Tunisia

We flew from Malta to Tunis (the capital of Tunisia) and immediately transferred to Sousse a 2 hour drive. Sousse is the second largest city in Tunisia and is more tourist oriented than Tunis.

The currency in Tunisia is Dinar and 1 Dinar is roughly worth 1 Aus dollar. Everything is quite cheap a coffee is 1.5 dinar and a pizza is 4 dinar. The average wage of a school teacher who knows 5 languages is 600 dinar per month whilst a cleaner in the hotels earns just 150 dinar per month. They are big on tipping with most people expecting a dinar for any service they provide.

We gave the cleaner in our room 1 dinar each day and she made sure we got clean linen and towels every day

Stayed at the Tej Marhaba pictured above - this is the view from our balcony.

The beach is golden sand similar to Australia, but thats where the similarities end, as soon as you get close to the beach you are constantly hassled to buy something, rent a sun bed or take a parasail ride. The same can be said for all of Tunisia where bargaining is a way of life, everywhere you go you are hassled to buy.

The Medina of Sousse (old walled city) is an interesting place, it contains hundreds of souks all looking to sell the same leather goods, pottery or jewellry to tourists, these areas are relatively clean and would be a pleasure to walk through if not for the hassling. The medina also includes the daily shopping for the residents including the fresh ( maybe) food market, these areas are dirty and smelly, we even saw a dead rat in the gutter

John standing in front of a butchers shop in the Medina the things hanging on the wall on the left of the picture are entrails and on the right a head all meat is covered in flies but is for human consumption.

We did a 2 day trip to the south of Sousse with 1 night spent in the Sahara at Douz,we did a camel trip on the sahara, dressed up in traditional arab costume, no pictures because it was in a sand storm but that lent to the experience, visibility at times was down to 2 camel lengths. We stopped at an oasis to shelter from the storm for a while, got off the camels and sat next to them for added shelter, then an arab pops out from behind a palm tree to sell us a drink.

This is el-Djem roman ruins where some of the movie Gladiator was filmed

Below is Matmata lunar landscape and hotelwhich includes the set for the Star Wars movie

In the mountains close to Algeria

Chott el-Djerid Salt lake

We had a great time but we were pleased to leave -been there done that.

We were subjected to a ful body pat down and a complete check of all our hand luggage at the airport. The French people were allowed to walk straight through ( I forgot to mention that Tunisia was colonised bythe French and French is spoken everywhere)