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Tunisia marked the proper start of the trip and I drove around it for 2 1/2 weeks, visiting Tunis, Cap Bon, Rse Jebel, Raf Raf, Bizerte, all along the north coast via Sidi El Mechrig as far as Tabarka, then south to Ain Draham, Bulla Regia, Jendouba, Dougga, Le Kef, Hamman Mellegue, Jugurtha’s Table, Kasserine, Metlaoui, Tozeur, Douz, Blidet, Ksar el Ghilane, Tataouine (as a base for the Ksour region) and Medenine then exited through Ras Ajdir border crossing.
I finally left London on 24 February and drove to Hannover in a day.
I’d badly underestimated how long it was going to take to prepare for this trip and, when I left the UK, there were various things I hadn’t managed to get sorted out both on the vehicle and elsewhere. Conversely, in retrospect I probably overestimated the need to get EVERYTHING on the vehicle done before getting on the road. Once on the road, one quickly finds that some days are for sightseeing, some for driving and others for maintenance/other vehicle stuff. Nonetheless, I did spend the next 3 weeks in Hannover with Chris, getting not only things on the vehicle sorted out but also various banking/adminy issues that really SHOULD have been sorted before I left. Something I would do better next time. Thanks anyway, Chris.
I have done LOTS of travelling before, but those who know me will confirm that I am like the Rhesus monkey, clinging to the breast of its mother seeking attachment, as the hours tick away before I depart. I have already been to some of the countries I plan to go to on this trip, but even so I was still loth to tear myself away from Hannover. This was partly why I had left so little time before heading south to catch the ferry – maybe it’s some sort of familiarity fetish.
L1000334, originally uploaded by overlandcruiser.
Someone smashed the driver’s side window . Great start.
16 March 2007 – Hannover in the rear view mirror today.
After a last-minute Carnet panic, we had to call the ADAC to jump start the engine on the day I was due to leave so we could drive to the ADAC to sort out a typo on the carnet…but now I’m off!
Most of the journey is a blur, at least until I reached Austria. I have had problems with interpreting those computer-generated route planners before but this time, when I ended up having to pay 7 Euros to drive 1km on an Austrian motorway it was only partly the route planner’s fault. I had followed it religiously until it told me to turn into a small town just near the Austrian/Swiss border. I couldn’t understand why it had told me to do this and was a bit worried when I came to a roundabout it hadn’t mentioned. I stopped to ask directions and in retrospect what I was told was spot on and so was the route planner – I should have carried on through this town and would have ended up in Switzerland without having to use the toll road. At least I was alert to this when I reached Switzerland a little later and this time I found out from the customs people at the border how to get across Switzerland without using the toll roads.
It was slow going but entertaining, going around all those mountain switchback roads in the dark and ironically, by not using the toll roads, I also saved about 50kms off the projected mileage. Found a long-distance truck stop at about midnight to sleep, deserted but for artics with ghostly silhouettes dancing against curtained-off windows and faint scratches of sound from of portable TVs. Couldn’t see anything, but it was so cold I had to sleep in the car and not the roof tent, with the sleeping bag to keep me (toasty) warm.
17 March 2007 – Awoke to the magnificent sight of the sun rising over the Alps, and carried on to Genoa. Once again I wished I’d taken a few days longer to travel to the Genoa ferry port. I had had very little interest in seeing any of Western Europe between Hannover and catching the ferry to Tunisia, preferring to stay in Hannover as long as possible, but the Alps were gorgeous and I should have crossed all of them in daylight. Northern Italy was less dramatic but still a place that would have been worth taking some time to travel through, so I will know for next time. I stopped for breakfast in a nameless town north of Genoa and had Italian breakfast ie raven-haired Italian beauty, with cleavage half-way to her belly button, dishing out an expresso and a piece of bread washed down with copious clouds of cigarette smoke.
The street layout of Genoa was some of the craziest I’ve seen, with elevated roads seemingly thrown over the top of the seafront like a sort of afterthought. I’d arrived here with a bit of time on my hands, owing to wanting to make sure nothing went wrong on the way from Hannover, so had the chance to do some shopping. Got some rechargeable batteries, but then went to a car accessory shop for a set of locking wheelnuts for the car. Shame the staff suddenly discovered a selective and new-found rigidity, curiously uncommon in other spheres of Italian life, when it came to me actually trying to buy some. This consisted of me saying “I know you’re closed for lunch, but I’ve got to catch my ferry before you open again” and them saying “no – we’re on our lunchbreak” even though they were all standing around at the entrance doing nothing apart from smoking and chatting. Glad they weren’t my staff. Whilst not an advocate by any means of the American / Thatcherite deregulated labour market model of workers constantly having to worry about being fired if they don’t jump to it, it wouldn’t have hurt to see some sort of middle way between that 1970s ‘not in my job description’ mentality and the breathless ‘Hi – my name is XXX – how can I help you today?’
I don’t know if any readers have seen the film ‘Day of The Jackal’, but there is a bit where the assassin (Edward Fox) goes to Genoa to collect a fake passport. Some of the footage is shot on the waterfront eg where his car is in a garage and suddenly, as I was getting stressed and fed up with the bad signage for the 1-way system leading into the ferryport, there it was. I remember, in Jan 2008, how I suddenly realised this when I was watching ‘Day of The Jackal’ on satellite during my my Calcutta sojurn.
Also boarding the ferry from Genoa were about 20 far better-prepared 4x4s belonging to some sort of German/French/Italian ‘Libye/Tunisie Desert Raid’ group. I’d heard before that the preferred style of these people was to bomb across the desert as fast as possible rather than to enjoy the sights and I could see something of this in their focused, grimly efficient demeanours. They had unbent sufficiently to turn and laugh at my jalopy when I’d passed them in the ferry queue and for this reason I didn’t try to communicate with them. They had each spent on their vehicles probably 3 or 4 times what I had spent….fine, if you’ve got the cash and the inclination, but I sensed that any attempt at conversation would have been either haughtily rebuffed or an excrutiating session of one-upmanship. Shame, really, as normally the German/French/Italian people I have come across have been OK.
But while the ferry was loading, I got a chance to see the Tunisians with citizenship/residency in France/Italy etc, together with a GCSE Economics case study in Comparative Advantage, as well as Trade Distortions Caused By Import Duties. Coming from Tunisia into Europe, the Tunisians had cars laden down with foodstuffs. But the cars returning to Tunisia were instead laden down with manufactured goods. See the photos, and check out in particular the Mercedes that looks like it’s been in a motorway pile-up!
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| Alps to Genoa |
I had not paid for a berth when booking the ferry, as I had wanted to see if it was cheaper to book once aboard. It wasn’t – exactly the same price – ha! But I ended up in a 4-bed berth with 2 Tunsians-with-French-Citizenship (or should that read 2 French-Citizens-of-Tunsian-Origin?) and they were lovely. One of them, whose name I don’t remember and never will, thanks to ALL the numbers being deleted from my mobile following the software crash in Omsk, ran a bakery in Paris. But Amanda will be pleased to hear that I had just a few beers on the ferry and then retired to the berth, before being reminded the next morning (via mime and sign language) that I had a snoring problem! Dear Monsieur Boulanger de Paris de La Tunisie – if you’re reading this – you and your friend were really sweet and I would love to take you up on your offer to stay with you, but I no longer have your contact details!
