As I continue to try and update my blog with what I have been up to the past several weeks I figure at the very least I can put some photos up so anyone who is interested can at least see what I've been doing.

Trip to South Tunisia
More Tunisia photos

The next morning we woke up at the insanely early hour of 5:45am (this is vacation after all) so we could see the sun rise over the Sand Dunes of the Sahara along with the remnants of the Mos Isley Spaceport (from Star Wars). The Mos Isley set was just that, a Hollywood set, but it was quite impressive that it has survived this long in the middle of the Sahara desert. It was also neat to see Hollywood magic at work since in the movie Mos Isley definitely seemed more futuristic and impressive than it is in real-life.




As an aside for any Star Wars fans, a lot of the locations from the original movie (Episode IV) were filmed on location in Tunisia and many of the sets are still standing today. More interesting though is not only did George Lucas use Tunisia for locations but a lot of the background and story for the series was stolen directly from Tunisian culture including the Sandman and Jawa outfits and even names of places like Tatouin which is a city in Southern Tunisia. Oh, and in case any of you were wondering, yes, I am a nerd...

After our sojourn into the desert we returned to the hotel to pick up the rest of the tour-group who were not interested enough in Star Wars to justify waking up that early and then we continued on ouur way. After a couple of smaller stops we got to the southern most city in Tunisia called Douz. Fortunately, our trip coincided with the annual Berber Camel festival where the local people celebrate their heritage through parades and skill demonstrations including horseback riding, camel racing, music and food which we got to enjoy.




In addition to the festival while in Douz we also went on a camel ride into the Sahara and ate lunch in a Bedouin tent.




The next morning was the last day of our trip south. We started early and headed to the Mos Isley Cantina (also from Star Wars) which George Lucas made from a converted Troglodyte residence and which is currently is a tourist hotel.


The Troglodytes are the local people in the South of Tunisia who rather than building homes above ground lived in caves that they carved directly into mountains. After visiting the Cantina we went to the home of an actual Troglodyte family who still live in the traditional style to see what their life was like.


After the Troglodyte visit we were back on the bus for the eight hour return trip to Tunis. On the return trip we had just one stop at El Jem, the best preserved and largest Roman ruin in all of Africa. El Jem is the third largest Roman amphitheater still standing and one of the 10 largest ever built.




From El Jem we returned to Tunis and I decided it was going to be several weeks before I set foot near a bus again!

The next morning I woke up just in time to miss breakfast (which I heard later was probably for the best....) and soon after we were back on the bus for a 45 minute drive to get to a tourist train that was to take us around an area of the country with some nice landscapes. Despite the fact that we got to the train 45 minutes early it was already very full making it standing room only (although we did manage to get decent spots near some windows) and after only an hour and a half of waiting the train finally got underway. Later we learned that the delay was because several family members of Ben Ali (the semi-permanent President and somewhat authoritarian leader of Tunisia) decided to take the train and of course the train couldn't leave them behind despite their being so late. During the ride the train made a couple of stops at various panoramic views and on the way back a lot of our group managed to secure actual seats.




The train itself was quite nice having been built in the early part of the century for the French aristocracy and after Tunisian independence it was shoved into storage, only recently being revived for its current role of tourist train. Another interesting aspect of the train is it was still laid out in its original style so rather than regular bench seats, each car had its own style with a mixture of comfortable sofas and plush chairs. Even the light fixtures and details in the woodwork were quite artistic and still survived from the trains former glory days.


At the end of the train-ride our group split up into a number of Land Cruisers that were waiting for us at the station since the driving throughout the rest of the day involved going off-road. The first stop was at a beautiful hotel where we had lunch, although due to our earlier train-delays we didn't get there until 3:30pm so we were all starved by the time we sat down. By the time we left the restaurant it was 4:30pm and we still had three other stops planned and each of these stops were a decent distance from each other so obviously something had to give...

The first stop after lunch was the “Grand Canyon” of Tunisia. Despite its name this canyon was not nearly as Grand as you'd imagine but it was still a nice site where we spent about 15 minutes so we could at least attempt to see one of the other planned sites for the day.


The next stop was a vista overlooking the start of the Sahara from the top of some mountains. Unfortunately, since we got to the viewpoint 20 minutes after sunset we missed most of the view but even with just the afterglow of the sun it was still quite an impressive landscape (it was the same place that was used in the opening scenes of The English Patient). Since the sun had already set we didn't even bother trying to see the waterfall filled oasis which had been scheduled as our third stop for the day.

