Tunisia – Page 2 – Writing With My Mouth Full

Le Kef to Tozeur via Gafsa

We had a long way to go to Tozeur via Gafsa, so we woke up early to start our drive to Kasserine. The rolling hills switched to empty lots of cacti. As our surroundings started to become flat, more and more locals started to hitch a ride to the nearby towns. We saw an older man in a long purple tunic on the side of the road, trying to wave down cars. I joked to the Dr. that we should pick him up to buy some good karma. To my surprise, he stopped the car on the side of the road. I was squealing before he rolled down the windows on my side! The old man didn’t speak French, but we all understood “Kasserine” and he got on the back seat. It was a quiet and awkward ride for the next fifteen miles because he only spoke Arabic, but he managed a faint “Monsieur” to let us know he wanted to get out as soon as we drove by the city center.

During Ramadan, some stores remain open for business. We found out fresh bread was easy to come by during the day, as well as fruits and drinks. In Gafsa, we stopped by the only open patisserie and ordered four pieces of small, triangle pastries. They were wrapped in phyllo and filled with almonds and pine nuts. They were not serving tea, so the lady refused our payment when we finished. We were simply tourists passing by her town, but we were shown such great hospitality. Picking up the old man wasn’t so bad after all. (When the Dr. bought water from another store, the man tending the place asked him what a guy “like him” was doing in the middle of Gafsa.)

We were on our way toward the desert. The roads started to become drier and dustier. We started to see road signs warning us of camels crossing. We initially thought that they were just a ploy to entertain tourists, but we laughed as soon as we caught our first glimpse of camels far away, just chilling on the side of the highway.

In Tozeur, we drove in circles before we found Residence el-Arich. We checked in our airy and tiled room that looked out to a courtyard filled with palm trees. We missed the sunset from the Belvedere Rocks because we also couldn’t the right turn. The cop stationed outside the zone touristique recognized our car by the time we circled a third time. We made it to Belvedere Rocks as soon as the sun disappeared behind the horizon. The rocks were ugly anyway as the most recent landscaping included a golf course and a playground. The face of Tunisia’s most revered poet, Abdulkacem Chebbi, was cut into the rocks. (My first reaction? “That better not be John Fucking Kennedy!” I have nothing against him, of course, but I didn’t come all the way to Tunisia to see an American’s face etched in sandstone.)

Right outside the souq, or market, of Tozeur, we found Restaurant Paradis where we had a nice dinner of couscous with lamb, a cucumber salad and ragout of green peas, all for 13 dinars. An old man ran the place and he offered to move the table and chairs outside so we can enjoy the nighttime breeze. We ate heartily as we watched the men go in and out of the mosque next door.

On our way home, our favorite cop flagged us to stop. When driving in Tunisia, there are several roundabouts and police inspections on the road. As driving tourists, we have enjoyed the privilege of simply driving slowly past the cop, waving and continuing on without having to go through the inconvenient inspections all locals treat as routine. When we were signaled to stop our car, we got a little bit nervous. The cop walked over to the Dr.’s side and handed us a date. He stopped us to give us a date! He also kept us for the next twenty minutes, excitedly chatting about Tozeur’s palmeraie–where the date came from–and the Dr.’s ability to speak perfect French even though he is “clearly” Japanese.

Inspired by the date, we visited the palmeraie the next morning, Tunisia’s second largest with at least 200,000 trees. It was an amazing sight to see clumps of trees in the middle of the desert. It’s a great example of tiered oasis agriculture where the system is watered by more than two hundred springs that produce more than 60 million liters of water a day. The best way to explore it is on foot, so that one can go through the narrow paths along the irrigation canals, but we had to be packed up by 9am. We were off to the Sahara, where we would be needing all the water we could get.

Tabarka to Bulla Regia to Le Kef

We were awaken by the first call to prayer of the day. A man’s voice echoed through the loud speakers but we still got up later than expected. The staff at Les Mimosas still served us the free breakfast of hard-boiled egg, bread, butter, coffee and orange juice. We checked out, sad that we didn’t get to take advantage of the pool with a view of the city, and visited Les Aiguilles, or the Needles. They are spiny pinnacles of rock that jut out of the Old Harbour Bay, but they were less impressive than we originally thought. We drove towards the zone touristique and chose Malibu Beach to set our beach blanket and enjoy the early afternoon. There were a lot of Czech people there, most of them sunbathing topless while young Tunisians gaped from the beach. The Mediterranean was warm enough to swim for more than an hour straight but cool enough to keep us on our toes. We weren’t keen on staying, though, because the beach was littered with cigarette butts.