18 March 2007
Travelling overland by one’s own vehicle is not to be taken lightly. In fact, the nearest thing I can liken it to, at least for the first few weeks until I got used to it, is travelling with a child. I am reminded of JFK’s words “we choose to go to the moon and to do the other things…..not because they are easy but because they are hard.” Aside from the cost and hassle of preparation, it’s a millstone around the neck. Always having to worry about it, what to do if it breaks down, is it getting broken into/vandalised/stolen? I had my first glimpse of this when I got off the ferry at La Goulette, the port for Tunis.
Whenever I’ve landed in a place before, my first impulse has always been to head for the nearest cheap hotel to dump my backpack and I haven’t cared about much more than whether I’m going to get bitten or my stuff stolen….I am a firm believer in the ‘spend a night not a fortune’ philosophy and really don’t see the sense in spending loads of cash on something so transient (unless it’s alcohol ). But with a car there is a whole different consideration – PARKING! I had quite a drive around the streets of Tunis (with added 1-way street aggravation) trying to find a place which offered the unique combination of safe parking and a price below the hundreds of pounds per night. Add to that the fact that I couldn’t immediately get out of Tunis and head north as per the original plan (the ferry had docked at 5PM, not 1 as scheduled so I’d have been travelling in the dark) and the general feeling of mild disorientation I get when I start my travels and all this made the first night decidedly interesting. In the end I settled for a place with on-street parking, but the car is right outside the door and a police station was 20 yards away. The feeling of unease wasn’t helped by the way the police came to the hotel and asked me to move the car closer to the station entrance “just en case”.
19 March 2007. My plan was to leave Tunis today. But, I was still feeling a little disorientated and thought it better to settle down for a day or 2 and Tunis isn’t that bad a place. Had a walk around the Ville Vieux followed by a nice hammam and massage….the man actually stood on my back while I was lying down, which was a new experience. The steam room after the workout was always my favourite part of going to Holmes Place gym. If any of you is a movie buff, there is a sweet Turkish / Italian film you might want to see called ‘Hammam’ – http://www.totalfilm.com/cinema_reviews/hammam_the_turkish_bath
It’s about the Italian widow of a Turk who has just died, and she has gone to Istanbul to wind up his estate – which includes a hamman that was in his family. Initially she merely wants to sell it and return to Italy and indeed a property developer is keen to buy it, but as the film goes on she falls in love with the old hamman and its regulars and decides to stay and run it herself. It is a shame that hammams aren’t more a part of English culture, although there is always the Porchester Spa I suppose.
20 March 2007. I wanted to visit Korbous on the Cap Bon peninsula today and didn’t feel like driving, so I tried to get a bus or a louage. But at the station, they kept telling me I could only get as far as Soliman and then I’d have to get a taxi for the last 10 kms. I never like being told to “take a taxi” – it always sounds like “be taken for a mug” because it’s generally a lie, spun by rapacious taxi drivers the world over, that a taxi rather than a bus is the only way to get somewhere. So I spent the afternoon at Sidi Bou Said instead and had a coffee at the Café Des Delices. It brought back pleasant memories of going there with Amanda in 2005. While walking around, I inadvertently ended up at a roadblock at the entrance to President Ben Ali’s residence and as luck would have the heavens chose that moment to open, but the guards beckoned me under their bus shelter-like canopy to keep dry. It was an interesting experience to hear a police officer, someone supposedly pro-establishment, criticising the war against Iraq. Not for the first time, I was asked what westerners thought of Islam and whether we thought all moslems were extremists. A number of times in Moslem countries I have come across people at pains to tell me about their religion and about how Islam doesn’t equal extremism. But hey – the establishment in 1 culture equals the enemy in another. Later in the trip, I was to be reminded of this time and again by people in Syria and elsewhere.
Reminded of the little differences in Tunisia that we encountered the last time we were there in 2005. Tunisia is the only country I know (apart from Jordan) where the currency is divided into 1000 sub-units rather than 100. Thus every price you see reads like TD 1,450 rather than the TD 1.45 it would be anywhere else, meaning that everything momentarily looks like its 10x the actual price until you get used to it. Also the design of coins could use some improvement, for the 1, 2 and 5TD coins look quite similar, especially from the side, and often the numbers have been worn off so they need to be minutely examined.
21 March 2007. Cap Bon isn’t really on the circular route of Tunisia that I am planning to take, but I thought I might as well see it. Also hadn’t bargained on how it would take nearly 300km of driving to get around a 60 km peninsula! Driving on fairly narrow, undulating roads, in a RHD and (probably) overloaded vehicle was decidedly interesting. I was trying to keep as far right as possible to stop the left side of my vehicle from getting embedded in the front bumpers of approaching juggernauts, while the bumpy edge of the road kept making the poor Landcruiser lurch towards them.
The undulating scenery here was redolent of Agadir in southern Morocco, with fertile soil and lots of orchards. Unfortunately the goats in the trees (!) eating the Argan berries were absent but everywhere could be seen people selling oranges and these taste absolutely delicious….but make sure you’re near running water when you peel them by hand!
Kelibia was the first visit and the fort atop the hill over the town looked imposing as I approached….just as a fort should be. Another first in Kelibia was filling up with diesel for the first time since reaching Tunisia – 30p per litre!
Unfortunately I missed Kerkouane by about 10 minutes, so I am just as ignorant now about all things Punic as I ever was before. Probably would have been better to miss Kelibia in favour of Kerkouane…..there are many more imposing forts in the world than Punic settlements, epecially ones this well-preserved.
Jebel Abiod, just north of El Haouaria, marks the tip of Cap Bon. No pics of this as I was waiting for the camera batteries to recharge, but worth the climb if you happen to be in the area.
The final stop was probably the most worthwhile sight on Cap Bon – Korbous. A hot spring empties itself into the spring here, and it is a funny feeling to put your hand, paddle or swim, in warm sea-water. Am sure there’s some sort of micro-power generation project here for someone or other. Reminds me of the geothermal project at Stithians in Cornwall a few years ago.
Once back on the outskirts of Tunis that evening, I had a bit of difficulty finding the route back to the hotel and, at one point when I realised I’d taken a wrong turn, started to do a U-turn – but not far enough from a blind corner. While I was at right angles to the flow of traffic, around the corner came a 4×4 similar to mine, travelling at speed STRAIGHT towards the side of the Landcruiser. I remember thinking ‘I’ve made a stupid mistake and it’ll be my fault if he hits me’ but luckily the other driver stopped and without even any screeching of tyres. I was fully expecting to have to get out and apologise, but he sped off. No doubt the average Daily Mail reader would say that this is just normal driving in a place like Tunisia.