The day after Christmas I went on a four day trip to Southern Tunisia with a group of about 45 U.S. Embassy employees, families and friends. Unfortunately, Andrea found out just a few days prior to the trip that she had to work on the 29th making it impossible for her to join us. The trip started early in the morning on the 26th with a LOT of driving (7 painful hours to be specific), but on the bright-side we stopped every couple of hours at various sites which broke up the monotony quite a bit and the bus wasn't completely full which meant I could stretch out in two seats. Even better, the crowd from the embassy were a really nice and down-to-earth group of people that was fun to hang out with.

The first stop of the day was a town called Kairouan which is known as the "spiritual capital" of Tunisia. Kairouan has what is apparently the first mosque, and actually the first Arab building in all of Tunisia (and I believe North Africa). The Mosque was pretty cool as it was built with over 600 foraged roman columns that the Arabs had collected from all over the country making the mosque in essence also a museum of Roman columns.



Apart from that Mosque we made a few other stops in the city including a visit to the Medina which was kind of pathetic since its only claim to fame was a well in a small room where a very sad camel walks in a circle to get water that supposedly “comes from Mecca”.


The final stop in Kairouan was a Mausoleum for a famous Islamic historical figure (someone who was the Prophets barber and “best friend”). The mauseleum was built in the 18th century in Andalusian style and it was somewhat interesting but not nearly as nice as a lot of things in present day Andalusia.

After Kairouan we had lunch and then it was back in the bus for a few more hours of driving before we got to the ruins of the town of Sbeitla. The ruins were quite cool, and what was most impressive was how you could see the history behind the town's transformation from one religion to another over time based on the architectural remains. After about an hour or so at the site we were off again for the final stretch of two hours to our hotel.

Since Andrea unfortunately had to work on Christmas Eve I joined up with some of her friend's (Matt and Laura) along with Matt's mom who was in town for the holidays for some more sight-seeing. The first stop for the day was a town on the east coast of Tunisia called Nabeul that is known for its handicrafts (pottery, baskets, etc.). The main reason for this stop was to visit a basket weavers workshop owned by the family member of one of Matt's Arabic teachers. Unfortunately, since road names, and road signs aren't really used or even seem to exist in Tunisia we spent a good hour wandering around looking for the shop unsuccessfully before we just gave up and had lunch.

After lunch we continued south to an ancient Roman city called Oudna and somehow, like every other Roman site in Tunisia we had the entire place to ourselves. We started the explorations by wandering through a Roman ampitheater where we had complete freedom to go everywhere including the catacombs underneath the structure (where the animals were kept prior to their release in gladiatorial contests).



Some of the other highlights of Oudna included the remnants of the old Roman Capital.



The remains of a Hammam that had been bombed during WWII but which we still managed to find our way down inside to the basement sections where light was pouring in and reflecting off the mosaics still intact on the floors and walls.


What made the visit even more striking was the incredible sunset that we witnessed at the end of our visit.




After finishing up at the main Oudna site we drove a couple more miles to get to an amazing set of aqueducts that during the Roman era was used to provide water for Tunis. We were able to actually climb up inside the aqueducts and walk for probably a quarter mile down the channel that used to be used for water. Amazing.


The one very sad thing from this site was the obvious disregard the Tunisians show for their Roman heritage. The aquaducts which at one point in time were probably 50 miles or longer (stretching from the mountains to present-day Tunis) had been dynamited repeatedly for convenience sake regardless of the impact on these impressive ruins. For example, at the section of the aqueducts which we crawled through it should have been possible to go 2 or 3 times further except that the a large section of this 2000+ year old monument was blown-up to make it easier for train tracks to pass through rather than just adjusting the tracks so the trains could pass through one of the aqueduct's arches.

I am now a little over two weeks into my trip and I am finally posting something to this blog. Actually, I have been writing regular posts which I have posted below but have had some serious challenges getting access to WiFi so I could upload them from my laptop to the site. I finally was able to connect at my friend Andrea's house so there are 5 or 6 new postings below this one.

