Trip to the North-West of Tunisia

We woke up early to get a jumpstart on the day for our camping trip up to the North West of Tunisia (close to the Algerian border) with Andrea's friends Matt, Laura and Katherine. One of the main reasons why we decided to go camping was everyone had off work for the Islamic holiday Eid Al-Adha, which is a holiday that is focused around every family buying a live sheep and then slaughtering it (frequently in their front yards). So, since Andrea and her friends had been hearing sheeps bleating pretty much continuously for the previous several days they decided that they wanted to be as far from civilization as possible when the entire population of Tunisia decided to become amateur butchers.

In addition to the five of us going on this trip we also brought along Murphey (Andrea's 75lb Bernese Mountain Dog), Keira (Matt and Laura's 80lb German Shepard) and Pepsi (Katherine's ~40lb dog). Since we had such a full-load of people and critters we decided to take both Matt and Laura's 15 year old Isuzu SUV and Katherine's brand new Jeep Wrangler

After about 2 hours of driving we made it to our first destination which was a town called Bizert. Once there we let the dogs run around and play a bit along the beach while we admired the views from the “Cape Bizert”. After we had enough of stretching our legs/paws we decided to continue on to the next stop, a secluded little fishing village called Cape Serrat that was located on what was supposedly an amazing beach. Unfortunately, after an hour and a half of driving we kept finding ourselves right back in front of a massive prison compound that was about 15 minutes away from Cape Bizert (this prison hopefully is not foreshadowing later parts of my trip...). After our third loop around the prison we gave up and decided to get some lunch back in Bizert.



Back in town we found a great little hotel restaurant that had great Tunisian food and even better, they were willing to sell us some beer to take with us to drink at night while we were camping. Not only that but the proprietors of the restaurant were also able to set us up with good directions to Cape Serrat and we were finally on our way (and only 2 hours late). After two more hours of driving through some amazing landscapes of cork-trees and open fields we finally arrived. The entire place was deserted of tourists since tourist season ended in September and the only people around were a couple of locals who were somewhat perplexed to see a bunch of white people showing up in the middle of winter.

At this point we decided to drive down the beach a bit to find a good place to set up camp. The beach however had a channel carved down the middle of it parallel to the coast line from when the tide came up. The channel didn't look particularly deep and it appeared like crossing it would be the only way to get somewhere a little more private to set up our camp. Besides, Katherine had just bought her Wrangler and was itching to test-out its 4 wheel drive capabilities. So, Katherine and Andrea crossed the channel in the Jeep without any problem and started exploring the beach. The rest of us in the Isuzu weren't as comfortable with the river crossing though as the water went up quite deep on the Jeep and we were afraid the Isuzu's lower clearance might cause some problems.

Once Katherine came back from exploring the other side of the beach they decided to try crossing the channel at a different point that appeared to be shallower which would hopefully be an easier path for the Isuzu to follow. The Jeep went into the water and within seconds had submerged above the tires and all the way up to the hood! Katherine slammed it in reverse but the car was completely stuck and since the car had no snorkel it was in serious danger of the engine flooding and being completely stuck in the Mediterranean sea's salt-water. To make matters worse, night was fast approaching and since we were so far out in the middle of nowhere it would take hours for any sort of help to be able to reach us.

As soon as Matt and I realized what was happening we tried to jerry-rig some tow-straps to get the Jeep out of the Sea. Matt went over to the Jeep to try and see how bad the situation was while I ran over to some fishing boats to find some line that could be used to pull the car back to land. By the time I had found some pretty weak looking rope Matt was back and looking for carabiners which fortunately we had both brought along. We strapped up the cars and almost immediately after putting pressure on the rope, it snapped. By this time our little adventure had attracted the attention of the remnants of the town and we had a couple of people over trying to help us. A few minutes later I found a significantly thicker rope attached to a boat anchor. I removed the anchor and Matt hooked it up to the cars again and this time when we attempted the tow, the rope held.


Once the Jeep was out of the water we could see just how precarious the situation had been. The air-filter was completely soaked through and there is no way that it would have been able to permit air to flow to the engine for more than just a few more minutes. We also could see that the air intake was above the water level by less than an inch meaning any little bit of settling would have resulted in the engine flooding with salt-water. However, amazingly other than the soaked air filter a mostly detached piece of plastic undercarriage cover and the inside of the car being completely flooded with water, the Jeep was in amazingly good shape. Even more amazingly one of the guys who came over to watch/help us get the car out of the water was a mechanic who helped us make sure the Jeep was back in operable condition.

Needless to say that by this point in time it was getting dark, we hadn't started setting up camp, nor had we put together dinner. On the bright-side Matt, Laura and Katherine were all in Tunisia studying Arabic and Andrea spoke French so we were able to communicate at least on a fairly basic level with the locals. At first we were just extraordinarily grateful so we offered them the beer which we had purchased from the restaurant earlier (and they eagerly accepted). They then insisted on preparing our food for us (using the food we had brought for camping), and suggested we set-up our camp right out front of their hangout by the water.

Pretty quickly though we started to get quite nervous especially as several of them became uncomfortably “forward” with the women in our group. What made us further cautious is that Tunisia is a very family-centric culture, and it is not that common to have a group of six unmarried men in their 20s, 30s and 40s, especially considering that we were there in the middle of an important holiday which people would normally spend with their families. On top of that the locals brought out some moonshine and were very adamant that we take one of our cars 20 minutes away to buy more beer for them. Given the situation we we couldn't imagine that alcohol would improve things but we didn't have much choice. Lets just say we were all quite happy that we had brought along our own pack of fairly large dogs as company (particularly as Tunisians tend to be fearful of dogs).

Fortunately, Matt and Andrea made it back from the beer-run without any problems and soon after they returned our dinner was ready. The food was actually fairly decent and once we had finished eating we made it clear to our hosts that we would not be camping there that night. Apart from us having to pay a pretty hefty sum for dinner (which was made mostly with our food and which fed the 6 locals as well) there were no problems with our leaving and we took off to our next stop of Tabarka.

While everyone was happy with our decision to leave we were still in a rather awkward situation. Instead of staying in tents with the sketchy locals, we now had to drive 2 hours on pretty horrible roads, with a car that just came out of the sea, in pitch black with the hope of finding some hotel in a tourist town during the off-season who would be willing to take 5 random Americans and three large dogs (remember dogs aren't liked in Tunisia). Fortunately, other than one random suicidal cat that tried unsuccessfully to end things for himself (and us) by jumping out in front of the car while we were crossing a bridge, the drive to Tabarka went by without any problems.

The difficulties began though when we tried to find a place to stay. We drove by virtually every hotel (at least a dozen) that we could find and 2/3rds of them were closed for the season and the remaining ones wouldn't even let us leave the dogs in the cars in their parking lots much less take them up to the rooms. Finally, Andrea got through by phone to a hotel in the city-centre who said they would be able to help us out. The hotel turned out to be fairly nice and very well located (and the manager got quite a nice tip for hooking us up) so on just the second day of my vacation I was already well into quite an interesting adventure.