22 March 2007. Today I left Tunis and travelled north. After Cap Bon, the scenery was a little disappointing, being merely the same undistinguished gently rolling green seen in the north of Morocco, around Tangier. I was hoping to camp tonight but didn’t have a pillow. So, on the way out of Tunis, I stopped at a shopping centre to get one. It was indistinguishable from any French hypermarket inside but it was amusing to see copies of the Daily Mail and the Mirror in the newspaper section. Perhaps there are expats / diplomats etc living around here – a plum posting. After 20 kms of toll road (costing a princely 0.6TD) I reached Utica.
The ruins themselves were not particularly striking compared to some I have seen, but the flagstones rather than mosaics on the floors of the houses were unusual. The museum itself was small but actually quite impressive. Some of the jewellery was just like could be seen in a hippy-stall in a market today and hard to comprehend that it was 2000 years old.
Sidi Ali el Mekki to camp on the beach was the original plan, but wasn’t sure whether this was permitted and there was nobody to ask. The only restaurant in town was closed and the shacks on the beach looked both dire and decidedly shut. Plus, the beach was hardly the most inspiring in the first place – if as the Lonely Planet says it is Tunisia’s best then I am not looking forward to carrying on along the north coast! So I carried on to first Raf Raf and then Ras Jebel. Raf Raf was incredibly similar in layout to Sennen Cove and I quite liked it, but there was only 1 hotel in town and I couldn’t see why it was charging 50 TD per night (or maybe it was abusing its monopoly!) This time I tried asking the local police whether camping was OK but they flatly refused, although with the language barrier it wasn’t clear whether they were just trying to tell me “don’t do it – it’s not safe around here” or “don’t do it – it’s illegal.” I thought of getting on the phone to Amanda there and then and getting her to interpret for me, but the beach wasn’t that inspiring anyway.
In the next town – Ras Jebel – I had a bit more luck at least in the beginning…the beach here was much nicer and the local police told me I could camp, but that I would have to register with the National Guard. The Guards spoke good English and they certainly seemed OK about the camping, but then one of them called his superior and orders suddenly came down from on high saying I couldn’t camp as the area was “very dangerous.” I guess it all depends on what you are used to, but (touch wood) I haven’t yet experienced cause to feel unsafe in Tunisia – a far more heavily policed country than the UK, for eg. But it’s all relative I suppose – if the murder rate goes from 1 to 2 per million per year, it’s doubled but still very low.
Driving around Tunisia, it isn’t long before you come across a police checkpoint. Either it’s a little kiosk on the outskirts of a town, or 2 police standing at a roundabout. Thankfully they’re not like the Russian traffic police – although they have stopped me quite often, they’ve just wanted to say hello.
After that, I thought I might as well carry on to Bizerte. I couldn’t understand why I kept getting told I couldn’t camp when the book said it was OK to do so, so I ended up having a chat with the local tourist information people. The impression given was that the police in Raf Raf and Ras Jebel had merely been concerned that I was proposing to camp on my own away from a town, with nobody to drive me anywhere if anything went wrong during the night, rather than a blanket prohibition. Oh well – I will know for next time. But I am quite sure that, if I had followed the Nike ‘just do it’ method, the heavens wouldn’t have fallen in and likely as not nobody would have bothered me. This was another lesson in the ‘it’s better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission’ philosophy…….not a school of thought I have exactly eschewed in the past, but I have always shied from doing this in foreign countries. And there is a unique feeling of nakedness and vulnerablity attached to sleeping in a tent, exacerbated by a fear of being awoken in the middle of the night by people (no doubt with guns and uniforms) shouting gibberish at you that, at this point in the trip, I didn’t feel able or willing to deal with.
Maybe they have something like S106 in Tunisia as well, for the tourist information place was tacked onto the side of a newly built luxury hotel. The only camping in or near Bizerte was in the carpark of the Sidi Salem hotel, but in truth I didn’t fancy paying 25 TD for the privilege of getting soaked and freezing when for an extra 5 I could just have a room with breakfast and a shower – so I succumbed. Thursday night in Islamic countries is the same as Saturday night in the UK and as I was walking around this fishing port town I could hear Arabic disco music belting out from somewhere. When I found the source, it was a Tunisian wedding! I could have kicked myself for breaking my rule, started in 1991, of NEVER going anywhere without a camera when away from home. I learned this the hard way in Malatya in 1991, when I did exactly this and came across a market with a 6 foot high pile of dried apricots that I couldn’t get a picture of. Ever since then, I have stuck to this rule religiously as you never know what serendipity is going to throw in your path in a strange place. The Arabic dance music at this wedding was superb and the guests seemed quite happy to see a visitor from Mars who couldn’t really talk to them. But I needn’t have kicked myself too hard for forgetting my camera, for after this I went back to the hotel and sure enough there were 2 more weddings. Having got my camera, I made sure not to miss any good photo opps, as you can see from the pictures.
23 March 2007. The laptop is earning its keep today, for using a computer on a beach is a new experience for me. Shame about the abysmal 1 hr 20 mins battery life, though. After the battery ran down (and my extremities had turned numb in the wind) I spent the day exploring. Bizerte looks and feels a little like Penzance and Newlyn combined ie a bustling air, whitewashed buildings and lots of fish on sale, but minus the art galleries. The biggest problem I have having in Tunisia so far is the language. In a place like India for eg, it is at least relatively easy to find someone who speaks English whereas here I have had to resort to using my abysmal French. The result of this is that although I feel a comfortable vibe here, it’s not that easy to have any more than limited conversations with people. Hard on the heels of the language is the cold! It’s not as bad as northern Morocco when we were there last February, but with the constant coastal wind and intermittent rain it can be a little depressing.
I have been to plenty of Islamic countries and the muezzin call is a familiar sound. But in every place I have been, it has been pre-recorded – until tonight. In the medina of Bizerte, I was walking around and could hear a muezzin call. But something unusual about the sound prompted me to follow the noise. Would you believe it – when I reached the source it was a small mosque and there, bellowing out at full blast, was a real live imam. That night I ate in the Du Bonheur restaurant which was delicious, washed down with some Tunisian red wine and live music. I have often seen ‘Today’s Special’, with a price ‘at market rate’ on menus, but another new experience tonight was watching the raw, whole fish being brought to the table and weighed in situ to work out the price before being taken away to be ‘processed’ into the delicious dish that no doubt ensued.
Photos of Tunis to Bizerte.
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| Tunisia – Tunis to Bizerte |
24 March 2007. Today’s plan was to see Lake Ichkeul national park and then stop for the night at Cap Serrat. As I headed west, the terrain began to get more undulating and thus interesting. As usual at the moment, it was cloudy and raining and for once this worked positively – this national park consists of Jebel Ichkeul, surrounded on 3 sides by Lake Ichkeul. As I approached it from the south, the road was bendy and Ichkeul couldn’t be seen. Suddenly I rounded a bend and, as the road abruptly straightened and began gently descending towards a plateau stretching out in front of me, I got my first glimpse of Ichkeul. Sitting in its plateau, with the lake around the base of Jebel Ichkeul and the top disappearing into the low cloud, Ichkeul looked for all the world like something out of Lord Of The Rings. It was raining so heavily I didn’t even want to get out of the car, but I am glad I did as the rain stopped after a short time and I was able to walk halfway up Jebel Ichkeul (only half way as the path stopped). I know next to nothing about ornithology but could see and hear plenty of flocks of birds – maybe I should have had my binoculars.