As you can probably imagine from the posts below I am having a great time thus far on my trip. I have also uploaded some additional pictures to Picasa which you can find at the below links:

http://picasaweb.google.com/steven.holzer/BlogPhotosMorocco#
http://picasaweb.google.com/steven.holzer/BlogPhotosTunisia#

Since it was the weekend and Andrea still hadn't seen a lot of the nearby tourist attractions in Tunisia we decided to take off for Dougga, a site of Roman ruins located about two and a half hours from Tunis.

After a relatively late start on the day as we were trying to get things together (including tracking down some maps) we finally were on the road at around 11:30am. Unfortunately, not knowing the city at all, the route that I picked took us through downtown Tunis where we encountered horrible traffic. Eventually we gave up on the downtown route and tried to get out of the city on another highway but in the process we got very turned around and ended up getting quite lost. This didn't make Andrea particularly happy as we were driving around some marginal neighborhoods of Tunis in her car with foreign plates. Finally, through a combination of the GPS on my phone (which didn't have any Tunisian maps, just compass functionality), our maps and various road signs we found the highway that we needed.

After driving for another hour and a half we realized that somehow we missed the turnoff for Dougga but at the same time noticed that we were only 45 minutes away from Bulla Regia, (the main set of ruins we unsuccessfully tried to visit on the trip up North where we drowned the Jeep). So, after a minor change in itinerary and about 3.5 hours on the road we made it to Bulla Regia! The ruins at Bulla Regia were amazing and we were literally the only people on the entire site which further added to the experience.



Even better, since we were the only ones there we were able to wander around the ruins with Murphey (Andrea's Bernese Mountain Dog).



Right after we got to the site we were met by a tour guide who did a great job of giving us the history of the site as well as showing us the specific highlights and stories behind a lot of the buildings. The most remarkable aspect of the ruins was definitely the gigantic mosaics that are still in perfect condition on the floors of these houses from probably 1500 years ago.



We left Bulla Regia around after sunset in order to get back to Tunis at a reasonable hour. It was only after we got back to Andrea's and we checked our email that Andrea found a message from a friend of her's who we had invited to join us on the trip. In his message Andrea's friend indicated that he couldn't make it but would loved to have come since he had already tried unsuccessfully to go to Dougga on three separate occasions but failed each time since he never successfully managed to navigate his way out of Tunis. This definitely made me feel better about my navigation skills...

Once again it has been quite a while since I have posted some updates but for some reason I keep finding other things to do while traveling than sitting in front of my computer and writing. So, once more I will say that I'll try to update this a little more frequently in the future and who knows, maybe I'll succeed.

Anyways, after a little over a week in Morocco I came back to Tunis once more so I would be able to join Andrea at a formal event with the Tunisian American Chamber of Commerce. The event had in attendance all of the executives of just about every significant Tunisian and international company with operations in Tunisia. Unfortunately, with my lack of Arabic and French and no solid background on Tunisian business it wasn't the most exciting event out there (not to mention I am on vacation). Fortunately, Andrea introduced me to several of her colleagues so I spent most of the evening talking with them over the unbearably loud Traditional Tunisian band that was playing in the background while eating some extremely mediocre (read as bad) banquet food.

After spending a few days wandering around Casablanca and Rabat I headed over to Fez which is an absolutely amazing city. The town of Fez is dominated by the old Medina and it is basically a city out of the past. The transportation and shipping of goods around the town is accomplished with mules and you'd be lucky to find a building that was constructed within the past 500 years. In fact, the entire pace of life seems not to have changed in centuries and it was great spending several days just wandering around, exploring and taking photos.




After spending a lot of time in the old Medina, I decided on my last day in town to explore the Fez El-Jdid or new Fez, which is called “new” since it wasn't built until the 13th century unlike the “old Fez” which has been around since 800 AD. This Fez was actually built because the Sultan at the time was a bit paranoid and he decided he was better off building his own fortified city right next to the actual city of Fez and filling it with Syrian Mercenaries

One of the more interesting aspects of Fez El-Jdid's history is that the Sultan at the time had a penchant for jews so he encouraged thousands of jews to come to his new-town which developed into a thriving community or Mellah. So, in my search for the Mellah I must have seemed a little bit lost and a random Moroccan man asked me in Arabic if I needed help (at least I assume that is what he asked me), then again in French (which I also don't know), and finally in some broken English. We started talking for a while and he invited me into his very modest home for tea. Tea, eventually became breakfast and eventually he invited me back to join him and his wife Fatima, his 12 year old son Rachid and his 17 year old daughter Afaf for lunch later that afternoon.

