Touzir to Gabes
Pictire: The 'Belvedere' Rock
Click here to see our Ofoto album from Touzir
Last we wrote we were in Sfax, a very pleasant town with a small town feel and a sprawling old medina with tiny alleys crowded with shoppers and venders operating from traditional stalls and shops. This activity was mostly behind the imposing intact walls of the old town. The exotic atmosphere was supplemented by the genuine friendliness of the people there, a combination I found recently in the old souq of Alexandria. I'll add Sfax to my list of places Westerners can go in the Arab world to recapture the sites, smells, and flavor of the old traditions along with the spirit of hospitality still found in most places in the Arab world. On the down side we had been kept up late at night by raucus wedding parties vibrating the walls of our hotel.
We left Sfax around noon in the mood for a long journey, but sat for an hour in the heat of a stagnant louage waiting for passengers to Gafsa, a town in the south west of Tunisia, not well portrayed in Lonely Planet. We later found from talking to locals that this would be an interesting region if one were to have one's own transport, but in our case, going by public shared louage, the journey was tedious. Our destination was Touzir, requiring a cange in Gafsa at the end of a three hour ride, with an hour and a half to go. The scenery was reminiscent of Oman or Morocco where the two are similar, nothing unusual for us, not unlike Arizona or new Mexico, scrub lands stretching to distant low, bare hills, not all that picturesque.
We arrived in Touzir still with the heat of late afternoon. We came in one of the roads mentioned in LPG and passed one of the hotels we were thinking of staying in. When the louage stopped a km or two further on, we walked back to it, passing through the center of town where we checked out a hotel for 10 dirhams each, and we could have had our pick of rooms. We considered taking two not right on the noisy street, but decided to continue to the place recommended by the LPG. This place had one room for three, 6 dinars each, but no a/c or fan, shared bath, and not that palatable. We decided to return to the first place but deviated into the old town. It was a hot day and it wasn't as obious where the old town was as it had been in Sfax. There were more shops catering to tourists here, a street marked off as a Berber shopping alley fo example. We continued through the alleys, smells of horse manure, flies, dust, sickening smells eminating from the butchers' market, pungent odor of fruit in a more open space with people sitting out taking coffee on the sidewalks hung with colorful berber carpets, colonnaded with the uneven brickwork characteristic of this town. Here we chanced on a sign for Hotel Ghaouar and we followed to find the entry just off the square with another entrance to the vegetable souq.
The hotel looked a little tired and rundown, like it had seen better days, and we were shown down a long corridor to not unpleasant rooms overlooking a garden courtyard, not the street. Noises from the courtyard could be suppressed with the drone of a/c. The price was twice that of the first hotel we saw and we were thinking to go back there, but on the way back downstairs the receptionist mentioned the bar and pool, and these struck us as
being a pleasing combination in the late day heat. To make a long story short, we negotiated the price down to 15 each and took rooms there, went to the pool, ordered ice cold beers, and had a swim in the shallow end where the water was still blue, the dirt and murky water having settled in the deep end.
We enjoyed walking around Touzir but by meal time we'd pretty much explored the town, and still hadn't found any place we wanted to eat. We ended up eating couscous in a restaurant
where the other customers all had lonely planets. We wondered where Tunisians ate. At least our hotel was quiet and we caught up on sleep.
Next day another hot one. We headed out to a viewpoint we'd read about called Belvedere Rocks. It turned out to be much farther than we thought it was, and as we skirted the outskirts of the extensive 'palmeries' we were accosted frequently by caleche drivers touting trips through the plantations. As we were looking for a 'sand path' and had to ask directions, there arose some tension, esp when we came to a spot with dozens of these cleches and their underemployed drivers. Children we passed requested bon bons and dinars and stylos, and we passed signs suggesting that if we had 30 dinars each, we could quickly spend it on a desert excursion. Closer to our destination, in the sandy edges of the palms, we passed a family of Tunisian tourists being led on camel back slowly to where we were going.
Our destination was a tiny hillock less than ten meters tall with heads carved in it and steps hewn to the top. We climbed them for the view of the huge chott or salt lake that showed as blue on the maps. But there was no blue, no water, only a vast stretch of dried salt beds on the horizon beyond the palms.
Walking home in the heat we flagged a caleche and rode into town for a dinar and a half. W changed some money, you need a bit of that in Tunisia unfortunately, not as bad as in europe, but not like china either. We picked up a watermellon from one of the vendors outside the hotel. He tried to overcharge us but we talked to someone buying mellon at the next stall, discovered the true price, and returned to our vendor with a counter offer which was shrewdly accepted. We took that to the pool, ordered a last round of beer, had a last refreshing swim, and checked out.
Our destination now was Matmata, an area of troglodyte homes where Star Wars was filmed.