Cap Serrat is one of those places which is probably better visited in the summer. I am a great believer in going to places at off-peak times, but when you get to a beach which isn’t that inviting anyway, and when the only places to stay and eat are shut and there is nobody around to ask re camping AND you wouldn’t want to camp anyway because it’s so wet, cold and windy, there is a limit to how much I gained from going here. At least, that’s what I thought. The book had mentioned a 20 km drive to Sidi El Mechrig, the next town to the west, along a coastal piste which was passable only by 4WD. Aha, I thought – let’s put Landy though its paces! Sure enough, as I drove out of Cap Serrat, a turning off to the right came up and off I went down the unmade road. After about 1 km I met a vehicle coming the other way. I had to stop and let him pass and the driver did wind his window down and say something to me, but of course with the language problem I couldn’t understand him and I just assumed he was saying thanks – so I smiled and waved back and continued. The road gradually deteriorated but it was an entertaining mini-Landrover Experience day. Then I found out what the man had tried to tell me – after 4 kms the road met a dead end at a lighthouse!
So I had to retrace back to the main road and, at the next right turn, thought I’d better stop and ask directions for once. Normally I don’t like doing this in places where I can’t speak the language. I have found that either they can’t understand the question, I can’t understand the answer or they don’t know but give you false directions out of ‘politeness,’ as is the custom in some places. But this time the old man and I did understand each other and so Landy was…..not christened this time – that was the lighthouse trip – but at least baptised, with a suitable garnishing of mud and dust to prove it. I guess a few more trips like that are what’s needed to make sure nothing is going to break or fall off before the Libya bit of the tour.
That evening, in Sidi El Mechrig, I had the nearest thing I have had since arriving here to a proper conversation with someone – and most of it was in my appalling French! The hotelier seemed mightily impressed with my planned itinerary and I could actually understand some of what he was saying when he told his colleagues what I was doing.
Sidi Mechrig is far more the sort of place I like to visit in off-peak times, for it was on a sort of skeleton staff rather than being completely closed. I was the only person staying in the hotel/pension and almost the only person on the beach, so I could feel I had the place to myself. The rain had stopped, and it reminded me of why I like going to Cornwall so much in the winter. The hotel is right on the beach and, if I had more time, it would have been a perfect place to stop and chill for a few days. As I sipped a beer and chatted with the hotelier, we could see a massive thunder and lightning storm out at sea even though it was dry inland. At Sidi El Mechrig, there are some Roman ruins right on the beach including 2 arches which are still standing. The hotelier had shown me some boarded up windows on the front of the building which had been broken by a storm a few days ago and I was struck by how those Roman arches were still standing after 2000 years of being battered by storms.
25 March 2007. The weather today was quite balmy and the sudden stillness in the air was a complete contrast to yesterday – fitting that this is the first day of summer, as I found out when I asked why the clock in the hotel was an hour fast when it was right yesterday.
A sign for Ras Rajel war cemetery suddenly loomed up from the roadside on the approach to Tabarka and I spent a few minutes wandering around this oasis in quiet contemplation. It was strange how I momentarily couldn’t hear the rai music blaring from the petrol station across the road.
I had planned to stop briefly at Tabarka and then carry on south, but I’d had a bit of a lie-in so there wasn’t time today to do much more than just see Tabarka and spend the night here. I still haven’t yet camped out, but for the first time today I did see 2 camper vans – Dutch – outside a hotel on the seafront. Tunisian tourists outnumbered the westerners by something like 300 to 1 and it was funny to see the kitsch touristy crap on the seafront being sold to locals and not foreign tourists. But it had a pleasant, laid-back feel to it and it must be excellent in the summer when the music festivals are on. I wanted to buy a rai compilation CD, but it didn’t seem to work properly on the shop’s CD player.
Stayed in the Hotel Mimosa which is quite nice, although I was irritated that they wouldn’t budge on the price even though they were half empty. The receipt they gave me was good, though, because the Mimosa is owned by a Tunisian chain calling itself S.H.I.T.
Photos of the Tunisian North Coast to Tabarka
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| Tunisia – North Coast |
26 March 2007. For once, today I finished the things I planned to do with time to spare. I drove from Tabarka to Ain Draham, Tunisia’s nearest thing to a hill station, to climb to the top of Jebel Biri – a hill of 1014 m (whoopee!) Snow lined the roadsides as I climbed towards Ain Draham and the thick forest with tight bends contrasted with the rolling coastal plain I had left behind.
The book had overestimated how long it would take to climb Jebel Biri and instead of it taking 3 hours I was back at the start after less than 2. Ain Draham is another one of those places where you either chill for a few days or zip through fast because there isn’t very much specific to see – rather like Cap Serrat or Sidi El Mechrig and in the summer no doubt it IS a place to chill for a while, which is why the French established it in the first place. If you’re into shooting wild boar, the Hotel Rihana, whose staff kindly let me borrow their carpark, is the place to stay and it must be one of the few restaurants in Tunisia outside places like Port El Kantaoui or Hammamet where pork is on the menu.
The road descended after Ain Draham and forest gave way to rolling wheat fields as I neared Bulla Regia. This is a Roman site with a difference – it is hard to imagine at this time of year, but the unique thing about Bulla is that the dwellings are underground to escape the heat a la Coober Pedy in Australia. This also means that some of the buildings are largely still intact and it makes a change not to have to visualise how they would have looked from ankle-high foundations. Sheep and lambs gambolling and bleating around the ruins, together with a working quarry in the background, provided incongruous side entertainment and backdrop (and no doubt free grass-cutting for the site owners and free fodder for the shepherd – Tunisian symbiosis!)
After this it didn’t seem to make much sense to go anywhere else as the next place is to be Dougga and going anywhere other than Jendouba for the night would have been a detour for nothing. There was was still 2 hours of daylight left when I reached Jendouba and with nothing to do and too much time on my hands I had the sudden urge to get hammered. Those of you who know me will agree that cutting back on alcohol will do me no harm at all and I’ve been trying to gradually wean myself off it while I’ve been in Tunisia. Restaurants in Jendouba apparently serve nothing else but pizza in the evenings, but after I had quite a passable one, I stopped at a patisserie for some fig pastries and the owner answered me in English when I asked for “cinq pieces, s’il vous plait”. I asked him where he’d learned to speak English and was impressed when he answered “London in 1976.” Hardly any tourists ever stop in Jendouba, much less English ones, but apparently he keeps his English up courtesy of the BBC. He would like to come to London again but “I’ve only got girls working here and I couldn’t trust them to run the place”.
Everywhere in Tunisia can be seen portraits of President Ben Ali and your man in Jendouba’s place was no exception. Interestingly, the remark in the Lonely Planet about there being so many pictures because businesses get hassle from the police if they don’t display them may have some truth. Without trying to lead him eg “is it true you get hassle from the police if you don’t display a picture of Ben Ali?” I asked why he, and everyone else, had so many pictures everywhere. Him “because the police will come and say ‘why haven’t you got a picture of the President?’” Put your brain in neutral, and worship.