After that pleasant distraction I continued my quest for the Mellah and once again I guess I looked lost, foreign, or both because someone asked me if I was looking for something. Coincidentally, the person unprompted mentioned he was a part of one of the 100 remaining jewish families in Fez and if I was interested he would give me a tour of the old Jewish quarter. I accepted and then had a quick tour of an incredibly run-down section of town including seeing the old Jewish cemetary and several synagogues. The most fascinating part was the huge differences in architectural styles between the Jewish and Arab buildings. Despite the fact that both sets of buildings were built at the same time, in the same place for the same purposes the Jewish buildings universally had windows and balconies that faced the streets outside while almost all of the Arab residences were built with an inner-courtyard which all of the rooms faced into. I'm not quite sure what the anthropological impacts of this are, but it seemed really interesting nonetheless.


After the tour was finished I continued exploring the rest of Fez El-Jdid before heading back to the family I met earlier to join them for lunch. Based on my request the family prepared couscous with chicken and I got back in time to get some very rudimentary Moroccan cooking lessons as well as a crash-course in how to eat when invited to a Moroccan's house. A couple of tips for anyone else who may find themselves in a similar situation:

1) There are no plates, napkins, tablecloths, or concerns of hygiene
2) Everyone eats out of the common serving platter with a spoon and anything that you can't handle with a spoon should be eaten with your fingers
3) Any inedible things (bone, grissle, etc.) just place on the table in front of you
4) What do you need a napkin for when you've got bread that can sop up any grease off your fingers
5) Homemade food somehow is always better than at a restaurant



So, after a delicious meal I took off to pick up my bag at my hotel and went to catch a train to Meknes, another former capital of Morocco that doesn't have quite as much of a tourist pull as Fez, so I thought it would be fun to explore without having the dozens of street-touts bugging me that were present in Fez.

I got to Meknes around 4:00pm and checked into the Hotel Marok, which is definitely one of the bigger dumps I have stayed in during the course of my travels. In addition to having literally 10 people camped out in the room next to me, the hotel had no heat (and it was about 40 degrees outside at night), and not only no hot-water but no water at all! I guess, not all $10/night hotels are created equal...

After checking into the hotel I wandered around the Medina of Meknes exploring and enjoying the fact that I was one of the only tourists around. I eventually got dinner from a street vendor of a ground meat sandwich along with some pastries from a little bakery down the road. I finally got back to my room around 9:00pm and getting as bundled up as I could in my freezing room I started sorting through all the photos I had taken thus far until around 1:00am.

After getting to Morocco we checked into a special type of hotel called a Riad, based on a suggestion from Sanaa. Riad's are traditional Arabic homes that are built around an inner-courtyard and are frequently decorated with ornate and beautiful designs and patterns, we decided to stay at the “Riad Dar Al Kounouz”. The Riad was great, it was beautiful, had great service and an amazing location in the heart of the old Medina.


After checking in we spent most of the day wandering around the Medina and visiting the main square of the city called Djemaa El-Fna. This square was quite cool as it is a jumble of everything from food vendors, to snake charmers, to traditional story-tellers, to acrobats all at the same time. A very unique place to say the least.





Since Andrea was only in country for two nights we decided to splurge and went to one of the fanciest restaurants in the city for dinner. The food was quite good, the building and ambiance was amazing and the traditional live music in the background just added to the atmosphere.

After a painfully early 7:00am flight to Casablanca that involved waking up at 4:30am (not the way to spend your vacation), we landed at around 9:30am. After we landed we spoke to Sanaa and based on her recommendation made a last minute change of plan to split the weekend up between Marrakech and Casablanca (instead of the whole weekend in Casablanca). In order to get this to work out we decided to rent a car right-away at the airport and drive the two-hours straight to Marrakech.

After spending 45 minutes haggling with National Rental Car over prices (which in Morocco unfortunately doesn't have a Booz & Co. Rate...) we ended up getting the most beat up POS car you can imagine called a Dacia Logan. The sheet of paper that they use to record pre-existing damage on the car wasn't particularly useful since by the time we had gone all the way around the vehicle there were more pen marks on the sheet than white-space. Finally, once the administrative hassles were out-of-the-way, the rental-car guy mentioned to us that we'd need to get gas immediately, and then we were off to Marrakech.

