South Trip Part III

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!