After two weeks of travelling in Algeria we are now going to Tunisia which is situated on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, midway between the Atlantic Ocean and the Nile Delta. It is bordered by Algeria on the west and Libya on the south east. The weather in the north of the country has mild rainy winters and hot, dry summers and the south is desert.
From Monday until Wednesday we are going to make a trip through the desert. As you know thousands of little animals and insects live at night so hopefully we will not be attacked or plagued by them in the middle of the night!
Wish us good luck and after these three days we will write a whole report on our blog as we do not have any Internet in the desert.
Kiss from us all!
Hello darlings, we are back in the civilized world where we finally can have a proper shower and some normal food!
Off course you are all wondering how are three-day trip through the desert has been. Well so far this side of Tunisia has been fabulous! Before we could go to the Sahara (= desert) we were heading out to Tozeur, which is the gateway to it and we spent there our first day.
Tozeur is an oasis town, and contains a large palmary (= palm tree plantation). In Tunisia, you measure the strength of an oasis by the number of palm trees you can plant. According to the locals, this one possesses about 322-483 kilometers of area with 200,000 palm trees. The temperature in this city is normally very hot (± 37°C in July) and due to the heat everything shuts down in the afternoon and opens up again at night. But in March the weather is not too hot and not too cold or rainy. We could enjoy spending our time because it was about 20°C. Another important reason why we liked being here was because the people were really friendly, and the food was better than in the other countries. They serve French food and as France is bordered by Belgium we are a bit used to these types of menus.
Tozeur is also famous for its ornate brickwork. They build their buildings with some bricks sticking out, to form cool patterns and this gives a 3-dimensional look to the wall. Logically this is quite impressive! According to our guide Ali, this brickwork only exists in Tozeur and Nefta, a nearby town.
On our tour we also got to see some ruined towns. Ali told us that the Tunisians used to build their villages out of mud bricks which were perfectly safe, except when it rained. These people live in a desert so probably you think that it does not rain here. Well, that is not true: one day, in 1969, they had 12 continuous days of rain, and all the villages completely disappeared! Afterwards the population moved elsewhere, built more mud brick houses but a few years later this misery happened again! Eventually they learnt to use brickwork and now they do not worry anymore about the fact that rain will destroy their houses.
Today we could stay with a local family and they cooked a wonderful meal for us. We talked a lot and had some tea before going to bed. Unfortunately the beds were uncomfortable
because they were very hard, the mattresses were not like the ones we are used to! Nevertheless we slept well.
On our second day we headed out to see Ong Jemal (neck of the camel) which is a scenic part of the Sahara, and features a rather prominent rocky outcrop that looks like the neck of a camel, hence the name.
Actually there are quite a lot of camels in Ong Jamal and we got the opportunity to make a trip on them. That was HILARIOUS! When you want to get on that animal, he has to sit down; so he has to bow through his knees and then you can climb on his back in a saddle. The most funniest moment of all is when he has to get up again. First he bends forward but it is like you are falling off him and then suddenly he “jumps” on his hind legs. Then we were ready to leave but I swear, 15 minutes later we were still laughing because it was incredibly funny! We made a long trip and got to see beautiful places which are only accessible with camels or horses and not with cars.
When the evening was falling we cooked our own dinner in mess-tins, which was weird because we never did that before. Afterwards we placed our tents which luckily had mosquito nets, to protect us against insects.
On our last day of the three-day trip through the Sahara we went to Mos Espa. This was another big highlight as this is the place where several Star Wars episodes have been filmed.
Thankfully our guide was fabulous and gave us time enough to enjoy the amazing and breathtaking sights around us. We did not know that someone could talk so much about sand but he did and actually we must admit that it was very interesting.
When the night was falling we were a bit sad because it was our last evening in the desert and we had become friends with Ali and now we had to leave him. After having had dinner, we watched the beautiful sunset while toasting some marshmallows which Ali gave to us as a farewell gift to enjoy our last evening.
We had a great evening and are looking forward to the next cities we are going to visit.
See you soon!!
Leen -xx-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvZRHCz3PwE&feature=related
video of Luke Skywalker’s house in Star Wars
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