The spark notes on this phase of the trip include: a bunch of Roman ruins, Thomas gets blitzkrieged by a deodorant bomb, Anthea and Thomas smoke sheesha in a desert oasis and buy several rounds of beer on the “marche noir”, a visit to the homes of Luke and Anakin Skywalker, Anthea and Thomas go to Africa’s holiest Islamic city and drink water from a well turned by a camel and famed to be connected to Mecca and the continuation of the saga that shall from now on be referred to as the Tunisian Visa Crisis.
In terms of things to see in Tunisia, the North is a goldmine of the most incredible Roman ruins. We went to Bulla Regia, Dougga, Sbeitla and El Jem. Bulla Regia is known for the fact that the houses were built on two levels (one underground) so it is one of the only places in the world where you can go inside Roman rooms. There were also some great mosaics in situ. Dougga is amazing for its location (think idyllic Roman pastoral landscape and add some fields of poppies) and the fact that it has a fantastic (pretty much) intact capitole and theatre. It is also quite a complete city, with bath houses and private houses etc. (there is even some speculation about a brothel). Sbeitla was only okay. While it was still impressive, it paled a bit in comparison to the other sites because the restoration work was not as flash. El Jem had the third largest colosseum in the Roman Empire and a great museum with some excellent mosaics. We also managed to get to the Bardo Museum in Tunis, which houses most of the mosaics found at the various sites around the place. The mosaics were fantastic and the collection at the museum was great, but it was pretty difficult to cope with the overload of information when there was just room after room of next level mosaics.
After hanging out in El Kef and checking out the Roman ruins in the area, we decided it was time for a change of pace and spent a day on four different sets of public transport making our way south. At one stage, an incredibly smelly man decided to sit in front of us on the bus. After much brow mopping and opening of every window in the general vicinity so not only the air, but also all the dust from outside got inside the bus, the guy finally got out a can of deodorant. Success – we thought. And indeed, the smelly man did give himself a liberal spraying. He then turned around, however, and (with a look of juvenile glee akin to something you may imagine in a 12 year old’s locker room) proceeded to give Thomas a liberal spraying as well – to Thom’s intense protestations. I can attest to the fact that, while the guy did smell, Thomas did not. Just before he got onto me, he managed to get the message. He then turned around and got the guys in front of him pretty good too. Clearly this is something that is culturally acceptable in Tunisia (?).
Tangentially, I will note a few other fun things about Tunisian culture.
- The men who are not “practicing Muslims” do drink and boy, they cannot handle their alcohol at all. Every time we went into one of the seedy, smoke filled bars for a cheap (non-tourist priced) beer, it was filled with guys having massive arguments over tables stacked with empties at 2pm on a Monday afternoon and staggering around the place.
- Also, they drive like crazy people (not quite as bad as Algerians (I think I will forever remember the drive between Constantine and Annaba as the scariest of my life and I am not particularly squeamish), but pretty bad all the same) and enjoy a good incident of road rage when things do not go well. On one ride, our driver sped up behind a car that was turning and had come to a halt, but that was still in the main lane in the road. The driver hooted wildly. I believe this is Tunisian for: “I am coming up behind you at a hideous speed, it is now your responsibility to get the hell out of my way. Move it.” For various reasons, the car failed to move. These may have included the fact that he was there first. Our driver then slammed on the breaks resulting in much squealing, the smell of burnt rubber, and a probable decrease of about 3mm on the tires. He then pulled over the car in the middle of the road, hopped out slamming the door and ran over to where the other car was now pulled over and proceeded to berate the driver loudly and with much enthusiastic hand gesturing. He finally got back, got out a cigarette to calm himself down and proceeded to take us and the other six passengers on to Kairouan.
- Other incidents of general rage for which I have no explanation included one day when driving through a small town en route somewhere, a man dashed wildly out in front of our vehicle, followed closely by another man wielding a baton of some variety. On closer inspection (once the car had managed to come to a halt) we realized that the first guy had a couple of excellent head wounds, from which blood was flowing profusely. I am not sure what the disagreement was, but I would not want to piss off the baton wielding guy – he clearly meant business. Anyway, enough stories about crazy Tunisian behavior.
