Tunisia

In retrospect, we should have pushed on past Gafsa, but we don’t like traveling in the dark. The bus didn’t end up being a good choice over the louage – even if we had to wait for the louage.…

During negotiations with the louage driver getting to Douz, the driver warned us that there was an international festival going on in Douz. We had heard this line before, usually as a preface to getting us to stay at the cabdriver’s cousin’s hotel room, which was claimed t

Our next stop was Douz. In about 2002, they build a new road directly between Douz and Matmata. Until then, it had been necessary to loop back up to Gabes, and go through Kebili.…

Arriving in Matmata, we stayed at the hotel which was also the main reason we were there – the Sidi Driss Hotel. This was the hotel seen in the first Star Wars Movie.…

The next day, we headed to Matmata. To get there, we decided to take a shared taxi (louage) – in this case, it was a bit of a miscalculation. On our way in to Djerba, we had crossed on a causeway to the island.…

We went shopping in the Medina and experienced some high-pressure selling. We could tell they were used to a steady stream of European tourists. Things were priced accordingly, and they didn’t really take ‘no’ for an answer.…

Accommodation wasn’t a problem during the off season. 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.…

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.…