Back in town, the first day of Ramadan was pretty obvious. All the restaurants and cafes were closed. Grills all around the port looked lonely and unused. We went to one store that was open and bought what would be our usual Ramadan lunch for the rest of our stay: a loaf of fresh bread, canned fish and Coke. This time, we added some pickled olives and vegetables from the market. We parked our car under a big tree back at Les Mimosas because we knew we can’t just eat in front of those who were more pious than us. Our small homemade lunch was pretty good, and we ate knowing that from sunrise to sundown, the Muslims will refrain from eating or drinking for the next forty days.

We drove past Ain Draham, by the Kroumirie Mountains and rolling hills covered in cork trees. We made a detour to Bulla Regia, a Roman site with underground villas intact. We paid the small fee to enter, plus the extra dinar to carry my camera, and a guide followed us to the site to show us around. The Neolithic tombs around the site proved that the area was inhabited before the Romans arrived. “Regia” was added to the town of Bulla after the Byzantines took over. We felt the sun burning our shoulders, but the temperature dropped as soon as we walked underground. (It was difficult to drink from our water bottles in front of a man who hasn’t had a drop since sunrise.) We walked through the House of Treasure, the House of the Peacock, the House of the Hunt and the House of the Amphitrite, where a mosaic of Venus flanked by two centaurs came alive as soon as our guide doused water over the tiles. The baths, the forum and the amphitheater were all equally amazing.

We left and continued our drive to Le Kef, also called El Kef. It didn’t take too long, but the Dr. was tired. We checked in Hotel-Residence Venus. For 40 dinars, we had our own bathroom again in our room. Our blue shutters opened to the mountains behind the medina. No one seemed to be in the hotel except us, even though our guidebook touted September as the beginning of the high season.

As the first day of Ramadan was wrapping up, we noticed the groups of men hanging outside the cafes. Le Kef was absolutely great for people watching. Hundreds of men sit on plastic chairs lined along the streets with nothing to do but talk and hang out. Not one woman can be found outside. As the afternoon call to prayer signaled the end of the day’s fasting, just like that, the streets emptied out and turned into a ghost town. It was eerie to see no one all of a sudden.

We were thankful for a stranger’s recommendation to eat at Ramzi, the only restaurant lit on rue Hedi Chaker. Without any prompting, we joined the staff in breaking the first day’s fast. We were first served shorba, or hot spicy soup. And then a plate of briq was put on the table. This one was the regular kind with chunky potatoes, but still with the ubiquitous runny egg. Traditionally during Ramadan, a meat or pasta course follows the two kemias, or appetizers. We chose the kamounia, a meat and offal stew seasoned with lots of cumin.

But as fast as they all went inside to eat for the first time in twelve hours, the men all stepped back out to resume to their original positions–this time with hot, green mint tea on hand. Still no women around, so it took balls for us to enter one of the cafes and order the same tea that the men were having. To my surprise and delight, a couple of the older men gave up their seats for me. Fresh mint leaves are stewed in hot water for several hours until they turn the water black. The tea is poured in a small glass from high to create a froth and a lot of sugar is added to make it syrupy. It’s strong and painfully sweet at times, but we found ourselves joining the men after dinner throughout our stay in Tunisia.

Bizerte to Lake Ichkeul to Tabarka

As soon as we drove away from the city, the landscaped changed. Olive trees lined the highway and dry, earthy dust covered the air. We arrived in Bizerte after an hour, parked our car in front of the municipal building and walked to the Old Port.

Bizerte sits on a canal that links the lake to the Mediterranean Sea. Small wooden boats were docked at the port, while the tall fortifications of the kasbah (fort, or citadel) flanked the fishing town. We went inside the market to check out the local goods. There were the usual bananas and grapes, but there were also prickly pears and doughnut peaches. The fish market had only the freshest produce, from the small sardines to the extra large swordfish. The meat market was far more interesting. A cow’s head, with its eyes opened, was hanging; all its innards displayed on the tables. I asked a vendor for permission and he let me take a photo of the head, but wagged his finger at me when I started to take a photo of the stomach lining and the bloody mess on the counter.

Inside the medina (or the old and traditional section of a city), a maze of stone walls guided us from narrow street to narrow street. It was dirty and rundown. We had to step over a few piles of shit. We even saw two dead kittens.

We walked by a restaurant called Marco Polo right outside the medina and noticed an old man grilling fish. It was busy with lunching Tunisian men, and so we immediately knew it was a good place to rest and eat. We sat inside to stay away from the blistering sun. The Dr. was ordered by the owner to buy fresh fish back in the market if we wanted to eat fish. He bought a kilo’s worth of what he thought were sardines. When the owner shook his head, he walked with him back to the market to exchange the fish with the correct type. We waited only a few minutes before we were served two platefuls of the grilled sardines with salad meshouia, a cold plate of roasted vegetables swimming in olive oil. For dessert, we crossed the street and bought mint tea which every Tunisian-Muslim man seemed to drink in lieu of alcohol.