So, we had a good chat about London and Tunisia and by the end of that the impulse to have a drink had worn off. I have noticed that if I go without alcohol I gradually feel better and better as the days go by and can well remember how much energy I had at the end of a week without alcohol in 2005. I guess that means I spend most of the time going around in a state of mild hangover. Also, tonight the car is parked outside the hotel in the street so if anything kicks off with anyone trying to break in, it’s probably best I am sober. In Tunis, the evening I came back from Cap Bon I had lost my parking space outside the front of the hotel so I had to park opposite the police station – later on I went out to get something from the car and one of the police came over and spoke to me. I hadn’t been drinking that night and am glad he couldn’t smell alcohol on my breath; it probably wouldn’t have given a good impression. Even less so if something had happened to the car AND I had had to deal with the police with my breath smelling of alcohol. So, I guess that means I should only have a drink if the car is parked in a hotel car park out of harm’s way…..yet another reason why the 4 wheels feel more like 4 millstones at the moment!
27 March 2007. Definitely ruined out after today. Dougga was every bit as awesome as all I’d heard and read but, just like any famous site, visiting it felt like being processed through on a conveyor belt with all the other Europeans and Americans with their tour buses and SLRs around their necks. I have seen more white faces today than any other. As per usual, they rubbernecked at the sights and listened intently to their pidgin-English speaking guides while dressed determinedly casually in their uniform of Rohans and t-shirts. Interestingly I overheard a conversation between an English-speaking guide and a tour group of Israelis…..I thought Tunisia didn’t let them in, but that must have been relaxed.
I don’t know if any of you have heard of ‘seed’ data but mapping people like the Ordnance Survey and – apparently – Lonely Planet, make deliberate little mistakes with their maps to catch out people who use them without permission. Considering how accurate all the other details were, it was a bit weird to be told at one place to go east when you could plainly see that you were being directed to a temple to the west and in another place an arch and an adjacent cistern (water tank) were opposite to where the map said they were. Not enough to make you go completely off course, just enough to keep you on your toes. For anyone who plans to use the Lonely Planet when they ‘do Dougga’, I would recommend that you don’t bother with any sites north of the main theatre. If you follow the prescribed Lonely Planet route, it will bring you out at the café next to the car park where you are supposed to have a break before heading to the northern sites. Not only will you be ‘ruined out’ by this point, but even if the first sites you saw were the northern ones then you would still be far more impressed with the rest. A Vandal church built with recycled bits of Roman temple and no discernible signs of Christianity, together with a few solitary columns (all that remains of the Temple of Saturn) are really not worth the walk compared to the rest of Dougga.
And so, on to Le Kef. The setting of this town reminds me quite a lot of Midelt in Morocco, with its situation atop a hill looking out across a plateau towards distant hills. Anywhere in Tunisia can be seen people sitting in cafes watching the world go by, but in Le Kef there seem to be far more people standing on the streets and leaning on walls doing this. A place where people watch life, rather than participate perhaps? Or maybe its the unemployment. It is more or less what would be called a market town in the UK – there is not much industry here but it acts as a hub for all the agriculture in the surrounding countryside. Today at Dougga was the hottest day I have experienced in Tunisia so far but, as if to remind me not to get too complacent, it is now raining in Le Kef.
To my surprise, as I was getting up to leave a restaurant that evening, I suddenly heard English on the radio. In lots of countries English words can be heard spliced into the mother tongue, but this wasn’t Arabglish or Hinglish – it was a Tunisian introducing “Tonight’s Topic Of Debate”. Aha, I thought. What mind-broadening bon mots will I hear if I stick around? “This house believes that the Iraq war is a good thing?” “Whither the Ben Ali doctrine of guided democracy?” I asked if it was Le Kef radio, going out live, and the answer was ‘oui’. Should I find out where the radio station is and go there and contribute, as the ‘visiting English politics lecturer?’ But no – “tonight’s topic of debate” was the meaning of the word ‘correspondence’. Hmm. Interestingly, the people I asked about the radio station were Algerian tourists, so meeting them marked a first for me.
28 March 2007. I wish Tunisian councils had Building Control departments like in the UK. The hotel I am staying at in Le Kef has stairs with treads of slightly different heights and widths and I keep tripping over the damn things. I was taken aback today when I had a chat with the receptionist. Ayari, 19, gets 80TD a month for a 7 day week of 12 hour shifts. I told her she could earn more money in India. Later in the day I related these figures to Mehdi, a student who wanted to practise his English – for once, this really WAS all he wanted and no invitations to his shop / requests for baksheesh followed. According to Mehdi, 80 TD per month was below minimum wage but in a place as small as Le Kef it was de facto impossible to enforce one’s rights and if Ayari had complained or sued her employer she wouldn’t have been able to find another job.
For once I found an internet café with a half decent connection, so ironically ended up spending a lot more time there than I would have done if it had been so slow as to make me throw up my hands in despair and walk away. Nevertheless, Le Kef proved to be a delightful town and with its starkly contrasting white walls and blue doors and windows it has to be one of the most photogenic places in Tunisia….a sort of mother of all Sidi Bou Saids. The views from just about everywhere, let alone the Kasbah on the peak, were superb and there is a unique quality about being able to take these views in at the same time as sitting at a café. Also worth a visit is the Kasbah museum, if you’re interested in Berber costume.
However, Ke Kef scored no points at all on the next sight. The Jewish cemetery had been so badly desecrated that the only graves remaining intact were the ones so plain as to be presumably beneath contempt. Regardless of what the Israelis have been getting up to, the value of smashing up the grave of someone who passed away in 1935 completely escapes me and I would take just as dim a view of a Moslem cemetery being vandalised in Israel. Unfortunately, the language barrier prevented me from finding out exactly why none of the graves, or ceremonial plaques in the synagogue I visited afterwards, were dated any later than the 1950s, although of course I now know that this is because they had emigrated to Israel.
Photos of Tunisia – North Coast to Desert (as far south as Le Kef)
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| Tunisia – North Coast to Desert |
29 March 2007. Today has been a rubbish-excellent-rubbish day. I spent the morning doing internet stuff (like emailing people the address for this website) and then met Mehdi for lunch. After leaving Le Kef and heading south, I thought I would stop by Hamman Mellegue on the way as it was 15 kms away, but it was so unreservedly crap I really wondered why I’d bothered going. Not only was it at the end of a long and muddy descent but I got lumbered on the way back up as well! Interestingly, just after leaving the turn off from the main road I came across a group of French overlanders parked in a field and ALL had 80 series Landcruisers.
