Hello!
Tataouine was the furthest south that we would be going in Tunisia. To go much further you need special permits because of the risk of terrorism from groups based in Libya and Algeria. We left Tataouine and swung north-west, heading to the town of Douz. This town is considered to be a gateway to the Sahara and it certainly didn't disappoint. We drove along sand-swept roads where piles of sand drifted up against nearby buildings.
Looking for something for lunch, we found the local market. It was mostly finished for the day but there were colourful rug sellers still set up.
Like in many towns, the cemetery was centrally located. Simple graves were being covered by the all-pervasive sand.
We had a delicious lunch - again we could only get the whole four-course catastrophe - but everything had fine bits of sand in it. We got used to this surprisingly quickly!
We found our accommodation and were welcomed enthusiastically. It was such a change to our previous welcome! We were shown to our room and I immediately loved it. It was very simple but there was plenty of room and, apart from a layer of fine sand on the floor, which we soon learned is everywhere, it was spotless.
The owners were a Belgian woman, Brigitte, and her Tunisian husband, Mohammed. Both spoke great English and lived in a room a few doors down from us. On our first afternoon we had a swim in the large pool, which was bliss, then I went to ask Brigitte a question. Soon we were offered wine, so we grabbed our cheese and biscuits supply and the four of us had a lovely night sitting in the warm air chatting.
Brigitte has lived in Tunisia for a long time and told us some interesting stories. The local people here are mostly Bedouins and they have some really interesting cultural practices. Traditionally, they were desert-dwellers and have only really come into the towns in relatively recent times. Mohammed is in his 40's and he grew up as a nomad in the desert. As you can imagine, life was tough. Mohammed was one of 12 children but only five survived. At one stage, when Mohammed was a baby, he was very ill. There was no access to medical services in the desert. His parents assumed he was going to die so they wrapped him in an old blanket, put him in a corner of the tent and assumed he would die overnight. They were amazed when he was still alive in the morning!
Mohammed's parents now live in the town but, up until a few years ago, they would still head out into the desert for a while each year.
Inbreeding is a big problem. Mohammed's parents are cousins (or second cousins . it was unclear) and both of their parents were cousins (or second cousins)! One common effect of this is that kids are often deaf/mute. Douz isn't a big town but it has its own deaf/mute school. There are also many people with six fingers or toes and an abnormal number of people that limp badly at a young age.
Back before the Bedouins were converted to Islam, there were many unique traditions. When a woman got married, she had 40 days to decide if she wanted to stay married to that man. If she didn't want to stay married to him, she just went back to her family and could look for another husband. What a great tradition but I note that a man didn't have the same rights!
Around the town were large palmeraie, plantations of date palms. They really looked like the oases that we see in movies. Palm trees stood lush and green against a background of sand.
The next day, we explored some nearby towns. It was market day at El Faouar, west of Douz and as close to the Algerian border as we would get for the trip. (Most of the border is off-limits as it's still a bit dodgy there.) On the way we passed donkeys and camels!
We gave a local guy a lift and he left a trail of sand in the back seat. Seriously, this sand gets in everywhere!
The market turned out to be fairly standard - mostly fruit and veg and second-hand clothes. The people were quite interesting so I wandered around holding my camera innocently by my side and taking random shots, hoping to get a few decent ones. I would love to have taken proper pics but I'm not one for sticking my camera in people's faces. I do see the irony though of being happy to steal photos instead!
It doesn't matter where we go in the world - there are still mobile phones!
Colourful second-hand clothes.
We sat in a cafe afterwards and, again, I was the only woman but nobody cared. We noticed there were entire tables of men talking in sign language.
Back in Douz, we checked out the local museum. I don't think I've ever been to a museum that dedicated so much space to information on camels! I was surprised they thought it was appropriate to include large graphic photos of branding them though!
This Bedouin tent was interesting. We learnt that they always set up the tent facing west as the winds predominantly come from the east. The pattern on the tent shows which tribe the owners are from. This is the sort of tent that Mohammed grew up in.
We had asked Brigitte and Mohammed if there was somewhere where we could see more dunes, keeping in mind we only had a two-wheel drive car. They offered to take us out into the desert to bake bread, which seems to be a bit of a thing to do here. We all piled into our little car and off we went. We followed back roads which were ok, then headed out on a main road. After a while Mohammed indicated a track we should turn down. It looked like it was all sand and John hesitated and asked if it was ok for our car. We were assured that it was - until we got stuck. I quickly learned how to dig a car out of sand. We pushed and only got a few metres each time before we got stuck again. Sometimes the wheels sunk so much that the car body was completely sitting on sand! We tried this a number of times before we finally got through. Bloody hell - this is a rental car! We would get shot if they saw where we took it!