Fortified, we walked back to the municipal building after lunch to find an empty street. Our car was towed! Panicked, we went inside to ask a stranger where and how we can get our car back. We took a cab to the parking lot, paid 30 dinars, and drove away with our rental. It wasn’t as much of a hassle as losing our luggage, but it still freaked us out. Why do we always have to be taught a lesson when we’re traveling? (See speeding ticket in Iceland post.)

It was time to head to our destination for the night, Tabarka. But first, we took a detour to Lake Ichkeul, a World Heritage-listed national park where different species of birds fly by from the Sahara en route across Europe. Apparently, a water buffalo was imported, too. We saw a flock of swallows and heard geese honking, but the only water buffalo we saw was the statue at the park’s entrance, where there was no admission fee, but the guard asked us for a “donation.” (He took out a blank piece of paper when we handed him a couple of dinars and wrote our names down to make us believe that our contribution was going elsewhere besides his lunch allowance.) We did a quick hike around the mountain where the view was so different from the city’s. The marsh was dry and the shallow lake was surrounded by cacti and swarmed with mosquitoes, but it was breezy at the top. We felt immediately better.

The sun started to set, so we left in a hurry and started our drive to Tabarka. The drive from the small town of Sejnane to Tabarka was like being in California. More olive trees surrounded the hills, but figs and eucalyptus also wrapped the valleys with lush greens. It was almost 9pm when we checked in Les Mimosas Hotel. Our bedroom with private bath and a terrace looked down the town center and out to Genoese Castle. It cost us 64 dinars.

After moving our stuff up, we walked to the main street to look for dinner. We found a restaurant with only an Arabic sign. We ate a spicy version of meshouia salad (thank you, hidden Serrano peppers with seeds intact), an overflowing ojja, a stew of tomatoes, chilies and merguez, or sausage, with an egg stirred in before serving, and my first Tunisian briq, a flaky, deep-fried crepe of runny eggs and, curiously, tuna. We also encountered our first harissa, a red chili paste seasoned with garlic and caraway seeds. Harissa is what kimchi is to Koreans–we ended up looking for it every time we sat down for a meal. We also ordered a bowl of hsou, or spicy soup with semolina and capers, but the owner sensed that we were already full and canceled our order.

We went back to our hotel room and enjoyed the night view from our terrace. Tabarka was waiting for us the next day.

Sidi Bou Said

We arrived in Tunis-Carthage airport after a connection in Paris minus the Dr.’s backpack. We originally planned to start our drive to the north of the country without stopping in Tunis, but this setback, although minor, was still annoying. We took care of everything first: filed a claim for lost luggage, exchanged our dollars to dinars ($1 = 1.25TD), picked up our rental Fiat, bought a SIM card for our phone. We knew we had to look for a place to stay in the city for the night, but navigating the crazy streets proved difficult. The locals sweetly crossed the street without any regard for vehicular traffic. Other cars sneaked in right next to us as if in a video game docking explosions. By the time we checked out a hotel room in the city center, we were so spent. We couldn’t get our car back to the front of the hotel, so we decided to just keep driving. (Our apologies to the hotel clerk!)

The coast to Sidi Bou Said was a much prettier and less harried drive. It smelled less like Diesel and more of the Gulf of Tunis. Set on a cliff, all we can see were white buildings with blue window grills; bougainvillea spilling out of high walls and fences. The streets were narrow, so we parked at the bottom of the hill and checked in Hotel Sidi Boufares. For 75 dinars, we got a double room with our own bathroom. The ceiling was high and made of red bricks; the walls with tiles of different patterns. Our door was, of course, painted in that Sidi Bou Said blue, complete with metal studs and a heavy knocker. The owner talked to us in English, but I knew I will have to defer to the Dr. for the rest of our vacation when people outside the city will start speaking in French. (We think it’s a perfect travel arrangement: I plan, he speaks; I look pretty, he drives!)

We ate at Rais Labhar for our first experience of simple Tunisian fare. The restaurant offered pizza and spaghetti, too, but we ate the salad Tunisienne, a mix of lettuce, olives, cucumber, peppers and flaked tuna. I had the under-salted grilled fish and the Dr. opted for the overcooked beef steak. A least our hunger pangs were satiated. We later found out that 22 dinars for so little food was too expensive.

We walked around town, past all the souvenir shops and haggling Europeans, to take photos of the Andalusian architecture. The blue tint grew on me, as well as the metal details that dot the doors and the windows. The sun started to set over the white domes, and as the other visitors boarded their giant buses, the town quieted down and emptied out.

Later, a call to prayer we overheard coming through the town’s loud speakers reminded us that we were in a new place. The five calls to prayer each day will remain to be the most impressionable for the next two weeks. I was ready for the new tastes and different smells I will encounter.

We were reunited with the Dr.’s pack at night time. For dinner, we walked down the hill and stopped by a hole in the wall to eat a chawarma with beef the clerk peeled off a spit. For 2.50 dinars, it was a much more satisfying fare than lunch. We were ready to start over the next day.