South trip part II

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.