As I descended the steep escarpment towards this place, it was raining heavily and the going was slippery and muddy. I went really slowly, as I could feel the vehicle sliding and didn’t want to lose grip going round the hairpin bends. Just near the bottom, I came across 2 men in an old Peugeot 504 pickup that had got stuck in the mud on the way up. They looked beseechingly at me and with a combination of gestures and pidgin French I got across to them (I think) that I was happy to give them a tow up the hill after I’d finished in the hammam, provided they supplied a rope. The hammam was just around the corner and next to it was what looked to be a perfectly serviceable tractor. As I spoke to the caretaker, the Peugeot owners came back down the hill and the caretaker asked me if I could give them a tow. When I gestured to the tractor, he indicated the driver wasn’t around and I resisted the impulse (and lacked the linguistic ability) to say “try it – it’s not that bloody difficult!” To call this place a hammam was an insult to hammams. It was just a brick building with a lukewarm spring dribbling into a 6 inch deep paddling pool, with no showers, no steam and a load of teenage boys having a good laugh at the foreigner who couldn’t speak French. Then again, once the Peugeot driver came in I asked him if he’d found a rope and once the boys heard what had happened their attitude changed. I didn’t stay long in this rubbish place and didn’t even bother soaping myself, for clearly doing so would make the water soapy for everyone else. When I came out of the ‘hammam’ the French overlanders’ vehicles had turned up outside and I thought about going to warn them not to bother going in, but they were nowhere to be seen.
So – the stranded Peugeot. As I tried to manoueuvre close to it the Landcruiser was sliding in the clay-rich mud and I had to put all the diff locks on. The Peugeot’s owner came back with a length of steel hawser, woven into an eye at each end. One eye went over my tow hitch but then they tried to fasten the other end to the towing eye on the front bumper of the Peugeot with normal electrical wire (!) When I shook my head and indicated that wouldn’t hold, they asked me “vous avez experience?”….Keystone Kops was the first thought that popped into my head and with the rain soaking me and the mud clinging to my shoes I suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to be somewhere else. Someone reappeared with a slightly thicker piece of steel wire and I still wasn’t convinced when I saw how they attached the steel hawser to the Peugeot with it. OK, I said – I’ll give it one try. The diff locks were already on and had to be to get any traction at all in the mud, but I also engaged low range. This surprisingly gave me a lot more control as I pulled away in slow motion, so rather than tightening with a sudden jolt the slack took up gradually and sure enough Peugeot and Landcruiser slowly began to crawl up the hill without snapping the rope.
Eventually we reached a tight bend and the road levelled out slightly….as is the wont of any 4×4 with difflocks engaged the Landcruiser showed no sign of wanting to go around the corner. This vehicle has to last me all the way to China and back and I had no intention of straining it by forcing it to go around the corner with the diff locks engaged, so I switched off the locks and put it in reverse and drive a few times to rock the vehicle and free the diff locks – they don’t free if there is wind-up in the transmission. As with so many situations I have come across in places where the locals and me don’t speak the same language, there followed a little misunderstanding. For my own part, I wasn’t trying to abandon these people half way up the hill – I was simply trying to get the vehicle facing the other way prior to reattaching the rope and continuing up the hill. However, as soon as I stopped and rocked back and forth, Peugeot man jumped out and said “merci”. At the time, I assumed they were happy and I carried on up the hill. However, it became clear that they couldn’t have made it to the top without a further tow and about 1 km later, as I rounded a bend, I could see back down the hill and the Peugeot was still where we had parted company. Yes I could have gone back, but it was getting late in the afternoon. I think Peugeot man thought I had been trying to signal them to untie the rope so I could leave, when in reality I wasn’t – one of those situations which could have been easily ironed out if we had been able to communicate properly. Maybe Peugeot man went back to the French overlanders to get help with the rest of the ascent and the pair of them had a good bitch about ‘Les Anglaises treachereuses’.
All the niggling doubts I have had so far about the wisdom of travelling in my own vehicle – the little voice in the back of my head saying “why didn’t you just go on a trip with Dragoman or Kumuka” – were for a short time suspended at the next stop. Jugurtha’s Table was such a complete contrast to the unreserved rubbishness of the last stop. Jugurtha’s Table is a conical hill which rises gradually out of the surrounding plateau, before steepening into sheer rock faces and abruptly stopping at a plateau. It looms up in the distance as you approach. It was also an indication of the sort of people who call Tunisia home. The book had said it was necessary to stop at the police station and register before climbing up the mountain, so I duly did as advised. The police then said they would escort me. Dollar signs appeared in my eyes and I declined – the road was plenty clear enough. But – as sometimes happens – they insisted and so off we went in convoy, with me cursing myself for not being more insistent. I needn’t have worried, for the road deteriorated and the police pulled over, indicating ‘this is as far as we go’. “Une petit cadeau” wasn’t even mentioned and I carried on up the hill with my faith in human nature temporarily replenished. I’ll have to be careful not to get too complacent when I leave here!
The road wound further towards the top and I had the satisfying experience of getting stuck just as a Tunisian Army Landrover came the other way. They stopped and beckoned at me to carry on up and I could just feel them willing my Landcruiser to get bogged down and for me to crawl over and beg for help. Not a bit of it! With the diff locks engaged, Landy carried on up the track as if nothing had happened. Just where the track ended, below the sheer rock face, I came across a Nissan Prairie. I was quite surprised at how it had managed to reach here and even more surprised when a European approached me from it. I didn’t get his name, but he runs a walking tour company based in Oxford called ATG Europe – he and his Tunisian business partner were doing a recce. The views from the top of here were incredible. To the west were some low mountains across the Algerian border, while north was an extensive plateau, with smaller Jugurtha’s Table-like formations in the distance. East and south were terraced hills marching towards the sunset. Curiously, some of the stone walls at the foot of the hill were just like could be seen in the Peak District, while on the top there were signs of an ancient settlement, with stone walls evocative of Cornwall. Jugurtha’s Table appeared to be formed of some sort of sandstone or limestone-type rock and under the ruins of the settlement there were hollowed-out caves – almost like a sort of underground car park! I watched bemused as the Nissan left the car park and skirted around a road at the base, but to the north and not the south although from above I could see the roads meeting nearer to the town – don’t know why the police took me up the hard way.
Someone had stretched the next bit of Tunisia. There really isn’t that much in The Tell region between Jugurtha’s Table and Tozeur unless you’re into Roman ruins. My plan had been to reach Metlaoui and stay the night there before chancing my arm on the Lezard Rouge train. For a few days now I had been in contact with the booking people for this train and the best they had been able to offer me was a waitlisted ticket for Friday (which fitted in perfectly with my plans) or a confirmed one for Sunday (not quite so hot). However, the journey took on a dilatory feel and no matter how loud I turned up the music I could hear a little voice in my head chanting “are we there yet?”
9PM saw me reaching Kasserine and, rather than carry on to Metlaoui and satisfy my tummy rumbles by eating at 11PM (and then not being able to sleep on a full stomach) I stopped here, planning to leave early the next morning for the next 200kms to Metlaoui. The Lonely Planet refers to Kasserine as a contender for Tunisia’s dullest town. With this, I would heartily agree. There is NOTHING here! I walked around, looking for somewhere to eat but the few places there were were either closed or anything I wanted was “finit”. It was like something out of the USSR. But – even though I ended up in a ‘caff’ as they’d call it in the UK, and had a greasy spoon meal, I can say that everything was fine the next morning. Fine, that is, apart from one thing.
