As we stood around wondering how we'd traverse the remaining 20km between new and old Matmata, a car pulled up and a Tunisian man asked us if we were going to Matmata and if we'd like a ride. We'll that was easy!
As we headed south from the mountains of northwestern Tunisia the land had changed from rolling green springtime grain fields and pasture to semi-arid land filled with sheep, goats and lots and lots of olive trees.
In a few short kilometres after leaving new Matmata, this changed again into true desert with nothing but rugged, gold and pinkish rocky landscapes in every direction. These landscapes would be familiar to many people of about my age. And, rather surprisingly, the hotel in the centre of old Matmata that we pulled up to would be more familiar still.
That's because the hotel was the Hotel Sidi Driss, which was used to play the inside of the Lars Homestead, living place of Uncle Owen, Aunt Beru and Luke Skywalker in the first of the Star Wars movies.
The Sidi Driss is a tourist attraction in Tunisia, but really not a major one. A few tour buses pop by every day to have lunch or to pay one Dinar a head to look around the hotel. For those of us who are fans of the Star Wars films, one Dinar seems like a pittance to pay for admission to one of the highest points of pilgrimage. Sarah and I had decided to spend the night. A lot of tourist guides say that the hotel rooms are not particularly pleasant, but we found our room, carved into the walls of one of several hand excavated ancient “craters” that were (and in some cases still are) used as homes by the troglodytic inhabitants of Matmata.
We spent the afternoon looking around and taking photos all around the hotel. After filiming of A New Hope concluded in 1977, the props and set decorations were taken down, but when Attack of the Clones needed to use the same location it was rebuilt from scratch and has been left in place ever since. It was cool to look at the set pieces up close and see how they were buoltbofany everyday items stuck together and painted (e.g. cups, drop in concrete anchors, nails with plastic washers, etc.)
Curiously (or actually maybe not) our photos remind me more of the movies than actually being there did, but I still had a grand time, grinning widely for much of our time there.
The hotel room itself was cozy and interesting, and the separate bathrooms were reasonably clean, with lots of hot water, which is better than we'd been led to believe. I reckon most of the negative reviews of the place as a hotel come from people who have been staying at four and five star beach resorts rather than others like us who have been staying at simple Airbnbs and zero star local hotels.
As we settled into our cave for the evening the wind came up again and the sky darkened and yellowed with dust. The sunset wasn't visible from our room, but we did get the drama of a thunderstorm (but with very limited rain) to lullaby us to sleep.
We'd made inquiries about onward travel from Matmata, including with some local tour guides. But in the end the hotel staff's advice of “it's really too expensive to be worth it, just go back to Gabes and get a bus or Louage from there,” ruled the day. We had a little walk around town, visiting a scenic overlook and the main square. But when a louage appeared, our transport difficulties of the previous day convinced us to cut our explorations and get aboard for the journey to New Matmata and thence back to Gabes. We met a couple of the same people hanging out around the louage station (they seemed surprised and pleased to see us) and bought tickets for a ride south to the town of Medenine.
Medenine was right on the way to our final destination, and (though I'm not a big fan of the Star Wars prequels) an old granary structure (a “Ksar”) was used as a filming location for The Phantom Menace. And the ksar was right next to the bus/louage station.
As with Hotel Sidi Driss, it was a little surprising how little (i.e. absolutely none) fuss was made over the Ksar Medenine. You just walked down a couple of market alleyways and there it was. Most of its individual doors were locked, but it seems to presently be used to store bulk second hand clothes and house lots of kitties. It's a really cool looking structure, and would have been worth a visit even if it wasn't for the Star Wars connection. On the way back we bought some yummy fresh peaches at a market stall, with helpful translation from French to Arabic (or was it Berber?) by the guy at the next stall.
We thought we were being so clever stopping in Medenine. Of course our stopover there wasn't nearly as simple as we'd imagined it being. First we were dropped off on the northern outskirts of town instead of at the Louage/bus station. We had to take a taxi into town (incidentally, taxi drivers in Tunisia were great. Rides were cheap, they were friendly and uniformly used the meters without us asking. This may be because we only ever took taxis in very untouristy locales, but taxis in Tunisia get two thumbs up from me). Then the Louage station near the Ksar turned out not to be the one where our onward journey departed from. Then we stopped for lunch (fried egg and chips with a plate of delicious dips, bread and a brik a l'oeuf [really yummy crispy, savoury Tunisian fried pastry filled with egg and potato]).
