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.