Pictures of Houmt Souk, Tunisia

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A typical louage station. A louage is a shared inter-city taxi. It's a great, fast, comfortable way of getting around Tunisia, and not very expensive.

A typical louage station. A louage is a shared inter-city taxi. It's a great, fast, comfortable way of getting around Tunisia, and not very expensive.

We stayed at the Hotel Erriadh, which is an old funduq. A funduq is a former lodging house for travelling merchants of the camel caravans that stopped there in Ottoman times. The top floor is for the merchants, and the bottom floor was for the animals.

Lost, we found the Borj Ghazi Mustapha, the town's old fort. It's also known as the Borj el-Kebir. It was built by the Aragonese in the 13th, but extended in the 16th by the Spanish.

The fishing port is a short walk from town. The terracotta pots are used by local octopus fisherman in a traditional technique called gargoulette. The pots are tied together and sunk to the ocean floor. They make great hiding places, so the Octopus crawl in, and are lifted to the surface. We bought one from a fisherman for $1. Now that's a souvenir.

We hired a taxi for a few hours and headed out to Erriadh. It used to be a Jewish settlement, but now is mainly Muslim. This is the most important synagogue, El-Ghriba (the Stranger).

Inside El-Ghriba.

On the way back to town, we stopped at an olive oil factory.

Now that's a lot of Martini's.

Houmt Souq sells just one or two souvenirs.