Or at least we thought we were off. The car made it as far as the opposite side of the airport traffic circle (maybe 1/4th of a mile) and the engine started stuttering, and within a few seconds it died altogether. On the bright side, since the car died so quickly we were only a 10 minute walk to the airport terminal. So, Andrea being the trooper that she is (and because she speaks French...) was off to try and remedy this situation (keep in mind she only has 2 days in Morocco).

About 20 minutes later Andrea returns and soon after that the rental-car people arrive in a van and another somehow even more beat-up Dacia Logan (which I didn't think was possible). Even more amazingly the gas tank on this “new car” was just as low as in the previous one! It was then that I realized that someone at the rental car agency has built himself a a nice side-business of draining the gas-tanks to empty when tourists return the cars above zero and selling the “extra” fuel on the black market. I also decided at this moment that I would outsmart them at their own game and return the car just as empty as when we got it! As you can probably imagine, Andrea wasn't particularly happy with this plan...

Now that we were off for the second time we insisted that the van follow us to the gas station to ensure we had enough fuel to make it, and despite the fact that we were cruising on fumes at the end we were able to fill up the car and hit-the-road down to Marrakech.

Just to keep everyone in the loop, there has been a slight change of plans with my travels. One of the main reasons I started my trip to North Africa/Middle East in Tunisia is because my friend Andrea lives in Tunis and she offered that I could use her place as a basecamp for different segments of my trip. Originally Andrea was planning to be in Tunis for a two year assignment but after about six months in-country she just found out that her role will be ending next month. This means that a lot of the traveling she was planning to do over the next year and a half has to be accelerated and as such she invited me along with her to Casablanca to visit Sanaa, a Moroccan friend of hers from Business School.

Since Andrea still has to actually go to work (unlike myself ;-) ) she can only visit Morocco for a long weekend while I can then hang out for another 5 days before returning to Tunis. The reason I have to head back that quickly is I already signed up for a couple of activities in Tunisia starting on the 19th including a black-tie dinner with the who's who of the Tunisian business world as well as a trip around the south of the country with a bunch of people from her work. Besides, if there is still a bunch of stuff I want to see in Morocco after I leave then I can always head back...

The next day we woke up early as we had still quite a few places we wanted to visit before heading back to Tunis. We hung out for a couple of hours in Tabarka spending most of our time exploring a cool fortress that is not normally open to the public (one of the people working on the renovation of it gave us a tour).



After that it was off to the main destination, the Roman ruins of Bulla Regia. At this point since the jeep had successfully navigated around 70 miles on a combination of very rough roads and later on a highway at high speeds we had assumed that it had made it through our little adventure unscathed. Unfortunately, we were wrong.

About an hour into our drive to the ruins (and about 10 miles from the Algerian border), the Jeep's transmission skipped. Soon after that as we were driving through the main road of a tiny one-road town called Babouche when we noticed smoke coming from the hood of the car. We immediately stopped both vehicles and when we opened the hood we saw flames shooting out from the engine of the car. Without a fire-extinguisher handy Matt and I just ran back and started dumping all of the bottles of water we had accrued during the trip onto the fire in the hopes it wasn't oil based (which it fortunately wasn't) until we had the fire out. After we no longer were worried about the immediate risk of the flaming car we then focused on the pool of pink fluid leaking from under the hood of the car which Matt correctly guessed to be transmission fluid.

Needless to say this flaming car caused quite a commotion and we were soon surrounded by half the town with everyone looking at and being quite amused by the silly Westerners. Fortunately, our entertainment value only lasted for a short while and after about an hour the crowds had dispersed.

At this point everyone basically decided that our adventures were over so we gave up and called to have the Jeep towed back to Tunis (3 hours away). During the 2 hours we were sitting around waiting for the tow-truck we cracked open a couple of bottles of wine which was a good thing for Katherine and Matt since it helped them sleep on the way back to Tunis while they were stuck in the cab of the tow truck, whose driver was happy to take twisting turns on precarious mountain passes in a fully-loaded tow-truck at much faster speeds than we were comfortable with in the lowly Isuzu.

At the end of the day we made it back to Matt and Laura's without any further incidents and we spent the evening eating enchiladas and reliving our little Tunisian adventure.