Sunday in Kairouan and I was feeling slightly better. I actually had some semblance of an appetite so I sat down in the Hotel Splendid restaurant for a Continental breakfast of an extremely stale chocolate croissant, fresher French bread with jam, and some very tasty coffee...
We hit the streets early (around 8am) to head back to the Grand Mosque for an hour, which is open only in the mornings, before departing by bus for southern Tunisia.
It was right around here when...
... I shit my pants.
I'm not kidding. I hadn't taken Immodium that morning because I thought I was feeling better. Unfortunately, I had about a 10 minute walk back to the hotel. It was a very uncomfortable to say the least. Needless to say, I took some Imodium to get through the day. I wasn't feeling so hot anymore. Thankfully, Miguel was a good sport about it.
Anyway, enough about that, we finally made it back to the Grand Mosque, about 30 minutes behind schedule. When we walked in to the main courtyard, a guy handed us a scarf. We both figured it was for me to cover my head. But NO! It was for Miguel to cover his knees because his shorts were too short!...
Hot legs.
Here's a view of the mosque:
We were able to look inside from an amazingly large and intricately carved wooden door:
Here we are looking toward the mihrab, or the niche that points toward Mecca:
This older man had memorized the Koran and was reciting it aloud on the floor of the mosque:
Looking the other direction across the courtyard, Miguel strikes a pose:
At the base of the minaret is a door with intricate decorations and interestingly two large bricks pulled from Roman buildings for re-use. They both show the Latin script, although one was installed upside down...
The courtyard is slightly angled and tilts toward an ornate central drain that collects rainwater:
Miguel with the mosque and drain in the background:
Meanwhile, my stomach was not cooperating, and I was feeling pretty horrible. Here I am curled up in the shade taking in the view and trying not to move too much:
I did rally to take a photo of Miguel from my perch:
Miguel took this one:
Then turned around and shot a picture of me trying not to poop my pants again:
Miguel took another picture of another wooden door too...
And a few more of the mosque itself:
I finally gathered my strength enough to walk out to the minbar, or pulpit, in the middle of the courtyard for a final and fabulously touristy photo...
Next stop? Back to the hotel to gather our things and then off to the bus station for our 10am bus to Nefta, the southwestern-most city in Tunisia before hitting the Sahara, along the Algerian border.
On the way back to the hotel, we spotted this -- our very most favorite -- Ben Ali memorial sign...
We quickly checked out of our hotel and scurried by taxi back to the bus station, where we arrived about ten minutes before the next bus to Nefta, located in the southwest most populated corner of Tunisia. The crowd was an interesting mix of tattooed Bedouin women, pastry salesmen, and a noisy little bus station mascot who wore a fez and appeared to have special needs. He shouted loudly -- a lot.
Here was our mode of transportation... another SNTRI bus:
We stopped at a rest stop about 30 minutes south of Kairouan, and I noticed the engine door was open. We rode like that the whole five hour drive, it turns out. Maybe an overheating problem? At least the A/C on this bus was better than the other one, and the driver was pretty kickass. There was a measly little assistant (apprentice) on board too that took tickets and looked just like a Tunisian Frankie Muniz. He drove for one short section of the drive, and he was nowhere good as the real driver.
Miguel and I bought some bread:
I took a few photos of the changing landscape. About an hour south of Kairouan, there were hundreds of olive orchards and prickly pear cactus:
Soon after, it turned into brush and desert-like landscape:
It was a looooong flat ride. Here's an interior shot of our fellow passengers: three Italian women -- and another photo of us in the back of the bus on the vibrating and LOUD engine. My teeth nearly rattled out at certain points of the ride from sitting on top of the engine (the only place on the bus that had seats available):
Once we got within an hour of Tozeur and Nefta the landscape really changed:
And we soon hit the salt flats. The area is famous for a famous salt lake, the Chott Al Jarid, which is dry most of the year but remains a huge white expanse of salt, seen in the distance below:
Most of the passengers got off in Tozeur, but Miguel and I thought we'd travel on to the oasis town of Nefta instead to avoid the tourist traps. BIG mistake! Nefta is in no way designed to be a tourist stop for solo travelers. Unless you're in a tour group, it's virtually impossible to get around (as our story will show)...
The bus driver asked which hotel we were staying at. Referring to our guide book, we chose a place called the Bel Horizon, which appeared to be the best option in town. The bus dropped us off at the bottom of a hill, and we climbed about one mile up with our backpacks along a totally desolate and shadeless road looking for this hotel. Mind you, it was definitely more than 100 degrees F, we were exhausted from a five hour bus ride, and I had some of the worst diarrheal stomach cramps ever known. It was not a fun walk.
