Tunisia - Two Day Adventure

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Our two day coach trip was our next adventure. Although it was a bit of a whirlwind tour of Tunisia it was both very interesting and really enjoyable. We also got to experience some pretty intense heat with temperatures rising to over 45 degrees Celsius. The heat is apparent in some of the photos where it created an almost shimmering haze.

First stop was El Jem to admire its giant amphitheatre. It is only slightly smaller than the Coliseum in Rome but better preserved. It was built between 230 and 238 AD and could seat crowds of more than 30,000 people! We stood in the middle of the amphitheatre, climbed to the top to admire the views into and out of it, and went down into the dungeons to see where the gladiators and animals would emerge from. It must have been really frightening to be condemned to be a gladiator fighting a wild animal or other gladiators to the death.

Then it was back onto the coach for a fairly long trip to our first "view stop" followed by a "pit stop" where we could get drinks and sandwiches before continuing another fairly long way to our lunch stop. Along the way we learnt all sorts of interesting facts about Tunisia. One of the most amazing is that there are two main olive groves with almost 50 MILLION olive trees! This is one of their main exports including to Italy so next time you use your Italian olive oil it could be made with olives grown in Tunisia. Another amazing statistic is the unemployment figures; during the summer fruit and olive picking season there is only between 12 and 20% unemployment but this soars to a massive 60% during winter! The average salary is around 600 Tunisian Dinar, about £280. Our lunch that day was traditional Tunisian cous cous and vegetables and, for the not too faint at heart, some meat that we were not sure if it was lamb or camel. We stuck to the vegetarian option.

Next stop was to visit an area of Tunisia called Matmata. This is a village where people built homes below ground to escape the extreme heat. They built two storey dwellings, the top as storage and the deeper level as living areas. These dwellings date back to as early as the fourth century BC when there were none of today's conveniences. Nowadays, those who still choose to live in these dwellings, have all the modern trappings of life including electricity and television. There is also an area that has been converted into a four star hotel so no doubt even has air conditioning! This area has become even more popular with Star Wars fans as the opening sequence of the original Star Wars movie 'Star Wars: The Phantom Menace' featured these troglodyte houses.

The next stop on our adventure was our "Lawrence of Arabia" experience. We were dressed up in traditional garb and mounted our camels and headed off into the Sahara Desert. The desert is truly magnificent and, when we stopped and got to walk around in the desert, you could really feel the vastness and loneliness of the desert. Annie and I have been to a few different deserts but this was unlike any other. There is just nothing but sand for as far as the eye can see. It would be an amazing experience to do a two day or more trek into the desert on camels and stay in a Bedouin camp overnight. Hopefully one day we will get to do that.

Our final coach trip for the day was to our overnight hotel in a town called Tozeur. Along the way we were treated to a stop at Chott El Jerid, a salt lake where most of the water had evaporated leaving mounds of salt all over the place. Stepping down from the coach was like walking into a hot-air fan-heater. The wind was blowing quite strongly and was incredibly hot, quite an experience. Amazingly enough though, the water that was still there was pretty cold and obviously VERY salty. We tasted some of the salt and considered bringing it home to fill our salt grinder but decided to rather leave it there. Even though the wind was so hot and no doubt the heat in the day scarily intense, there were still people living in small huts where we stopped and they came out to try and sell us some souvenirs!

Our overnight hotel was an elaborately decorated 5 star hotel (really slumming it) with all the rooms built around small courtyards. The courtyard our room was around was open-roofed so before going into the room we could do some star gazing.

In the morning we were taken a short way down the road to see the main reason for the growth of the town of Tozeur, a giant Oasis in the middle of the desert. It is quite fascinating how well used this relatively small piece of fertile land is. At the highest level there are the date palms, in-between the palms are fruit trees ranging from figs and pomegranates to henna, and then, below these are vegetables ranging from tomatoes to corn and a great variety in between. All of this survives due to there being around 200 springs watering the oasis. Local residents are given a small allotment within the date palms where they can grow fruit and vegetables either for their own use, for bartering or selling at the local market. We were taken around the oasis by horse and carriage with a stop along the way to walk through some of the oasis and see a man scaling a date palm.

The next two stops were at Chebika and Tamerza, both in the Atlas Mountains. For these we had to switch from our coach to 4x4's, just as comfortable though. Along the way we stopped to see some wild camels and where Annie asked, "why did the camel cross the road?". The obvious answer seemed to be, "to stand next to the electricity pylon" (-:

Chebika, the first stop, was between an oasis and the mountains where we could walk down to a stream and mini-waterfall, stand in the cool water and admire the mighty Atlas Mountains.

The drive to Tamerza took us through the mountains and up to the border between Tunisia and Algeria where we stopped at a waterfall right in the middle of the mountains. We did not have our swimming costumes with us so we just waded into the water which was nice and cool. We also had the treat of buying and eating fresh figs while we were there, yumm!!!

The rest of the afternoon was spent driving back down the mountains to meet the coach for the ride back to our hotel. There was one last stop at Kairouan, the most sacred city in Tunisia and Islam's fourth most important centre after Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. We saw the Great Mosque of Sidi Oqba but, as non-Muslims, could not go into the courtyard or mosque. Being such a holy city there are over 50 mosques in the city as well as a Medina (market) which we walked through a little of.

Back on the coach again with a final "pit stop" along the way where we had coffee and stocked up on more cold water. We got back to our hotel at around 7:00 pm that evening having had a great two day adventure, a must for any visit to Tunisia.