We headed back north. Given that we were seeing things faster than we thought, we decided to head to the island of Djerba and see Houmt Souq. To get there, we decided to give the louage system a shot – we should have done so much before.…

We ate a bad dinner at the hotel (‘tourist menu’ – we should have just asked to have whatever the locals were having on the other side of the room). Again, the restaurant was unheated and we could see our breath as we ate.…

Ksar Ouled SultaneWe started by visiting Ksar Ouled Sultane. This was definitely a highlight of the trip. The granaries are four stories high, and are really other-worldly. We were there at the end of the day, and had the place to ourselves.…

Tataouine is a compact, easy city to get around in. There isn’t much in the way of nice hotels – there are a few expensive tourist hotels out of town that cater to the coach potatoes, but in town the quality goes down.…

Bus to TataouineThe bus turned out to be a very old accordion bus – which I thought was an odd choice for a 3 hour trip to Tataouine, especially considering that the bus was mostly empty.…

Continuing our trek south, we took a train to Gabes. There isn’t much to do here. We stayed at Hotel Regina, because it was late and we couldn’t be bothered to find anywhere else (navigating this town is not an easy feat).…

Continuing south from El Jem, we were headed to Sfax. Our Lonely Planet indicated that the bus station was right outside the train station, but, well, it wasn’t there. It didn’t really exist – one simply has to stop on the road and wait for the bus.…

The next day we took a day trip out to Carthage. Carthage is about a 30 minute train ride outside of Tunis. The TGM is the name of the train line that took us there – it’s a small train line that runs up the Tunisian coast past Carthage and Sidi Bou Said.…

Coliseum of El Jem Our next destination was El Jem. The only reason to go to El Jem is a magnificently preserved coliseum. It is directly off the train line heading south out of Tunis.…

Grand Mosque in TunisThe next morning we headed off to the medina. First up, we wanted to visit the Great Mosque, as the courtyard is open to visitors only until 11AM.…