Le Sud Tour - Day 1

We had the feeling of ‘pioneers’ as we lugged our kitbag and backpack to meet our transport at 0630 for our three day tour of ‘Le Sud’, the Sahara Desert and places in between. However, rather than a caravan of camels, we had chosen a Toyota Landcruiser 4x4 to take us there. Our companions were a German speaking Swiss couple and their daughter, Gabriella. Thankfully Gabriella spoke English and was able to translate between us and her parents who had virtually no English. Our driver, Maher, was fluent in both English and German and spoke his commentaries in both languages. Aisha, a young Tunisian girl in her first year of training as a tour guide came along as an observer but spent a lot of the time asleep!
Our first stop on this tour of discovery was El Jem, a former Punic town that became a Roman colony in the mid 3rd century and one of the richest towns in Roman Africa. Driving along the typically straight road towards the town a magnificent amphitheatre, built over the eight years from 230 – 238AD and seating over 30,000 people, stands high and imposing above the town. Its remains are remarkably intact even though the town was sacked by the Turks and the Arabs with many of the stones being removed to build mosques elsewhere.
It was interesting to discover the difference between an Amphitheatre that was used purely for pageantry and spectacles involving the gruesome sport of throwing slaves to wild animals or Gladiators battling with those animals and a Coliseum, such as the one in Rome, that had the additional feature of the ability of being filled with water and thus stage mock water borne battles and pageants.
The landscape of the flat coastal plain was uninspiring and the towns and villages were litter strewn and dirty and comprised in the main seemingly unfinished and drab or dilapidated shops, workshops and houses arranged haphazardly with little hint of a town plan. Olives grow in abundance and are of great importance to Tunisia’s economy, production here being exceeded only by that in Spain and Italy. The olive trees are more widely spaced than those in other countries, the spaces in between being, soil permitting, sometimes cultivated with other crops.
As we approached Sfax, almond and fig trees grow in the increasingly infertile soil as well as the perpetual olive groves. Sfax is Tunisia’s intensely industrialised second city, and one well bypassed by the traveller. It is the major port for the export of Phosphates and refinery of crude oil from Tunisia’s desert and offshore fields.
There were sculptures on a fishing theme clearly made by local amateur artists from flotsam and jetsam on the road into the tiny fishing village of Mahres on the coast between Sfax and Gabes. Opposite the cafe where we had drinks we admired the sculpture of an old man hewn out of an old tree trunk.
The sea is very shallow along this coast for as great a distance offshore as to preclude us sailing there. The beaches were being combed by many picking shellfish like the Chinese cocklers in Morecombe Bay, Lancashire. Offshore we could see fishermen from Arab dhows casting their nets over the brown waters of the shallows.
On the roadside between Mahres and Gabes Libyan diesel was being sold in plastic containers having been purchased over the border in Libya some 200 kilometres distant where it is very much cheaper than in Tunisia. This trade is illegal but overlooked, the quantities not being significant. I wonder!
Gabes is a maritime oasis and the centre for the production of henna, a dye made from ground privet leaves used for traditional Berber hand, feet and face painting to protect from evil spirits. Perhaps the privet found in England will do the same!
During the climb from Gabes towards Matmata into the hills of the Jebel Dahar the terrain becomes increasingly barren with rock strewn sand and sandstone slopes interspersed with the odd palm tree and scrub. This veritable lunar landscape was the location for the filming of the ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’.
This is the north eastern extent of the land of the non Arab Berber tribes, former nomads and, with evidence of their existence discovered from 3,500BC, the oldest indigenous North African people who even today inhabit the region across the Sahara desert, the Atlas Mountains and into Morocco. They are a pale skinned blue eyed people who, despite having embraced Islam, have maintained their ethnic and linguistic identity. Integration with the Arab population is jeopardising this identity however.
In this part of Southern Tunisia the Berbers lived as Troglodytes. The underground rooms of their homes dug into the sandstone from a central open courtyard maintain a constant temperature of 17°C day and night winter, and summer. The tradition goes back thousands of years but the houses the like of which we saw at Matmata date from the 19th century. In fact the house that we visited was the first opened to the public and the one where the matriarch, who died earlier this year, is featured in our guide book. The photograph of her in the guide is that which hangs on the wall of one of the bedrooms. We had a splendid traditional tomato soup, ‘brik’ (thin deep fried crispy pastry filled with a fried egg) and tender, tasty goat ‘couscous’ (steamed semolina grains served with meat or fish and vegetables in a tomato sauce) lunch at another, larger of these houses now occupied as a hotel. Talking of traditional Tunisian dishes I must mention ‘Harissa’; a paste made with red chilli and garlic often served with olive oil, olives and bread as a starter. It can be ferociously hot!
The terrain got sandier as we drove south to Douz, the gateway to the Sahara and once there on the fringe of the Grand oriental Erg with nothing but sand dunes and oases to the south and west of us for many hundreds of miles we once again felt the pioneering spirit when, garbed in traditional Berber dress, we sailed a ‘ship of the desert’. They say that take off and landings are the tricky bits but we prevailed without mishap and enjoyed the experience immensely. The camel is a noble beast whose upturned nose makes it appear snooty and whose long eyelashes give it a certain allure as well as keeping the sand out of its eyes! The camel will drink a hundred and thirty litres of water in one sitting and this, stored in its hump, will last it for up to fourteen days before needing to drink again.
The camels drink at Oases once used as a haven for caravans and lost travellers. Today they are a vital lifeline for those who live in this extreme environment. Oases grow up around wells, natural springs and ground water and consist of fertile land shaded by date palms. Some oases, such as Gabes and Nefta have grown into towns. Some natural springs are running dry and a new source of water has been found from Artesian wells sunk over 3,500 feet below the earth’s surface. Water millions of years old forces itself to the surface under its own pressure and delivers at 70°C at the top of concrete towers where it falls and cools, is gathered in pools and distributed through irrigation channels and pipes to the palm groves and watering pools.
Our hotel for the first night of our trip was the three star ‘Les Dunes de Neftaoua’ surrounded by the palm trees of the small oasis of Bechri. Miggy was delighted to swim in the pool where the top foot of water that was warm came directly from the nearby artesian well whereas the water below was freezing. A 20m high tower had been built by the pool the view from which over the oasis was splendid.
It was a long day having travelled nearly 500 kilometres, having seen a myriad of sights or, indeed, ways of life and having tried a few of them.