Click here to see our Ofoto album from the Star Wars hotel used to film the 'bar scene' at Matmata
This time we headed south east across the causeway over the chott, not marveling all that much at the mirages, something again familiar to us, just hunkered down in the heat of the open windows of the luage. At Kabili we changed luages for Gabes and after a trip too boring to describe arrived there in late afternoon. We now had to walk a few hundred meters to another luage station to get the transport to Metmata, had to wait again for the luage to fill, and after another hour, we arrived at NEW Metmata, 15 km to go to the old Metmata where the movie was made. Here we had to wait again, but managed to buy cold water, and in the late afternoon sun and heat we reached the cute little town of Metmata, passing a few underground homes along the way, signposted invitingly for tourists.
The luage driver offered to take us to the Sidi Driss hotel where the bar scene zqs made. We refused the offer, so he pointed the way. We were picked up outside the station by a cab driver who also offered to take us to the hotel but when we turned down that offer pointed it out to us across a gulch. We picked our way down and up to where we thought was the bus station. But it wasn,t a station. It turned out to be a dozen tour busses outside the Sidi Driss underground hotel. We jostled the occupants of these busses filing back aboard as we entered the premises. There were rooms, for 20 dinars a night, supper included, you could have a clean bed in an earth-cooled hole with bath and toilets across the way. This price did not include lock on door, nothing to latch most doors with. We checked in, had a drink at the famous bar, got overcharged for that, and after the second tour group filed by, and with a fat american lady saying she had to have her dinner BEFORE 8, we went and got our bags and walked back to the luage station.
At the station drivers hovered and told us there was no transport away that night, offered to rescue us for a full luage back to Gabes, reasonable at least for 16 dirhams, but another said we could be in Tatouine in an hour (for 120 dinars, 100 dollars). Others offered trips to Douz, back the way we had come, and no an atmosphere of Tunisia, the Saharah tourist trail, that appealed to us. Anyway we kept our cool, ignored the misinformation, and in a quarter hour more passengers for Gabes appeared, and to make another long story short, we were back there around 9 pm.
That's a little late to be arriving in a Tunisian town. THere was a hotel near the luage station, noisy, cheap and clean, no a/c/ or fan, necessitating windows open to the jarring night traffic sounds. We walked, eventually found a nice place with a/c and garden. The patron reco,mmended the Khaleej Restaurant down the street where we got food and beer and wine and chilled out, ending a long day pleasantly. We slept soundly in our a/c rooms, no sounds disturbing us from the garden, breakfast table set for us in teh am.
Now in Jerba, more about that later
Click here to see our Ofoto album from Touzir
Last we wrote we were in Sfax, a very pleasant town with a small town feel and a sprawling old medina with tiny alleys crowded with shoppers and venders operating from traditional stalls and shops. This activity was mostly behind the imposing intact walls of the old town. The exotic atmosphere was supplemented by the genuine friendliness of the people there, a combination I found recently in the old souq of Alexandria. I'll add Sfax to my list of places Westerners can go in the Arab world to recapture the sites, smells, and flavor of the old traditions along with the spirit of hospitality still found in most places in the Arab world. On the down side we had been kept up late at night by raucus wedding parties vibrating the walls of our hotel.
We left Sfax around noon in the mood for a long journey, but sat for an hour in the heat of a stagnant louage waiting for passengers to Gafsa, a town in the south west of Tunisia, not well portrayed in Lonely Planet. We later found from talking to locals that this would be an interesting region if one were to have one's own transport, but in our case, going by public shared louage, the journey was tedious. Our destination was Touzir, requiring a cange in Gafsa at the end of a three hour ride, with an hour and a half to go. The scenery was reminiscent of Oman or Morocco where the two are similar, nothing unusual for us, not unlike Arizona or new Mexico, scrub lands stretching to distant low, bare hills, not all that picturesque.
We arrived in Touzir still with the heat of late afternoon. We came in one of the roads mentioned in LPG and passed one of the hotels we were thinking of staying in. When the louage stopped a km or two further on, we walked back to it, passing through the center of town where we checked out a hotel for 10 dirhams each, and we could have had our pick of rooms. We considered taking two not right on the noisy street, but decided to continue to the place recommended by the LPG. This place had one room for three, 6 dinars each, but no a/c or fan, shared bath, and not that palatable. We decided to return to the first place but deviated into the old town. It was a hot day and it wasn't as obious where the old town was as it had been in Sfax. There were more shops catering to tourists here, a street marked off as a Berber shopping alley fo example. We continued through the alleys, smells of horse manure, flies, dust, sickening smells eminating from the butchers' market, pungent odor of fruit in a more open space with people sitting out taking coffee on the sidewalks hung with colorful berber carpets, colonnaded with the uneven brickwork characteristic of this town. Here we chanced on a sign for Hotel Ghaouar and we followed to find the entry just off the square with another entrance to the vegetable souq.