After taking more than one wrong turn, asking for directions at least three times from various surprised grocers, and turning up and back a few times, we finally found the hotel. A big tan brick place with tour buses parked outside. To make a long story short, the receptionist told us the rate, which was positively exorbitant (close to $100/night). Miguel noticed there were fixed prices in a frame posted on the desk, and it was then that we realized we were being asked to pay high season prices during the low season (which should have been about $80/night... still way overpriced). My sense of fairness and honesty switched on immediately, and I totally lambasted the greedy and corrupt clerk with a heated monologue, telling him that he was dishonest and that we would never stay in a place that openly lied about its prices. He reacted with a village idiot look, and didn't try to defend himself, but then offered us the lower price. We marched out angrily.
OK, so this was the "right" thing to do in the face of dishonesty, however, I was so pissed off that I didn't really think about the logistics of our situation. Our guidebook indicated that there were about four other hotels we could try in town. However, the map showed we were nowhere near any of them. Hmmm, problematic given the fact that it was as hot as balls, I was close to shitting my pants again, and there was nary a taxi in sight.
My anger and annoyance propelled me however, and we started walking back down the hill to the other hotels, which appeared to be about two miles away according to our very sketchy and not-to-scale map. I figured I could make it. Lucky for us, a taxi did arrive about half a mile into our walk and dropped us off at the totally empty "tourist zone" near the palm oasis in town. The only vaguely touristy thing we could see was a clump of very aggressive horse-and-carriage drivers trying to convince us to take a ride.
We discovered that most of the hotels were vacant shells with boarded up windows and doors that had gone out of business. The nicest hotel in Nefta, the Caravansarail, on the cusp of the palm oasis, was more than $100 USD night and didn't look much nicer than the Bel Horizon, and one other dumpy hotel, which was marginally less expensive, was too scary for words. The receptionist had a long curled mustache and was wearing a fez, and we had to wait about five minutes for him to show up and help us. We looked at a room there, and it reminded us of "The Shining" with its empty hallways and creepy host. Plus the bed spread was made from red satin, and the room view looked out onto a deserted parking lot creeping with desert weeds.
We slowly came to realize that we were going to be stuck staying at the Bel Horizon. I would have to swallow my pride after my show of integrity and return there. Embarrassing... but there was no other option.
The trick now was figuring out how to get back up there. We waited for at least 30 minutes at a traffic circle in town looking for a ride. However, the town was deserted. There was no shade anywhere, and I was at the point where I was about to curl up in a ball from my stomach cramping and just quit. Miguel snapped my picture at that moment:
Not having fun here.
At this point, I didn't need any prodding to take up an offer of a ride, however Miguel was quite pissed off at me for agreeing to follow this guy (a large man) up the street, into an alleyway and through a warren of maze-like, deserted streets. I believe Miguel told me that it was one of the stupidest decisions I had ever made, and he threatened to stop following the guy because he was sure we were being taken into a back alley to be mugged. I, on the other hand, told Miguel to just be thankful we had finally gotten help. I was certain the guy was honest. And I was right.
He took us to his home, a simple concrete structure along a dirt path, and introduced us to his wife and mother-in-law, who were lying in a central courtyard-like room on cushions and doing absolutely nothing. It was then that a giant gaggle of children (mostly girls) showed up, thrilled to have some visitors at their house. They were so sweet...
They grabbed onto the back of the cart and tried to keep up with us for a block or two until their dad got the horse going too fast for them to hold on:
Here's the horse and cart. One of our favorite bits on the trip is that our driver would yell at the horse in a very high pitched voice, "Brrrroooomsheee!" to get him moving:
This kid was hanging out at the vista point:
The Bel Horizon in all its glory:
We had arranged with our horse and cart driver, Nageeb, that we would meet him outside the hotel in an hour to take a scenic ride around town. Here are some of the pictures of the rather scrappy city of Nefta that we took along the ride:
Thinking our grand tour was over, we were surprised to be led into the old walled city of Nefta, where our totally non-English speaking driver walked us around and showed us two old doors with Jewish stars of David, signifying that Jews once lived there:
We were then taken to a little outdoor restaurant at the edge of the palm grove, where our driver insisted on dining with us. This was not something we really had in mind, as a) our driver did not speak a lick of English, and he was also totally unable to speak classical Arabic -- he spoke some pidgeon language of Berber, French, and Arabic that I was totally unable to decipher, and b) we really just wanted to be left alone after a rather grueling afternoon ordeal without struggling to make mime-like conversation.