Mohammed digging.
Views along the way.
We found a spot and hunted for sticks. Surprisingly, we were able to find plenty of sticks from the scrubby shrubs.
A guy who works at our accommodation was there too and he did most of the work. A fire was built and a tin was brought out with proving bread in it. Needing a flat surface to knead it on, a tea-towel was laid out in our boot and the bread was prepared in there! It was funny to watch.
It wasn't a comfortable camp. A strong wind was blowing and sand was getting in everything - our hair, our ears and, of course, in the bread. It was very fine sand though and every meal we had eaten in this town had sand in it so we were used to it by then. The bread was delicious!
We didn't hang around as the sun was setting soon and we had to get back out without getting stuck. As it turned out, we made it out without incident and we spent another lovely evening chatting to Brigitte and Mohammed. What a fantastic stay we had here!
We were sad to leave our new friends and our lovely, simple accommodation, but it was time to move on to Tozeur. The drive was interesting. We started to pass more and more palm groves.
After our wonderful last accommodation, this one was so disappointing. The room was dark and dingy and, considering it was more than double the price of our last accommodation, it was poor value.
We hit a problem immediately. The water in the taps stunk! We assumed that was normal and put up with it but the next day there was no water in any taps. It all got fixed but it was pretty awful at the time. The old sprung mattress stuck springs in my back all night so I wasn't a happy Vegemite.
The setting was lovely though. We were in a working date farm and there was a gorgeous-looking pool. The palms kept the house shaded.
We checked out a date palm grove that had a small museum. We learned quite a lot about dates and how many items are made with the various parts of the plant. We didn't know that a palm is a grass, not a tree!
A woven palm basket tied up with palm string hanging on a palm stick fence.
With not a lot of time before sunset, we headed to Maguer Gorge, where scenes from Star Wars were filmed. There was no indication there of which sections of the gorge were filmed but we had read that's it's a good walk anyway so we just explored. It was really gorgeous. It reminded me of gorges in outback Australia. Strangely, the base of the gorge was quite flat, making for easy walking.
We found these unusual signs. We had read that there was some old Berber graffiti that was incorporated into the filming so maybe this was it - or maybe it wasn't, lol.
We started early the next morning to beat the heat (an impossible task!) and explored the medina. The architecture here is completely different to other places we've been. The small, sandy-coloured bricks were formed into patterns on walls.
We then headed west to the town of Nefta. This is probably the only place in the world where a working palmeraie (group of date farms) lies in a crater. We parked on the rim above and checked out the view. We didn't have long though before a guy hassled us quite a lot about being a guide for us. He spoiled the moment for us really.
We drove though the very old town then switched focus and went Star Wars sites hunting. The original filming for the exterior of Luke Skywalker's home was done on the huge salt lake near here (Chott el Djerid again). Note that the interior of the homestead was what we saw last week at MatMata. We got to the edge of the lake. We could make out a mound in the distance that had to be the house. The 'road' was just a track worn by vehicles across the salt plain. If it's been raining, cars can't drive out here. Very carefully, we headed onto the salt.
The track was surprisingly firm and we made it to the structure, no problem. The original homestead was pulled down when filming finished. It has since been rebuilt three times by various Star Wars fan groups. It was surprisingly small but it was great to see.
Back on the road, we often see motorbike riders riding two abreast, chatting. Sometimes, one rider will have his foot on the other one's motorbike as they drive down the road! Everyone is just so casual about driving.
We debated whether to try the next site as it was known for being very touristy with touts trying to sell all sorts of things. As we've experienced so few hassles so far we thought we'd give it a go. We drove through the increasingly sandy desert and found that sand dunes had been blown across the road in places. A guy on a motor bike insisted on trying to help us through the sand dunes and then show us the Star Wars stuff. It took a while until he took 'no' for an answer. At one stage he tried to show us where to drive to get around a dune but he parked his motorbike on the tiny patch of bitumen that you can see in the photo below. He was blocking the only route we could take. He wouldn't have been much help!
At times the road disappeared entirely under a dune. Our faithful car got us through though.
We passed a well in the desert.
We negotiated the dune obstacles ok on our own and made it to Mos Espa, the fictional town from Tatooine where Anakin Skywalker was from. We were the only tourists there. This is usually a good thing but this time it meant there was nobody else to distract the camel ride guys, the shop owners and the touts in general. After a while they gave up though.
The original set buildings were awesome! I love the way they were made of the same sandy coloured materials as the desert around them.
I can see why they chose this site to film. It's located just where the dunes begin. The desert scenery was wild.
What fabulous experiences we had in the desert!
Heather and John :)
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