuing on to the holy city of Kairouan.

Kairouan is considered the fourth most holy city in Islam and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The city was founded by the Arabs around 670, becoming an important centre for Islamic learning, and thus attracting a large number of Muslims from various parts of the world, next only to Mecca and Medina. The city has a large number of mosques, including the most important mosque in Tunisia, the holy Mosque of Uqba (also known as the Great Mosque of Kairouan). The population of Kairouan is around 150,000.

While we were not allowed inside the mosque, we were able to get a great view into it from the rooftop of a fantastic store across the street. We admired the mosque and then went downstairs into the store and admired the fantastic treasures for sale (realising that everything we had bought previously was well over-priced!). We bought another couple of hand painted bowls, to go with the ones we had already purchased, a little "Aladdin's lamp" to sit proudly on the "Shelf of Treasures" at home and some postcards. The stuff all looked to be really good quality and so cheap!

From Kairouan, we had a short journey back to Port El Kantaoui and, luckily, we were pretty much the first people to be dropped off, at about 5.30pm. Thankfully the stunning weather we had had all day had followed us up to Port El Kantaoui and it was a beautiful evening there. We were glad to be back in our luxurious hotel! We had a rest and freshened up before having a buffet dinner in the hotel restaurant.

Saturday

There was a bit of cloud around on Saturday morning, but it burned off by midday and turned out to be the best day of the whole trip. Tim went for a dip in the indoor pool before breakfast and then we started to sort out a few of our things and pack to head home. We went for a big walk along the beach in the morning and ended up back down at the marina in the town centre.

It seemed a lot less crowded (both in the hotel and in the town centre) than it had been earlier in the week, which was a welcome change. The guys in the shops were less sifty as well - possibly because we had lost most of the harem. By lunchtime it was a beautiful, hot, sunny day and the marina looked amazing. It really is surprising how much a place can change if the weather is good.

We were determined not to waste the best of the weather, so we headed back to the hotel and spent the rest of the day lying in the sun by the outdoor pool. It was just perfect. We both got sunburnt (oops), but we had a fantastic, relaxing day.

In the evening we went over to the Irish pub and played some pool and had a quiet drink before dinner at the hotel. To carry on the theme of the day, we also had the best dinner of the week - there was really yum roast pork and plenty of other good options for mains and then dessert was awesome - doughnuts and chocolate sauce and all the ice-cream in the world. We ended up sitting next to an old Welsh couple, who were hilarious. The woman had rollers in her hair and kept inviting us to her village in south Wales and the man just couldn't get over the fact that the pubs used to close at 6pm in New Zealand - even after we explained that that went out in 1960s - he seriously brought it up three times. Very amusing.

After dinner we watched the first half of "El Clasico" - Real Madrid v Barcelona - in the "American Bar" in the hotel. The bar didn't seem particularly American, but it was very smokey. We were pretty tired and couldn't stay up for the second half! We arranged for a car to take us from Port El Kantaoui up to Tunis on Sunday morning and we flew back to London on Sunday afternoon.

Country tally:
Megan 36
Tim 33
Bear 33