I was finally able to convey that we were interested in a "dinner romantique," which he seemed to understand at last -- so we paid him, and he was on his way:
The dinner was quite interesting, to say the least, for a number of reasons. First, all the tables were outside in the middle of a palm tree thicket. The only light came from a small building where the food was being cooked. Second, there were no menus -- the two dining options were "meat" or chicken. We both opted for chicken and were served a very interesting plate of bony, skin-on chicken, which we had to attempt to cut and eat in the nearly pitch dark, like blind people. At one point, Miguel thought he was eating a bite of chicken only to discover it was a large chunk of some spice or seasoning. I accidently shoveled into my mouth a large piece of fatty gristle, thinking I was eating a succulent bite of meat. Needless to say, I think I got about three real bites of dinner and the rest I threw to the hordes of beggar cats scrounging about.
As there are virtually no taxis in this town, we were told to walk back up to the old city to call a taxi there. We were accompanied by an absolutely wasted drunk guy who kept trying to touch me, and then we finally ended up in the city "square" -- about four shops around a dusty parking lot, where a very nice shopkeeper called a driver for us, who took us back to the lovely Bel Horizon.
We were quite amused upon arriving at the hotel to see loads of Polish tourists dancing to blaring salsa music on a patio outside. One of the middle aged little Polish women (I believe Miguel referred to her as an "unattractive Polish pierogi") was getting totally grinded on by a very cheesy Tunisian tour guide. Somebody was getting lucky that night...
And that was it. We watched the stars for a bit from our room balcony (while listening to the pulsating beats of Ricky Martin) and then conked out, thankful we survived our most difficult day.
At the base of the minaret is a door with intricate decorations and interestingly two large bricks pulled from Roman buildings for re-use. They both show the Latin script, although one was installed upside down...
The courtyard is slightly angled and tilts toward an ornate central drain that collects rainwater:
Miguel with the mosque and drain in the background:
Meanwhile, my stomach was not cooperating, and I was feeling pretty horrible. Here I am curled up in the shade taking in the view and trying not to move too much:
I did rally to take a photo of Miguel from my perch:
Miguel took this one:
Then turned around and shot a picture of me trying not to poop my pants again:
Miguel took another picture of another wooden door too...
And a few more of the mosque itself:
I finally gathered my strength enough to walk out to the minbar, or pulpit, in the middle of the courtyard for a final and fabulously touristy photo...
Next stop? Back to the hotel to gather our things and then off to the bus station for our 10am bus to Nefta, the southwestern-most city in Tunisia before hitting the Sahara, along the Algerian border.
On the way back to the hotel, we spotted this -- our very most favorite -- Ben Ali memorial sign...
I remarked that he looked like he was saying (in a New York/Jersey mafia accent) "Whattya talkin' about?"
Miguel, using a derisive and yet amused tone, said I didn't know what the hell I was talking about because there is no such saying as that. Apparently, it's "Fuggeddaboutit..."
Miguel, using a derisive and yet amused tone, said I didn't know what the hell I was talking about because there is no such saying as that. Apparently, it's "Fuggeddaboutit..."
I still prefer "Whattya talkin' about?" It just fits the poster better.
Before getting to the hotel, we stopped for five minutes in a really cool mauseleum that honored some dead Muslim guy. The architecture was great...
We quickly checked out of our hotel and scurried by taxi back to the bus station, where we arrived about ten minutes before the next bus to Nefta, located in the southwest most populated corner of Tunisia. The crowd was an interesting mix of tattooed Bedouin women, pastry salesmen, and a noisy little bus station mascot who wore a fez and appeared to have special needs. He shouted loudly -- a lot.
Here was our mode of transportation... another SNTRI bus:
We stopped at a rest stop about 30 minutes south of Kairouan, and I noticed the engine door was open. We rode like that the whole five hour drive, it turns out. Maybe an overheating problem? At least the A/C on this bus was better than the other one, and the driver was pretty kickass. There was a measly little assistant (apprentice) on board too that took tickets and looked just like a Tunisian Frankie Muniz. He drove for one short section of the drive, and he was nowhere good as the real driver.
