After handing in a rough draft of my thesis, I took off for a month long adventure. I stayed with my grandparents in Poland for a week, then headed off to Warsaw for a reunion with some old Pad22 friends, and flew off to Africa for two weeks!
My first week in Tunisia was in a resort town, but I'm not a big fan of sitting in one place for too long, so I took a bus (public transport!) to Nabeul, a town with one of the countries most famous Friday souks (markets). Nabeul specializes in pottery.
On the way back from Nabeul I stopped at the Medina (old, fortified city) in Hammamet. Hammamet was the resort town I was staying in; it's famous for the beautiful beaches. But I was also quite a bit from the city centre, so if I wanted to visit the Medina I had to take a bus.
I also went on a safari that took us through the south of the country. This is the amphitheatre in El Jem, one of the best preserved and biggest in the world (seats 30 000!). Many films, including Gladiator, were shot here.
They also dressed me up and put me on a camel for a ride in the Sahara!
My camel...
The Chott el Jerid is a huge, salt lake, but most of the time it's dry. The salt looks like a huge ice sheet in the desert, it's really cool.
And of course, souvenir shops at every point of interest.
We also stopped at an oasis, where I got to climb a palm tree! I actually got high up, but the picture doesn't show it...
We then took a jeep through the desert. Behind me is Onk Jemal, which means "Camel's Head", because the rock formation resembles the head and hump of a camel. The Star Wars films were also shot in Tunisia, and sites are scattered all over the country. Onk Jemal was the background for the pod race in The Phantom Menace.
These sets were used in the Star Wars film for exterior shots of Luke's home. They've been left in the desert to decay, with no public transport or maps leading to them. It's amazing how you can just run around the sets of one of the most important films of time, and they're not protected at all!
A wedding celebration on the road!
We don't have street signs like this in Canada, or Holland.
At one point we were very close to the Algerian border; this oasis was about 8km away.
I returned to the Hammamet Medin a few times. This is a view over the old town from the top of the Kasbah (the old military fort).
I also went to a hammam, a public bath house complete with an amazing sauna. It was great.
Chillin' at a cafe...
The Medina...
Fishing boats...
One of the non-touristy streets outside the Medina.
Ben Ali is the president of Tunisia. He's been re-elected since the 80s with a victory of 99.9% or so. By law, his photograph must hang in all public places, including hotels and souvenir shops. Hmm...
I also spent a day wandering around the city of Sousse. All day long, my tormentors aka men, sat around cafes doing absolutely nothing!
A view of the mosque from the Ribat, a fortified military/school
.
Sousse...
What happens when you fall asleep on the job? Your picture ends up on someone's blog.
Children leaving school
Walking along the Medina walls in Sousse
This was the beach by my hotel in Sousse, although I was there for only one night. The beach in Hammamet was even nicer.
The mosque in Kairouan. They made me wear this robe that covered my arms to my wrists and my legs to my ankles. The god damned hypocrisy of it all pissed me off so much! It didn't matter what I wore on the streets, long pants or a short skirt, the men tormented me regardless! But as soon as I entered a mosque, I had to be modest, covered from neck to toe. Damned hypocrites. That's what I liked about Libya; people took their god fearing to the streets, and behaved the same way towards women in the mosque and outside it ie. respectfully!
A barber. Men either sat around at cafes or getting their hair cut.
Kairouan is the centre of Tunisia's carpet production.
We stopped at another oasis, where I got to drink palm juice! This is a pomegranate tree.
And the juice booths...
We stopped in Matmata, a region famous for its lunar lanscape.
As you get closer to the Libyan border, you see more and more shops selling all sorts of junk. Because Tunisia is much poorer than Libya, and because prices in Libya are lower than in Tunisia (Libya is very wealthy because of the huge oil reserves), many Tunisians buy things in Libya and sell them in Tunisia.
Gasoline is also extremely cheap in Libya, so Tunisians fill up their tanks (you can't take gas over the border outside of your car's tank), and sell it in Tunisia for a profit. This isn't legal, but because of the poverty the police look the other way and let people earn a living.
Those booths are currency exchange places near the border. Shady.
We waited 6 hours at the Tunisian/Libyan border as they made our visas. This is the Tunisian side; you can see the car draining his gas to sell it.
Once in Libya, we went to Sabratha, the westernmost of the three cities of Tirpolis. Libya is full of ancient Roman sites that you can just wander around. Because Gathafi doesn't want to acknowledge other influences on Libyan history and culture other than Islam, he wants to dismiss evidence that Roman's were on Libyan soil. As a result, he takes no interest in preserving these ancient sites. Sabratha was excavated by Italian archaeologists (Libya is a former Italian colony) and handed over to UNESCO.
A road sign pointing in the direction of the brothel
These mosaics are original!
The capital of Libya is Tripoli. This is a small mosque in the city centre.
The "wedding street" in the Medina, where you can buy all the materials and accessories for your wedding dress.
Tripoli fish market. I thought of Amsterdam (the fish, not the city) while I was there. He's still alive and well if you're wondering. My Italian roommate Linda took care of him while I was away. I call her "The Godmother".
I was really surprised by Tripoli. It's a very modern city, full of big modern cars and grass. The country has a lot of money to spend on things like irrigation and roads. The city is also full of billboards with quotes from Gathafi's ridiculous manifesto "The Green Book".
If you're a bride to be, you'll get one of these huge baskets as your wedding gift. It's full of crap like hair dryers, make-up and other tools to help you get ready for your big day.
The Medina walls, and good ol' Gathafi.
The brass works street in the Medina
It was cool to visit Libya because it's not a tourist destination yet. If you want to visit, you have to go in a group of at least 4, with a police escort and local guide. But because of this, you get a more authentic cultural experience.
And more modernness...
Leptis Magna, a major city of the Roman empire and part of the Tripolis (along with Sabratha and modern day Tripoli).
A roadside fruit market in Libya. It was watermelon season!
There are a lot of immigrants in Libya, especially since its a very wealthy and safe country when compared to the rest of the disaster that is Africa. Many of them are unemployed, and sit by the side of the road with the tools of their trade in hand (paint brush=painter, hammer= construction) awaiting employment. If you need their services, you can hire them on the spot.
Back at the border Gathafi is present to see you off. You can see all the stuff people are bringing to sell back in Tunisia.
On the Tunisian side, I had fun watching these dudes cram all the carpets they bought into their car.
You can hire these worker ants to carry all your purchases from the Libyan to the Tunisian side of the border.
Back in Tunisia we stopped by the ksour, fortified granaries belonging to tribes where they could store and if need be, defend their grain.
The exterior walls of the ksour
We returend for another night in Matmata, where people used to live in these pit dwellings. The soft rock was easy to dig into, but it was also strong enough to retain its shape. The dwellings were ideal, because they protected from the extreme temperatures of the desert. One hotel in Matmata was used for the interior shots of Luke's home in Star Wars (the set in the desert was used for the exteriors).
I was the biggest (and probably the only) Star Wars fan on the trip. I stalked that hotel out myself. The next day we visited a proper Matmata dwelling.
The kitchen, surprisingly modern.
On the "roof"; they even have satellite tv!
The last town on the trip was Mahdia...
The cemeteries in Tunisia are intersting; they aren't separated from the city at all, but are scattered whereever there is free space.
That's it! My trip to Africa was amazing, but I'm glad to be back home in Amsterdam. After more traveling, I still maintain that it's the best city in the world!
