Location: Gammarth, near Tunis
Today we mostly listened to: Funny wailing music in taxis
Miles travelled: 10 miles between Gammarth, Tunis and Sidi Bou Said
Weather: 30ºC Sunny
It took us about 2 hours to get through Tunisian customs on Thursday night. It then took us another hour to find our hotel, which was only 15 mins away from the port – doh. We stopped to ask a lovely policeman for directions and he proceeded to escort us in the general direction of our hotel getting us back on track – so far the Tunisians we have met have been very nice and helpful people.
Our hotel is lovely (a bit too nice really so we feel we are cheating) but it has secure parking and there isn’t really anywhere to camp in Tunis so we’ll let ourselves off for now. We awoke early this morning and after a few hours uploading photos and looking for a mechanic to fix Monty’s clutch we headed in to Tunis town centre to visit the Souk. It was quite nice actually – not as much hassel as we’ve had in other North African souks. Having said that, we did take our eye off the ball and lulled into this false sense of security we somehow ended up on a tour of a carpet shop and buying a small rug. We also managed to get up on to the roof-tops above the souk to get a great view over the city – see pictures on flickr.
After the hot, sweaty atmosphere of Tunis Medina we decided to head out to Sid Bou Said on the coast. It is a quaint town with white and blue buildings right on the med – all very touristy, but quite nice to spend a couple of hours there. After that we headed back to the hotel for a dip in the pool, dinner and another early night. Tonights entertainment was a crappy Steven Segal movie with Arabic sub-titles (truely awful and worse than Night at the Museum 2). Tomorrow we go in search of a place to camp further down the coast and close to a landrover mechanic we have managed to locate. Got 2 days to get Monty fixed as we have to be at the Libyan border on Tuesday as the visas are quite strict and we can’t keep Farhat (our guide) waiting!
