Chapter 3 – Into the desert

As we drove further west into the more desert like areas, the roads became much sparser and the scenery browner.  The main east/west road is basically a two lane highway (one lane each way) that cuts through dusty, forlorn villages and a few larger towns (by which I mean 1000 people maybe instead of 10).  And people in these villages/towns don’t know how to drive.  At least a dozen times we saw people on mopeds going the wrong way on the street and cars make turns when they feel like it whether or not they have the right of way.  They also like to pass.  But they will pass four cars at once.  This can be a real problem when there’s an oncoming truck and the stupid driver trying to pass four cars needs to get back. Sometimes they can’t get back and they force the oncoming driver (like me) off to the side of the road so that they can keep going.  What’s most surprising is that we’ve yet to see any accidents (unlike Greece where we drove one day on a treacherous mountain road where the drivers were equally crazy but we saw a flipped over car).   Driving does take some nerves here.

As you drive and drive and drive, it’s hard to imagine how people can live so remotely and in such inhospitable lands.  These are not places where you can order in a pizza.  The driving is much more fun than a big highway, though.  When you go 70 on one of these roads, you know you’re going 70!  And the roads do wind a bit and it keeps you more engaged (which is a good thing when your partner is sawing zzz’s next to you and the radio is barking in French and Arabic – speaking of radio, we were getting German radio for a period at one point.  Bizarre)

And then over the horizon, you suddenly see a sight that looks very familiar.  We’re cruising along and we’re not far from our destination (after a 5 hour ride) and I know that I’ve seen this vista before.  That’s right you Star Wars fans, I was looking out over at Mos Eisly spaceport (the same way Obi Wan, Luke and the droids did before meeting Han and Chewie).  Very cool.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t a safe place to stop and we wanted to keep moving.  Looking forward to more Tatouine sightings though!

The other fun thing about driving in the Tunisian desert is the oases.  Brown brown brown GREEN!  I’ve been to oases before, but it is still a treat to see it again.  Tozeur—where we stayed--is a major oasis with something like 200 thousand date palms.  It’s an amazing sea of green in the desert.

The weather here is quite varied.  On the coast, it could get quite cool.  I wouldn’t want to be there in winter.  The breeze is very strong, and it was chilly at night (and even in the day out of the sun).  Go a couple hundred miles inland, and it’s brutally desert hot (also with a wind which makes the heat worse – think hair dryer on a summer day).

Dining notes for those who have followed previous adventures: To the list of exotic things I have eaten (including live termite and fried grasshopper) we can now add camel.  It’s quite yummy actually (and not nearly as exotic).  But here’s the best part.  Camel, a diet staple in parts of the Arab word tastes like...not chicken…not beef... pork!  That’s right.  My camel steak tasted just like a delicious pork chop.  It’s so ironic that it makes me possibly believe in a deity that’s playing with us.

So the people here in Tunisia are overall quite friendly and nice. There’s the usual pushiness of souvenir vendors and the like (the caleche – horse carriage – drivers in Tozeur were probably the worst “It is too far. You cannot walk.”  Yeah, right pal, we’re from NYC, we walk everywhere).  People have helped in providing directions and giving general guidance on an area many times.  The hotel and restaurant staffs are above average in their solicitude.  But the kids on the street are a different story.  At least three times, we were cursed at by kids “what the f*** are you doing here”  “bitch” – all unprovoked and in English (which is even weirder because most tourists speak French).  We even had a couple of young girls hiss at us because we wouldn’t give them money (they weren’t poor, just looking for candy money).  I mean, who hisses?  What are they, channeling their inner cats? 

Anyway, the people are still nice – especially so in the desert where they will stop if you are stopped to make sure you are okay.  This whole desert hospitality thing has caused us some consternation and a bit of bad karma.  There have been several instances when we passed people in the desert, hitchhiking.  Now intellectually we know that it’s very common here and it’s expected that you’ll stop and pick people up.  But these are invariably men and usually younger.  All of our own instincts tell us not to stop – so we don’t.  But we feel very guilty about it, and I’m not sure we’ve done the right thing.  I mean, these people were standing in no man’s land miles and miles from the nearest town (what are they doing out there, anyway?).  But then it’s so hard to get the hitchhiker stories from the US out of my head (I keep thinking of this one story David Sedaris recounts, and it’s horrifying!).