We ended up spending a few days in and around Tamerza and Tozeur checking out some fantastic scenery and some of the places that the English Patient and Star Wars were filmed. Tamerza was blatantly amazing. We stayed in a new bungalow place with some lovely people on the edge of the town oasis and a gorge. The place was a touch unfinished (understatement) and included excitements like the water stopping every now and again and us being assured that it would work “après”. Après what, I do not know. That said, we got served a bouquet of flowers with breakfast overlooking the gorge from the terrace every morning and spent time wandering in the mountains and palmery and smoking sheesha. As noted, we also managed to source some black market beer and to cool it in the river. Getting the beer is a bit of an event in Tunisia as no one actually knows where to get beer (wink), but they eventually admit that they know a friend and that friend calls a friend and some guy appears out of nowhere with a neatly wrapped package or you are driven round the corner to someone’s house. Cooling it in the river was also a fairly interesting activity as every now and again a local guy would wander by and, seeing a six pack sitting in the river, he would (as is pretty natural) lean over to lay claim to the beer. At this point we would have to call loudly from the terrace – “Monsieur, Monsieur!” and they would slink away again.
Tozeur was one of the tackiest places I have been to. It is popular with European tour groups and there are almost no independent travelers. As a result, it is overpriced and kitsch. However, taking to this theme, we did go to see the set from the first (in chronology) Star Wars movie of Anakin Skywalker’s home planet and the most amazingly tacky and ridiculous museum / park on evolution / creation ever. Beautifully named: Chak Wak. I am not sure why. Among other things there were massive models of dinosaurs, the evolution of man, Noah’s ark, the parting of the Red Sea and many more displays. All of these displays are accompanied by horrendous descriptions and music over a blaring sound system (press 3 for English). In other news, I tried camel – but it was not much to write home about. Finally, I have attached a photo of an eagle statue at some rocks from which you can watch the sunset. The Lonely Planet describes this as ‘aggressive landscaping’. I think this is an understatement. I also remain unsure of the relevance of the eagle.
We hitched and hiked between a couple of towns around Matmata which is where Luke Skywalker lived with his aunt and uncle in the first (ever made) Star Wars movie. As I am sure you have by now realized, we spent some time indulging Thomas’s Star Wars fantasies (although I declined to reenact any Darth Mul vs. Obi Wan’s master fight scenes with Thom – goes without saying that I would have had to play Darth Mul). The main thing to see is really the underground dwellings and the scenery. It was worth going there if you ignored all the day trip tourists and wandered around the hills. After Matmata, we stopped in on Jerba, which was incredibly touristy and not particularly interesting, but pretty with old fondouqs, white buildings, blue trimmings and bougainvillea everywhere.
Sousse presented more opportunities to be judgmental about the tourism industry generally, but I have possibly done that enough in this post. The medina in Sousse is quite excellent and we also headed out on some day trips. Probably the most interesting of these was a trip to Kairouan, which is the holiest Islamic city in Africa and fourth in the world (they do love a good ranking system). I think you get some sort of percentage of the haj to Mecca for going there. The city itself was very pretty and it had a bunch of Mosques, shrines (zouias), carpet shops, old mansions and a camel turning a water wheel in a well that is supposedly connected to Mecca (my favourite). They are also big on Tunisian patisserie, which, of course, was excellent.
Finally, we returned to Tunis in the vague hope that perhaps we would now receive our coveted visa extensions. When we hit Tunis the first time, we had spent two full days to arrive at some sort of solution whereby we had applied for this extension. This had included visits to the police in Tabarka, the Office of Foreigners in Jendouba, a major fight with the woman there which resulted in us pretty much being thrown out of her office, a trip to Tunis (where the louage broke down as we entered the city, so had to find alternative transport), a visit to the Ministry of the Interior, a two hour walk around Tunis trying to find the Secteur de Police and Office of Foreigners for Tunis, a negotiation with the hotel for a certificate of residence, a flight reservation and another hour wait in the Office of Foreigners because they do not work from about 1pm to 3pm in the afternoon. After this, we finally managed to make the application for a visa extension. We were then informed that we had to now wait two weeks for it to (hopefully) be approved by “The Administration”. During our two week wait, we were assured that overstaying our original seven day visa was not a concern. And, indeed, it was not. Notwithstanding the fact that the police did check our passports during that time, no one seemed too concerned that we had vastly overstayed our visas. Suffice to say that the second round at dealing with Tunisian bureaucracy was no more successful than the first and our attempts were further hindered by Tunisian labor day which resulted in all administrative offices being closed. Surprisingly, the delightful (yes that is sarcastic) woman at the office “forgot” to inform us of this when telling us we should come in on that day. We finally gave up and decided to deal with the issue at the airport. Tunisia, you M*&^%RF$#@!R.
(but, p.s., we actually love you Tunisia and, other than the Tunisian Visa Crisis, we really were fans).
April 2013