Here we go with the second installment of my spring break blog coverage! Tuesday morning, after breakfast in the hotel we moved further into desert territory to a town called Douz where, in probably the most anticipated moment of all break, we rode camels in the desert! As if that were not awesome enough, after lunch at a hotel in town, we left behind our buses and luggage and got into a fleet of 4-wheel drive jeeps which took us into the Sahara! Our campsite was almost ten miles into the desert, and the bumpy jeep ride was tons of fun. While waiting for dinner and for all the tents to be pitched, most of us walked a ways from the site, which made me truly feel that I was in the middle of nowhere. A proud Chicagoan (okay, I'm a suburbanite, but I thrive in urban situations), I will admit that I sometimes get nervous going farther out than, let's say, Barrington or Crystal Lake. It's because then I feel like I am lost from civilization in the middle of nowhere and I feel unsafe. Well, that's a feeling I'm pretty sure I amplified by penetrating into the largest desert in not only Africa, but the world. That night alone would make spring break fantastic, but it just kept getting better. We all sat down to a fire-cooked Berber meal (including what we all now call "fire bread") and had a night of dancing and singing around a fire. I'm not kidding. The Berbers (North African nomadic groups) have a really interesting culture, and we had guys playing instruments and a woman dancing. After that died down, we sat around the fire and sang every song ever recorded in the past four decades. Also not kidding. I slept in a tent made for eight but full of perhaps ten, and it was the coldest experience of my life. I woke up and I'm pretty sure there was no blood flowing below my knees. However, we woke up for the sunrise and had some form of breakfast. I survived!
We got back into the jeeps and returned to the hotel, dirty and sandy and content as ever! There we had a real breakfast and, with no showering and minimal freshening up, continued on our southern Tunisian journey.
On the way to Tozeur we crossed through the Chott el-Jérid salt lake, which I expected to be more like the Great Salt Lake or Caspian Sea, and not the sort of salt desert it was. Let's use the term Chott el-Jérid salt pan, I prefer it that way, okay thanks. After staring at sky for miles and writing our names in the salt, we hopped back on the buses and woke up in Tozeur, where we got back into the jeeps and headed up into the mountains. We reached an oasis called Chebika, where there was an abandoned walled town (that we didn't go into) and opportunities for some semi-hiking. We saw the literal oasis (water) in a canyon and a small little waterfall. Eventually we happened upon the most luxurious hotel ever, the Tamerza Palace. We had a classy as hell lunch and they told us we could buy massages and spa treatments if we wanted. Tempting, but I did not partake. Tamerza was awesome, and I remember calling my mom that night since it was her birthday. Cute!
Because of the rain, which almost ruined our plans to camp in the Sahara, we couldn't do the next morning's plans of riding the Red Lizard train because apparently it was unsafe or tracks were damaged or something of the sort. Instead, we got back into our trusty jeeps and literally spent that morning and afternoon fooling around with them, blasting techno and driving down cliffs and such. Needless to say, we tipped the drivers well. We also stopped at another Star Wars site, and again I realized I should probably re-watch the movies. Off we went to the hotel in Sbeitla, where we spent the night sitting around in the lobby (and watching mostly Western music videos on some Cairo-based TV station on a big-screen). The next morning, our first stop was the Roman ruins at Sbeitla, which were cool mainly because I saw a group of old Sicilian tourists. We then kept on for Kairouan, the most holy city in Tunisia. We visited the Great Mosque and right around the corner was a place where we had a showing of Tunisian rugs. Some people bought rugs, which I would do too but I didn't know how to deal with its care and transport. Maybe next time I'm in Tunisia, right? After walking through our hundredth medina and stopping at the mausoleum of Sidi Sahbi, the barber of the Prophet, our time in Kairouan came to a close. We headed for, sadly, the last city on our itinerary, Hammamet.
Hammamet is beautiful. Another coastal Mediterranean paradise, my school saved some of the best for last as we spent our last two days there. I spent my Friday night at the hotel, enjoying the generous buffet and the bar. Saturday morning we slept in a bit (thank goodness!) and, after breakfast, some of us headed into the medina for some shopping and wandering. It turned into quite a productive walk! The weather was perfect, warm and with a breeze, and it sunk in that our African spring break wouldn't last forever. Still, I'm glad I was able to partake in the nightlife that evening and had a blast on my last night in Tunisia. On Sunday, in simple fashion, we returned to Tunis and the airport, where we waved goodbye to the Maghreb and boarded our Tunisair flight for Rome. I will never forget the experiences I had in Tunisia on Spring Break 2010, certainly my most exotic yet, or the things I have subconsciously learned about myself and my worldviews. So, thank you Africa, I'll be back as soon as I can, but until then, bislema and enhebbeck!
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