Tunis
Success! A whole night and morning with not a whiskey-seeker to be seen! We got up, threw all our warm gear on and headed out into the freezing day in Tunis.
We had a big list of things to find — throw rugs to keep us warm while we’re sitting around in Nettle, a laptop stand, keyboard and mouse for Katherine, who has been coveting my awesome workstation setup and the lack of back-pain that goes with it, a bunch of other stuff and second-hand bikes, which we still somehow haven’t managed to come by yet.
We spotted a shopping centre, which turned out to be quite small, but we did find a computer tech shop and nabbed a mouse, then headed onwards towards the medina, which we wanted to wander around for a while.
As we approached we were immediately set upon by someone who spotted us, the rich tourists; I steadfastly ignored him, having had well enough of being polite! Into the crowded cave-like corridors we went, moving at a crawl through the tight press of people — all Tunisians, no tourists that we could spot. A guy who was walking to his stall for the day, remarked to us on the busyness of the place. He worked in a perfumery, making oils and such. He told us that the proper ‘tourist’ medina was further onwards and offered to lead the way. We preferred to wander where we were, but he’d said it wasn’t far and it would’ve been nice to get our bearings a little. We followed a little way, farther than we’d anticipated, until we spotted a corridor lined with rug and blanket stalls and, spotting our opportunity to politely slip away, bid him farewell and headed down to see if we could find any throw-rugs.
No luck, but we continued wandering aimlessly, more-or-less un-harassed. It was a funny place, lots and lots of different goods available, but within each category (jeans, shoes, rugs, kitchen utensils, electronic goods, art supplies…) the goods were all the same, and choice was very limited. So, we didn’t do too well with our list of things to buy while we were still paying in Dinars.
We stopped at a café located off to the side of a covered corridor and had lunch of tasty grilled fish on a tomato sauce with chips on the side. The place was quite atmospheric, a dimly lit tunnel with Tunisians wandering by with their shopping, a bunch of men sitting outside another café nearby smoking sheeshas.
We found ourselves in the ‘touristy’ part of the medina, and entered a world of annoying pushy merchants, all with the same wares — copper-and-glass lanterns, painted pottery jars/urns, ornate hinged boxes, sheeshas (those water pipe things), bird cages, like the one Katherine bought in Medenine, and various leather goods.
The stores looked fascinating, and we would’ve stopped to investigate more, but for the amazingly stupid behaviour of the vendors — they would all stand, blocking the entrance to their shops, and as soon as they saw you looking at anything near their stall (actually, as soon as you were within earshot). they start with the badgering. Where are you from? Come look at my shop. You very beautiful. (to Katherine). One glance at a lamp or a birdcage and they would pounce and wouldn’t let you do anything else but start talking prices. We just wanted to look at stuff!
One vendor, who we naïvely thought may have been just being friendly, brought us tea and talked with us, then it was clear it was a ploy to guilt us into staying and buying something; he would first tell us to take our time looking around, give us a couple of seconds, then be back prodding and nudging, being a complete ass and touching Katherine’s hand. Katherine had originally wanted a closer look at a lamp, and by blocking the exit and keeping on us, we were hard-pressed to find an exit. He asked several times more than we would be willing to pay for a lamp that didn’t really suit us, and it was only by basically forcing our way past him out of the shop that we managed to escape. If that wasn’t enough, he actually scolded us as we walked by later!
Another vendor noticed we were looking at a bird cage, and told us it was five dinars, then once we were inside told us this one was more expensive, because it was better quality. The others were five dinars though.
After a couple of similar experiences, as well as more sleazy behaviour towards Katherine than anyone should ever have to put up with, we had had enough — it was either bail now, or fashion a shiv from whatever’s handy and just get stabby. Katherine actually wanted the bird cage we were looking at, but we were furious with the terrible behaviour of the merchant, and just walked out on him as he shouted decreasing prices after us.
We wonder if they have any idea their behaviour is so offensive as to scare off customers. We were very pleased we had visited the medina at Sfax, which was entirely devoid of such unacceptable behaviour!
We’d had enough of Tunis, and despite having managed almost nothing on our to do list, we headed back to Nettle through the rain, via the supermarket we’d identified earlier.
We’d identified a caravan park relatively close by, the other side of Hammam Lif, to spend the last few days, and headed off down the motorway. A stopover to get fuel while it was still so bafflingly cheap ended with a little concern after the attendant ripped the cover off Nettle’s fuel inlet in the process of filling up, then blithely said “ça va.” (it’s okay), and then asked for payment. Luckily it was just a clip-on thing that had come undone, and I clipped it back on easily while holding the fuel pipe from the other side. Phew!
We found our way to the caravan park, located on the far side of a very weird collection of half-finished buildings and puddle-covered dirt roads. We originally thought it was an under-construction tourist zone or something, but we later found it was a residential area. Tunisia is weird.
The caravan park appeared closed; I wandered around trying to find someone to talk to, but failed, so we just pulled up within the entrance-way, nicely out of the way, and closed up for the night.
I said something to the effect of “Now, what would be good is for there to be a knock at the door and there to be a caravan park attendant to open up for us“. Then, there was a knock at the door and there was a caravan park attendant welcoming us in. After experimentally trying “Now, what would be good is for there to be a suitcase of a few million dollars to appear“, we happily followed the dude in, plugged into the electricity hook-up, and settled in.