Anyway, at the rest stop, they were slaughtering sheep:
Miguel and I bought some bread:
They were also making pastries:
I took a few photos of the changing landscape. About an hour south of Kairouan, there were hundreds of olive orchards and prickly pear cactus:
Soon after, it turned into brush and desert-like landscape:
It was a looooong flat ride. Here's an interior shot of our fellow passengers: three Italian women -- and another photo of us in the back of the bus on the vibrating and LOUD engine. My teeth nearly rattled out at certain points of the ride from sitting on top of the engine (the only place on the bus that had seats available):
Once we got within an hour of Tozeur and Nefta the landscape really changed:
And we soon hit the salt flats. The area is famous for a famous salt lake, the Chott Al Jarid, which is dry most of the year but remains a huge white expanse of salt, seen in the distance below:
Most of the passengers got off in Tozeur, but Miguel and I thought we'd travel on to the oasis town of Nefta instead to avoid the tourist traps. BIG mistake! Nefta is in no way designed to be a tourist stop for solo travelers. Unless you're in a tour group, it's virtually impossible to get around (as our story will show)...
The bus driver asked which hotel we were staying at. Referring to our guide book, we chose a place called the Bel Horizon, which appeared to be the best option in town. The bus dropped us off at the bottom of a hill, and we climbed about one mile up with our backpacks along a totally desolate and shadeless road looking for this hotel. Mind you, it was definitely more than 100 degrees F, we were exhausted from a five hour bus ride, and I had some of the worst diarrheal stomach cramps ever known. It was not a fun walk.
After taking more than one wrong turn, asking for directions at least three times from various surprised grocers, and turning up and back a few times, we finally found the hotel. A big tan brick place with tour buses parked outside. To make a long story short, the receptionist told us the rate, which was positively exorbitant (close to $100/night). Miguel noticed there were fixed prices in a frame posted on the desk, and it was then that we realized we were being asked to pay high season prices during the low season (which should have been about $80/night... still way overpriced). My sense of fairness and honesty switched on immediately, and I totally lambasted the greedy and corrupt clerk with a heated monologue, telling him that he was dishonest and that we would never stay in a place that openly lied about its prices. He reacted with a village idiot look, and didn't try to defend himself, but then offered us the lower price. We marched out angrily.
OK, so this was the "right" thing to do in the face of dishonesty, however, I was so pissed off that I didn't really think about the logistics of our situation. Our guidebook indicated that there were about four other hotels we could try in town. However, the map showed we were nowhere near any of them. Hmmm, problematic given the fact that it was as hot as balls, I was close to shitting my pants again, and there was nary a taxi in sight.
My anger and annoyance propelled me however, and we started walking back down the hill to the other hotels, which appeared to be about two miles away according to our very sketchy and not-to-scale map. I figured I could make it. Lucky for us, a taxi did arrive about half a mile into our walk and dropped us off at the totally empty "tourist zone" near the palm oasis in town. The only vaguely touristy thing we could see was a clump of very aggressive horse-and-carriage drivers trying to convince us to take a ride.
We discovered that most of the hotels were vacant shells with boarded up windows and doors that had gone out of business. The nicest hotel in Nefta, the Caravansarail, on the cusp of the palm oasis, was more than $100 USD night and didn't look much nicer than the Bel Horizon, and one other dumpy hotel, which was marginally less expensive, was too scary for words. The receptionist had a long curled mustache and was wearing a fez, and we had to wait about five minutes for him to show up and help us. We looked at a room there, and it reminded us of "The Shining" with its empty hallways and creepy host. Plus the bed spread was made from red satin, and the room view looked out onto a deserted parking lot creeping with desert weeds.
We slowly came to realize that we were going to be stuck staying at the Bel Horizon. I would have to swallow my pride after my show of integrity and return there. Embarrassing... but there was no other option.
The trick now was figuring out how to get back up there. We waited for at least 30 minutes at a traffic circle in town looking for a ride. However, the town was deserted. There was no shade anywhere, and I was at the point where I was about to curl up in a ball from my stomach cramping and just quit. Miguel snapped my picture at that moment:
Not having fun here.
It was around this moment when a large, middle aged man approached us on foot and asked if we needed help. Thank god for my Arabic skills, I was able to explain where we wanted to go and asked if he could help us get a taxi. He had an even better solution... he owned a horse and cart and suggested that if we followed him to his house, he would get the horse and cart, and he could take us to our hotel for the same price as a taxi (about $3).
At this point, I didn't need any prodding to take up an offer of a ride, however Miguel was quite pissed off at me for agreeing to follow this guy (a large man) up the street, into an alleyway and through a warren of maze-like, deserted streets. I believe Miguel told me that it was one of the stupidest decisions I had ever made, and he threatened to stop following the guy because he was sure we were being taken into a back alley to be mugged. I, on the other hand, told Miguel to just be thankful we had finally gotten help. I was certain the guy was honest. And I was right.