30 March 2007. I am writing this a few days after the event, so will do my best to convey the difference between my mood before the phone call I had at 9.20AM local time, and afterwards thanks to the news in this phone call. 
I had woken up at 6 and had had a nice leisurely shower at the hotel. Despite the rest of Kasserine, the hotel was a good price for what it offered and the staff had a positive, helpful attitude. Once on the road, uninterestingly gradually undulating green gradually gave way to a more arid and bushy kind of terrain, as if marking the boundary between Mediterranean and African Tunisia. But the roads were superb, and I was able to reel in the horizon at a goodly rate of knots. I had stopped for a coffee and was making good time to reach Metlaoui by 10.00.
But then the phone rang. Amanda is joining me in Tripoli on 7 April but even so we have spoken on the phone every night so far, causing her to complain bitterly about the cossssst. If anyone had called me at this time of the morning, I would have assumed it was the Lezard Rouge people to let me know a ticket had come up. But no – it was Amanda. I was a little surprised, and answered in that vein. But Amanda had called to tell me about a report she had just read in Friday’s Metro about the death of Jay, in a microlight crash, on Wednesday 28 March.
news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/herts/6506421.stm
http://www.stalbansobserver.co.uk/mostpopular.var.1295022.0.microlight_pilot_named.php?s=s – note in particular the lovely eulogy by Clive London of Bushey. I echo every word of it.
www.jayairsports.co.uk
When Amanda called, I was driving but abruptly pulled over in clouds of dust. She then read out the article to me. I can only say that I found myself saying the F-word rather a lot and my first reaction was to get on the phone to everyone I knew who was connected with Jay. But – there aren’t that many. Nobody was picking up Jay’s phone but sadly it still bore the customary “excellent flying conditions – please leave a message and I’ll get back to you soonest, many thanks” message he had recorded that Wednesday morning, only a few hours before the crash. I also called Kay, the woman involved in the crash with him, but she was hardly in a position to answer her phone as she was in intensive care. But then I managed to get through to Jeremy – Kay’s husband. Jeremy explained what had happened. It seems Jay was doing a dead stick landing exercise ie a landing with no power. He had switched the engine off at 1500 feet above the runway and had done a couple of sideslipping turns to lose height. On the last one, he clipped a tree with 1 corner of the wing at 75 feet above the ground. The wing broke and they hit the ground at 80 mph. Jay passed away at the scene and Kay was taken to hospital. Jay was a good friend to me and I could not believe what had happened, or indeed how it happened. I had taken up flying in 2001 and, for whatever reason, had become friends with Jay – he used to say I was one of those who hadn’t flown the nest. I wasn’t the most intrepid of flyers but Jay showed me a lot of tolerance. He was one of those grumpy characters with a heart of gold! I used to enjoy not only flying with him but also the drinks, meals and theatre plays and staying at his flat a few times. I have also had some good conversations with Kay and I hope she recovers as quickly as she can – I am told that she is now slowly beginning to do so. Given my location and the fact of my travelling overland by car, it was to prove impossible for me to attend Jay’s funeral but this was the ONLY reason for my not going and I was lucky enough to be able to get Pam to represent me. Pam is a friend of mine from Ealing Council, but over the years I knew Jay had also got to know him.
Here’s probably as good a place as any to put in some microlighting videos and pictures:-
On 21 November 2005, I had borrowed a camera from work and took it with me to fly from Plaistows to Stoke, near Medway in Kent. It was a magical day, for the weather had that rare winter quality of bright, cold and clear AND for once I had a camera to capture the moment. Shame I was racing against the clock…..flying in the winter when I’d taken the afternoon off work.
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| Plaistows to Stoke and back, November 05 |
Jay RIP would have hit the roof if he’d known that I’d taken off from Plaistows while holding a camera in my hand to film it – and for that matter the later one from Stoke to get back to Plaistows.
I did indeed carry on to Metlaoui and rode the Lezard Rouge. But in truth, I was riding the train in body rather than in mind. I could not stop thinking about Jay, and well remember getting on the train and standing motionless for some minutes, staring at the floor…the other people on the train must have thought I was auditioning for Madame Tussauds. It was a pleasant train ride and getting to walk around the outside of the locomotive while it was travelling along was not something I’d have expected to be able to do in the UK. One thing I couldn’t understand was why it stopped twice but for such a short time on the way up, while turning around in just 10 minutes at the phosphate mine. But maybe the schedule was so tight to free up the railway for the mine to use at all other times.
Readers of Lonely Planet beware – the Hotel Seldja restaurant in Metlaoui is rubbish! It does indeed thrive on passing tour groups, but whether this is due to its merits or a cosy relationship between the proprietor and the passing tour buses is highly debatable. My suggestion? Bring your own sandwiches or hold out until Tozeur. Just as on the Lezard Rouge train, the drive to Tozeur was something of a blur and so too was the hotel.
That night I went to the only bar in town to get smashed. This too was a blur and a solitary foreigner (me) sitting under the shade of the trees at the entrance to the plushest restaurant in town necking bottle after bottle of Celtia must have looked a bit sad, but then – I WAS sad. Getting hammered didn’t work, although I did at least get talking to a decent chap named Bashir when I moved indoors to the main bar later on. In Tunisia, as in various other countries, you pay your bill when you finish your drinking session in the bar. But in Tunisia they have an interesting way of keeping track of how many drinks you’ve had – they leave all the empties on the table, even providing a little metal carrying-cradle like we used to have for milk bottles in the UK. It wasn’t an amusing night, but it would have been amusing in normal circumstances to see the waiter picking up my empties and bringing them to my new table when I moved indoors.
31 March 2007. At this point I’ll drop the day-by day diary for a while, for this is being written some time after the event and I have lost track of the exact dates. Tozeur is indeed a pleasant town to hang around in for a day or 2. The ubiquitous Toyota Landcruiser seemed to be the vehicle of choice for all the ‘desert’ tour operators and it was fun to tell their real authentic Touareg touts “no thanks – I’ve got my own vehicle.” Ouled Al-Hadef, the old town of Tozeur was worth a visit, with interesting relief-pattern brickwork and a maze of little alleyways to wander through and get thoroughly lost in. This being Tunisia, the tourist who gets lost in this way is mercifully not greeted with too many cries of “where you want to go?”, “hey meesterrrrrr!” or “you want something?”, although Tozeur clearly sees enough visitors for this to happen a little bit more than elsewhere in Tunisia!
Hiring a bicycle to explore the Palmeraie also has to be one of the best ways to escape the sun in the afternoons. The temperature drops as soon as you enter, redolent almost of that delicious cool watery feeling when walking off the street on a hot day into a shop with air conditioning. As the sunlight dappled through the palm leaves, I meandered through the plantations with their grid-like irrigation channels. If anyone is interested, the palmeraie is irrigated by 200 springs producing 60 million litres of water a day (!)