Tags: Caravan parks, Culture, Market, Tunis, Tunisia | Comment (1)Dougga – Tunis
We awoke blearily in darkness with the blaring cacophony of the early morning call to prayer, from a mosque that must’ve been right beside one of our silliest wildcamps ever. We fell back asleep once it had ended, and awoke a little later with village life in full swing around us, horns beeping, engines roaring, people walking by, shouting. Deciding it’d be good to get a move on before the inevitable knocking on the door started up, we hopped out of bed — okay, we took a little while getting to that stage, it was an extremely cold morning — threw on our clothes, opened the blinds, and drove out of town to find a slightly more out-of-the-way park for us to have a more relaxed start to the day.
We stopped in blissful quiet on the verge a few metres off the side of the road, switched on the boiler so we could have hot showers, treated ourselves to the use of our gas-guzzling heater, and I pulled out the laptop for a little programming, resting my feet against the warm heater while the water heated up and Katherine had the first shower. Warm, filling porridge for breakfast, then, feeling refreshed, warm, clean and good to go, we hit the road again, heading for Dougga, site of some promising-sounding ruins.
Almost immediately, we were struck by the change in the landscape around us — the first leg of our drive took us though some pine-covered mountainous terrain that for some reason reminded us strongly of Ireland! Only, instead of bog as far as the eye can see, there was scrubby ground-cover on dry dirt and rock. Looks similar from a distance.
I pulled over for a moment to take a picture, and a village youngster came over to say hello and (of course) ask for a dinar.
The scenery became greener and greener, and soon we were driving through gentle rolling green hills, a blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds completing the scene — a real sight for sore eyes, especially given that it was one which contained no garbage. We were reminded of the French countryside, then English farmland, the greens a very pretty bright emerald shade.
We gaped at a Roman arch we passed, sitting casually by the side of the road.
We stopped just outside of Dougga for lunch, by the road surrounded by grassy plains, then headed to the ruins along a little back-street that led up through the town, past chickens and tractors. We crested a hill and were struck by the intense green of a large field in the sun — we could be in Ireland! Except for the Roman city atop a neighbouring hill, behind an olive orchard.
We pulled up in the car park, put on all our warm gear and headed out into the biting wind.
This ancient town is probably the most impressive ruins we’ve seen — the detail that remains is amazing, and for the most part it’s quite easy to imagine it how it was at its peak in 2-4 AD. We walked along paved roads — a little buckled now in places, but still remarkably intact — passed by very solid-looking high stone walls, wandered in awe around the semicircle of a huge theatre, crossed an immaculate square with a still-visible engraved circle naming the twelve winds, beside an immense temple. We admired stone blocks engraved with carefully lettered text, and thought the font looked quite familiar — hey, that looks like Times New Roman.
We laughed at the sociably arranged latrines in a bath house, mere holes in a semi-circular bench, placed close enough that the users would probably all but have their thighs touching!
We were surprised to be told by our guidebook that the ruins were inhabited until the early 1950′s, when the inhabitants were shuffled out to ‘Nouvelle Dougga’, the new town.
As we wandered the crumbling city of light grey stone, in some places we felt a little like we were walking around the city of Rohan from Lord of the Rings, streets built in tiers into the hillside. The way the city soared above the surrounding emerald plains probably contributed to the impression, too.
We were quite awed, despite being almost chilled to the bone in that nasty wind. We would’ve liked to wander a little longer, but time had run out on us, and the hypothermia probably wouldn’t have held off much longer anyway. We headed back to Nettle, put the heater on full blast, and hit the road, having decided to make the drive to Tunis rather than face another wild-camp.
The drive was, again, very enjoyable as we passed through some really very pretty scenery, enhanced further by that magic late afternoon glow. We spotted the poignant/macabre scene of a stork and her offspring nesting atop a power pylon with the corpse of a prior hatchling fluttering in the breeze, caught on a piece of nest.
Our first glimpse of Tunis as we topped a rise was startling — the sprawl of the city as far as the eye could see was something we weren’t used to, having travelled for the most part through little villages.
Our dusk drive through the capital was very silly — large intersections where, truly, anything goes, and traffic flow is dictated solely by the patience of the drivers involved (‘give way as long as you can be bothered doing so’); traffic lights that no one pays any heed to; impatient drivers edging into the oncoming traffic, pushing others off to the right of the road in the process; pedestrians so oblivious of traffic that I first had to rev the engine to alert the three girls that I was there and trundling along behind them, then had to repeat the process to avoid clocking another guy over the back of the head with my mirror, the footpath devoid of any foot traffic just beside him. It was all fairly relaxed though, and the various impressive feats of insanity we observed mere entertainment as we crawled along through the traffic.
We were a bit disappointed when we arrived at our destination — a car park that Birgit and Dieter had suggested to us — having pictured something like the basic-but-secure car park-cum-caravan park in Palermo, walled in with a gate. Instead, it was a wide open shopping centre car park, beside a park; not particularly well-lit, and the guy that met us as we drove in said we could only stay a night, instead of the flexibility we were expecting. Still, it was a place to stop, and we closed up for the night, hoping for no whiskey-seekers.
Tags: Ancient Rome, Driving, History, Ruins, Tunis, Tunisia | Comment (0)
