June 26
We meet up again with Hafsa and Zainab, who are dressed even more liberally than before — who cross the road with us to an another touristy shop, and through a mixture of browbeating and flirtation, haggle the poor confused shopkeeper down to about a fifth of his asking price for our faux-bijoux and other gifts for the good folks back home. The shopkeeper looks pretty irritated towards the end, and if this is all a ruse to make us think we’ve gotten a great deal, it’s a damn good one. We head back to the sisters’ shop, where I’d seen a Tunisian soccer jersey I liked, and they give it to me for a probably-inflated but still reasonable 20 dinars — about 17$ and a third off the sticker price. For the rest of the day they lead us through town, the highlight being a huge museum that takes visitors through the stages of human civilization, beginning with australopithecus and ending with the pinnacle of human achievement: Islam. As biased an interpretation of history as it was, I was impressed at least by the nod to a five-billion-year-old Earth — if not by the portrayal of Eve as the evil destroyer of mankind’s virtue.
By the end of the day, we still don’t know what to make of Hafsa and Zainab — the boys and young men in the streets stare and hassle them regularly, and I wonder how much abuse they put up with when they’re not walking around with three friends, two of whom are guys.
June 27
Up early for our excursion into the *real* Sahara, we have breakfast on the roof of our hotel and meet a 50-something couple from Long Island over our “continental breakfast” of muffins and watery brownish coffee. Mark and Darlene explain that they’ve sailed here from Malta, and that Mark’s successful alarm system company allows them to sail around the world for six months each year. Incidentally, he says as he gives me his card, if I’m ever in the market for an alarm system, he’s the guy to call.
We part ways and set out to find a car and driver for our excursion into the heart of the Sahara: Ksar Gilane, a remote oasis and the site of an ancient Roman fort. Why the Romans thought it was a good idea to build a fort in the middle of a barren wasteland, I have no idea. After a couple of stops at tour company offices, we stumble across Mark and Darlene again, and and we decide to travel together.
We’re introduced to Abdullah, our driver, and after a quick stop for (lots of) water we’re bounding down the highway and into the Jerid — the famous salt flats that cover a huge swath of land in southern Tunisia, and that until recently were deemed too dangerous to cross in a single car on account of the scorching heat, the utter remoteness of the place, and the complete lack of drinkable water or any life of any kind. The salt permeates everything here, and though the land is devoid of plants and animals, it’s just spectacular to see: 360 degrees of salt as far as the eye can see, with only a thin strip of pavement to show that humans have been here. Amazingly, an hour into this beautiful wasteland we stop at a lone souvenir shop, exactly smack dab in the middle of nowhere. The owner has no electricity or running water, no apparent way of getting to town, and from look of the traffic on this road (we’ve passed only tanker trucks so far) no other customers today. But he’s here just the same, hawking pretty rocks and postcards with his son in what has got to be one of the most remote tourist traps on Earth.
We get moving again, and the salt flats slowly give way to scrub, with a few hardy weeds pushing their way into the desolate landscape. More hours of nothingness fly past, and we finally pull into Ksar Gilane with the sun hanging low and red in the sky. This is the real Sahara — with the dunes you see in movies and on postcards, and all the majesty and solitude that so many of the Earth’s great places share. We drop our bags our tent hotel while Abdullah goes to pray, and he returns just in time to take us out to the dunes for one of the most memorable sunsets of my life. To get us to the perfect spot, Abdullah takes us off-road over the dunes, with the Land Cruiser screeching in protest and crazy dance music blaring on the stereo. On a particularly big dune, as good a spot as any for watching sunsets, the truck\s back tires bury themselves in the sand, and we get out with just one instruction from Abdullah: avoid the shadowy areas beside big dunes, because deadly scorpions like to hunt in cool places. Good advice.
I don’t have the words to do justice to a sunset on a clear night in the Sahara. But if you ever have a chance to see it, trust me: postpone that all-inclusive Dominican vacation for just one more year and head for the desert. You will not regret it.
June 28-29
The hotel is our first taste of luxury in Tunisia, and while its “five-star” rating is dubious at best, our (mercifully) air-conditioned tent is only slightly mouldy, and the scrumptious buffet meals, fully stocked bar and in-ground pool are a far cry from the two-star places we’ve stayed in so far. This place is also about five times the price, and though the beds aren’t any more comfortable than they were in Tunis and Tozeur, we don’t actually do much sleeping here — at 4:30 a.m. we stagger out of our tents to see a dawn that’s almost as glorious as the sunset the night before.
After a huge breakfast, we’re off again on a two-day whirlwind tour of various Roman, Berber and other southern Tunisian ruins, including the troglodyte homes in Tataouine, made famous by the Star Wars movies shot here. We also spend an afternoon in the ancient Berber city of Chenini, an impregnable fortress town carved into a mountain face that has withstood attack after attack throughout the ages, and even bombings from French aircraft during Tunisia’s struggle for independence. June 28 and 29 are frankly a blur of ruins, sleepiness and “traveller’s distress.” The ruins are beautiful, but they’re surely prettier to see than they are to read about.
We head back north, and Abdullah brings us to the industrial city of Gabès, at the southern tip of Tunisia’s rail network. Mark and Darlene are riding to Monastir, where their boat is docked, but R, P and I get off at El Jem, home to the world’s third largest Roman colosseum, with a warm invitation to spend the following night on their yacht.
As it turns out, El Jem’s only hotel — the Julius — is closed for renovations, and has been for some five years or so. So we take an overpriced taxi the 5km to a hotel outside of town — the prettiest shithole of a hotel I’ve ever had the confused displeasure to stay in. The grounds are beautiful, with a pool, immaculate, gardens, and reams of marble, mosaics and ornate arabesque decor. But the rooms are dumps, the bathrooms are filthy, the “satellite TV” picks up only Kuwaiti and Saudi channels, and the AC pumps out warm, foul-smelling air. Seriously, barring a miraculous re-opening of the Hotel Julius, if you ever head to El Jem, it’s best to make it a day trip.
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