The hotel looked a little tired and rundown, like it had seen better days, and we were shown down a long corridor to not unpleasant rooms overlooking a garden courtyard, not the street. Noises from the courtyard could be suppressed with the drone of a/c. The price was twice that of the first hotel we saw and we were thinking to go back there, but on the way back downstairs the receptionist mentioned the bar and pool, and these struck us as
being a pleasing combination in the late day heat. To make a long story short, we negotiated the price down to 15 each and took rooms there, went to the pool, ordered ice cold beers, and had a swim in the shallow end where the water was still blue, the dirt and murky water having settled in the deep end.
We enjoyed walking around Touzir but by meal time we'd pretty much explored the town, and still hadn't found any place we wanted to eat. We ended up eating couscous in a restaurant
where the other customers all had lonely planets. We wondered where Tunisians ate. At least our hotel was quiet and we caught up on sleep.
Next day another hot one. We headed out to a viewpoint we'd read about called Belvedere Rocks. It turned out to be much farther than we thought it was, and as we skirted the outskirts of the extensive 'palmeries' we were accosted frequently by caleche drivers touting trips through the plantations. As we were looking for a 'sand path' and had to ask directions, there arose some tension, esp when we came to a spot with dozens of these cleches and their underemployed drivers. Children we passed requested bon bons and dinars and stylos, and we passed signs suggesting that if we had 30 dinars each, we could quickly spend it on a desert excursion. Closer to our destination, in the sandy edges of the palms, we passed a family of Tunisian tourists being led on camel back slowly to where we were going.
Our destination was a tiny hillock less than ten meters tall with heads carved in it and steps hewn to the top. We climbed them for the view of the huge chott or salt lake that showed as blue on the maps. But there was no blue, no water, only a vast stretch of dried salt beds on the horizon beyond the palms.
Walking home in the heat we flagged a caleche and rode into town for a dinar and a half. W changed some money, you need a bit of that in Tunisia unfortunately, not as bad as in europe, but not like china either. We picked up a watermellon from one of the vendors outside the hotel. He tried to overcharge us but we talked to someone buying mellon at the next stall, discovered the true price, and returned to our vendor with a counter offer which was shrewdly accepted. We took that to the pool, ordered a last round of beer, had a last refreshing swim, and checked out.
Our destination now was Matmata, an area of troglodyte homes where Star Wars was filmed.
Click here to see our Ofoto album from the Star Wars hotel used to film the 'bar scene' at Matmata
This time we headed south east across the causeway over the chott, not marveling all that much at the mirages, something again familiar to us, just hunkered down in the heat of the open windows of the luage. At Kabili we changed luages for Gabes and after a trip too boring to describe arrived there in late afternoon. We now had to walk a few hundred meters to another luage station to get the transport to Metmata, had to wait again for the luage to fill, and after another hour, we arrived at NEW Metmata, 15 km to go to the old Metmata where the movie was made. Here we had to wait again, but managed to buy cold water, and in the late afternoon sun and heat we reached the cute little town of Metmata, passing a few underground homes along the way, signposted invitingly for tourists.
The luage driver offered to take us to the Sidi Driss hotel where the bar scene zqs made. We refused the offer, so he pointed the way. We were picked up outside the station by a cab driver who also offered to take us to the hotel but when we turned down that offer pointed it out to us across a gulch. We picked our way down and up to where we thought was the bus station. But it wasn,t a station. It turned out to be a dozen tour busses outside the Sidi Driss underground hotel. We jostled the occupants of these busses filing back aboard as we entered the premises. There were rooms, for 20 dinars a night, supper included, you could have a clean bed in an earth-cooled hole with bath and toilets across the way. This price did not include lock on door, nothing to latch most doors with. We checked in, had a drink at the famous bar, got overcharged for that, and after the second tour group filed by, and with a fat american lady saying she had to have her dinner BEFORE 8, we went and got our bags and walked back to the luage station.
At the station drivers hovered and told us there was no transport away that night, offered to rescue us for a full luage back to Gabes, reasonable at least for 16 dirhams, but another said we could be in Tatouine in an hour (for 120 dinars, 100 dollars). Others offered trips to Douz, back the way we had come, and no an atmosphere of Tunisia, the Saharah tourist trail, that appealed to us. Anyway we kept our cool, ignored the misinformation, and in a quarter hour more passengers for Gabes appeared, and to make another long story short, we were back there around 9 pm.
That's a little late to be arriving in a Tunisian town. THere was a hotel near the luage station, noisy, cheap and clean, no a/c/ or fan, necessitating windows open to the jarring night traffic sounds. We walked, eventually found a nice place with a/c and garden. The patron reco,mmended the Khaleej Restaurant down the street where we got food and beer and wine and chilled out, ending a long day pleasantly. We slept soundly in our a/c rooms, no sounds disturbing us from the garden, breakfast table set for us in teh am.
Now in Jerba, more about that later