He took us to his home, a simple concrete structure along a dirt path, and introduced us to his wife and mother-in-law, who were lying in a central courtyard-like room on cushions and doing absolutely nothing. It was then that a giant gaggle of children (mostly girls) showed up, thrilled to have some visitors at their house. They were so sweet...
The arrival of the children helped Miguel get over his annoyance at the situation:
We finally got in the cart, and as you can see, the kids went chasing us down the block:
They grabbed onto the back of the cart and tried to keep up with us for a block or two until their dad got the horse going too fast for them to hold on:
It made my day..
Our driver, Nageeb, took us through "town" back to the Bel Horizon, although he took us on the more scenic route...
We stopped at a vista looking over the "basket" -- a smaller, sunken palm oasis in the middle of town with a natural spring-fed pool. Oh, what I wouldn't have done to have jumped in that water. Unfortunately, there were no women anywhere near the pool, and in this conservative (and religious) town, I didn't want to create a scene. Plus, I really just wanted to get to our hotel at that point...
Here's the horse and cart. One of our favorite bits on the trip is that our driver would yell at the horse in a very high pitched voice, "Brrrroooomsheee!" to get him moving:
This kid was hanging out at the vista point:
We finally made it back to the Bel Horizon Hotel, and shamefully checked in, telling the clerk that we had changed our minds. After showering and lying down for a bit, we took a few photos from the poolside of the hotel:
The Bel Horizon in all its glory:
We had arranged with our horse and cart driver, Nageeb, that we would meet him outside the hotel in an hour to take a scenic ride around town. Here are some of the pictures of the rather scrappy city of Nefta that we took along the ride:
Clearly, as you can see, the town doesn't offer many interesting options. The more interesting parts of the area were found down near the huge palm oasis next to the salt flats (the second largest palm oasis in Tunisia). We took about a 30 minute ride down through the twisting lanes inside the oasis, which I found amazing:
When it was nearly dark, our driver took us to a date farm, where we got to try palm wine and recently picked dates. I bought some for my mom from the guy pictured below:
Thinking our grand tour was over, we were surprised to be led into the old walled city of Nefta, where our totally non-English speaking driver walked us around and showed us two old doors with Jewish stars of David, signifying that Jews once lived there:
We were then taken to a little outdoor restaurant at the edge of the palm grove, where our driver insisted on dining with us. This was not something we really had in mind, as a) our driver did not speak a lick of English, and he was also totally unable to speak classical Arabic -- he spoke some pidgeon language of Berber, French, and Arabic that I was totally unable to decipher, and b) we really just wanted to be left alone after a rather grueling afternoon ordeal without struggling to make mime-like conversation.
I was finally able to convey that we were interested in a "dinner romantique," which he seemed to understand at last -- so we paid him, and he was on his way:
The dinner was quite interesting, to say the least, for a number of reasons. First, all the tables were outside in the middle of a palm tree thicket. The only light came from a small building where the food was being cooked. Second, there were no menus -- the two dining options were "meat" or chicken. We both opted for chicken and were served a very interesting plate of bony, skin-on chicken, which we had to attempt to cut and eat in the nearly pitch dark, like blind people. At one point, Miguel thought he was eating a bite of chicken only to discover it was a large chunk of some spice or seasoning. I accidently shoveled into my mouth a large piece of fatty gristle, thinking I was eating a succulent bite of meat. Needless to say, I think I got about three real bites of dinner and the rest I threw to the hordes of beggar cats scrounging about.
As there are virtually no taxis in this town, we were told to walk back up to the old city to call a taxi there. We were accompanied by an absolutely wasted drunk guy who kept trying to touch me, and then we finally ended up in the city "square" -- about four shops around a dusty parking lot, where a very nice shopkeeper called a driver for us, who took us back to the lovely Bel Horizon.
We were quite amused upon arriving at the hotel to see loads of Polish tourists dancing to blaring salsa music on a patio outside. One of the middle aged little Polish women (I believe Miguel referred to her as an "unattractive Polish pierogi") was getting totally grinded on by a very cheesy Tunisian tour guide. Somebody was getting lucky that night...
And that was it. We watched the stars for a bit from our room balcony (while listening to the pulsating beats of Ricky Martin) and then conked out, thankful we survived our most difficult day.
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