While leaving Tozeur, I dropped in on Bashir, who lived in Degache – about 10 kms east. Glad I did and sorry that by this time I was counting down the days to Libya, for he was somebody I could easily have spent more than a couple of hours with. Bashir is a builder by trade and reading between the lines of what he was saying he used to be a lot more busy before he got married and settled down – roughly the point where he stopped travelling for work. He’d certainly worked in plenty of European and Middle Eastern countries – in fact the UK was conspicuous by its absence. His wife and kids were both sweet and attractive and he took me to his drinking den in a nearby palmeraie where he appeared to spend most of his time hanging out with his friends. Have any of you eaten food cooked in a ground-cooker? A hole dug in the ground, glowing charcoal put in, fish (in this case) wrapped in foil put on top and the whole covered over with sand, before retiring to quaff alcohol and chat for 4 hours. Food slow-cooked in this way tasted superb. With a recent hangover taking its toll and dry Libya looming, I didn’t see myself finishing the vodka in the back of the vehicle so I thought I’d give it to Bashir and his buddies, who promptly became MY buddies!! It was a contemplative moment for me when I was leaving and he said “I’ve played around but now this is my life here”. He was in his mid 40s and had married and started a family quite recently – it really struck home how his life seemed to consist of one big comfortable niche.
‘Duty’ tore me away from Bashir and I headed towards Douz across the Chott El-Jerid. This is a huge salt pan but not entirely like Bonneville in Utah as the water content is enough to make it a little moist and muddy. It was entertaining to leave the raised tarmac roadway for some impromptu skid pan training, leaving twisting fettucini-like trails in my wake – all the caked-on mud by the end of my antics must have upped the weight of the car by a good 200 kilos. For the first time I camped, in Douz. There seems to be some sort of ‘Tunsie-Libye desert raid’ going on, for the town was full of French/Italian/German off-roaders in their souped up Landcruisers.
I also spent a whole day repacking the car, and from what I could see from other campers I have brought far too much gear with me. For the first time since the Genoa ferry port, I also saw significant numbers of European overlanders in Landcruisers, Unimogs, old ex-German army Mercedes trucks and even a Bremach (Austrian) and an Australian-registered Fiat Ducato motorhome, about which more later. Most impressive was an ex-Soviet army Tatra missile launcher which had found a new lease of life as a support vehicle for a team of German quad bikers, with a shipping container lashed on its back divided into a garage, living quarters and a kitchen. This outlandish 4-axled offering from the Hans Ledwinka stable had swing axle suspension all round and was probably powered by a 16 cylinder horizontally opposed air-cooled 2 stoke diesel or something. Not the sort of vehicle that would be driven by a single person..…rather the kind of contraption that would be crewed by a team. When this pantechnicon left the campsite, I watched as spotters showed it out and made sure it didn’t clip the overhead electric cables.
Later that day I was beavering away under the bonnet of Landy trying to tighten the play in the steering box. This was my fault, for whilst in Hannover I had tightened the adjusting nut and the play had disappeared. But then, when Chris and I had gone to the tyre place to sort out the balancing issue and the front axle was off the ground, I had noticed the steering was binding, so I had loosened the nut back. After this, I’d ended up with more play and wished I’d left well alone. As I was doing this, suddenly a grinning face appeared, offering help. The owner of the face was Dale Pinder, the owner of the Ducato. Dale tried to help me tighten the locknut, but by now it had jammed and Dale made the point that once I’d tightened the nut in Hannover, I might as well have left it as it would have bedded in after some time. Dale and his wife had driven all the way from Oz to Europe, across all of Asia (including China and Tibet) possessing just a friendly nature and not a single word of any language other than English. The Fiat factory in Turin must have had a shock, for they’d even stopped there to get their air suspension fixed under warranty. Now they were headed homewards.
That night, after a meal with Dale and his wife, I felt a little homesick in the tent, being kept awake by the sound of the ‘desert raiders’ chavving around the town in their Toyotas, Nissans and Landrovers with their sawn-off exhausts…it reminded me of Friday and Saturday nights in Helston when I was a teenager.
Good day trip from Douz to Blidet, one of the oases forming the gateway to the Sahara – at least, from Tunisia. Pretty oasis and fun dune-bashing. But what the HELL was that row of toilets all about?!
On to Ksar el Ghilane. Stunning sand dunes….I can see why the sublime scene in the English Patient, with the plane flying over the sand dunes with the sun low in the sky, was filmed here. But rather bizarre to be standing on the outskirts of the village, in late afternoon, gazing out across this sea of sand dunes, taking a phone call from Mike Berry to activate my travel insurance for the next leg of the trip after Tunisia!
Met a couple of Czech bikers who’d just come from Libya – they’d had an OK time, but they’d had trouble keeping up with their guide (or had he had problems keeping up with them – can’t remember). While chatting to the Czechs, a local who looked like he made a living taking people on desert tours said he’d seen me in Douz. I somehow have an image of foreigners living in a separate universe and being invisible, but that remark brought me down to earth.
Entertaining piste road from Ksar el Ghilane to the Ksour, where I would spend most of the rest of my Tunisia time. Gourmesa the first stop. The pictures don’t really do it justice, but as the book says it is indeed spectacular the way the ruins stretch across the 2 peaks linked by the narrow causeway.
Chenini just as pretty. Good walk up the curving road to the top of the hill, with excellent views from the top.
Used Tataouine as a base in the Ksour. Spent a day getting various bits of electrical stuff rigged up on the vehicle at a local garage – I didn’t think Amanda would thank me for doing that once we were in Libya and on an intinerary. Nice guys, who did exactly what I asked them to do (“Je suis tres tres tres tres fatigue” by the end of the long day), and didn’t even want to accept the full amount we’d agreed, but I wish I knew then what I know now about wiring up a vehicle to run a fridge-freezer. See the Equipment section if you want to learn more about this.
Pleasant drives around the Ksour countryside. The Ksours are a Berber tradition when an enforced system of storage of grain etc in communal granaries in times of feast meant there was enough to survive in famine. The 2 I had time to visit were Ksar Ouled Debbab and Ksar Ouled Soltane, although it was when turning left to go up to Ksar Ouled Debbab that I nearly ended up with a smashed-up side of the vehicle, thanks to a local prick behind me deciding it would be a good idea to try and overtake me on the left even though I had indicated left and clearly moved to the centre of the road. Highly civilised cup of coffee sitting in the cool, shaded courtyard of Ksar Ouled Soltane.
6 April. Fitting that the last night in Tunisia would also be the least pleasant. Crap hotel and food in Medenine. Called various people to use up last of Tunisian SIM card. Made contact with Libya guide Amer for the first time.
But no regrets about starting my trip in Tunisia. A gentle introduction to the changed lifestyle that I am to lead for the next year and a half – living out of a car.
A Russian proverb I heard once said ‘never go back to the place where you were happy’ and for this reason I’d had slight reservations about going back to Tunisia. Amanda and I had had such a pleasant week there in 2005 and I was wary of disturbing the memory. However, this was unfounded and the memory of Tunisia has, by and large, remained undisturbed.
Photos of Tunisia – Desert, starting with Kasserine to Metlaoui, to Libya border
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| Tunisia – Desert to Libya border |