Then after lunch we went next door to the Loauge station and discovered that there was no one in the ticket office which, for some reason, meant that none of the louages were accepting passengers and everyone was just standing around waiting for something to happen. After maybe half an hour of this we ended up getting a ride with two Tunisians in a private car whose driver had been soliciting passengers (and who was, apparently, not upset by the absence of a ticket seller and was just happy to accept [just over double the usual cost in] cash).
I've been skirting around the name of our days final destination because I wanted to save it for a big reveal. From one Star Wars location via a second to a third: the town of Tataouine! Right on the edge of the Sahara, though it gave it's name to Luke's home planet, its environs weren't actually used as a filming location until the prequels. But what environs they are! We only visited a tiny fraction of the desert landscapes and ancient villages that surround Tataouine, but when we departed after a day and a half there we felt sure we could have happily spent at least twice as long.
Tataouine itself is on the edge of, or really, just inside the Sahara. It's a pretty rugged looking town with a frontier-y feel to it. The main market has a lot of basic goods sales and an artisans section, and there are a few hotels, but it doesn't see tons of tourists, and even fewer independent ones. This was illustrated one night when we were having a Libanes (one of several Tunisian names that seem to very by city for a wrapped sandwich, others being Melawi and Malfouf). The shop proprietor asked what hotel we were saying at, and seeming a but surprised that we were at the youth hostel. “You're not here with a group? With a bus?” he asked. No. “How did you get here?” he inquired further. When we told him we'd taken a louage he seemed startled, as though the idea of tourists travelling by Louage was an entirely foreign and unexpected idea.
The best of our visit wasn't actually in Tataouine, but in the villages outside. We’d expected to have to hire a taxi for the day but the (tremendously friendly and helpful, and English speaking even) guy at the hotel told us we could visit them by Louage. So we headed to the station, looking for a lift to Douriet. We eventually found other folks heading there and waited with them. By the time the Louage showed up there were at least ten of us waiting for eight seats. And though we were there before several of the others we'd been told there was only a single Louage plying the route, so we figured that priority really ought to go to people going about their lives and trying to get home or visit family, so we let them all board and, after a bit more hesitation, hired a full minibus to drive us out there (for exactly the price of eight seats. Louage drivers in Tunisia really are scrupulously honest and organized, as illustrated by the fact that this guy, like every other one we met, charged us the exact same as everyone else, and the fact that neither the first driver to Douriet, nor anyone else, ever tried to cram in even a single more passenger than there were seats).
The drive out to Douriet was pretty impressive on its own, dry and vast, and reminiscent of the area around Four Corners and Monument Valley in Arizona. The landscape was filled with vast plains and huge mesas.
We zipped straight past new Douriet, saving us two or three kilometres’ walk (a side benefit to hiring the whole van) to the old village.
Old Douriet was truly spectacular. A village of brick houses and carved cave dwellings and hybrid structures perched on the edge of the mesa, climbing up, up it's sides to the top of a towering peak. There were signs of current activity (including literal signs for a couple of guesthouses and a restaurant). But there didn't seem to be a single other soul around when we were there, save for a few guys working on (what appeared to be) a new hotel on the floor of the valley below. We were free to wander, peek, scramble and explore to our hearts’ content. It was really magical, and you couldn't tell whether most of the buildings had been abandoned thirty years before or three hundred. The structures themselves, combined with the surroundings reminded me a lot of the Anasazi cliff dwellings in the southwest US.
With our explore done we followed a trail through the valley to the right of the village leading up onto/into the mesa. The canyon was pretty amazing, as were the small grain and palm farms growing on terraces behind small dams all the way up to the top of the mesa (and in any little gully anywhere on top of it as well).
The only person we saw in our ten kilometre walk up and across the mesa was a goat herd tending to his big flock who asked us (I'm assuming, as it was in Arabic) if we were going to Chenini. He smiled and pointed on up the trail we were following. He seemed pleased when we said (in French) how beautiful the surroundings were.
Up on top of the mesa was a stark, wild place that seemed almost entirely removed from the rest of the world. Other than the faint trail we followed there were times where there wasn't a sign of human habitation as far as the eye couls see for 360 degrees. It was still early April, and still not very hot, but we were nonetheless slightly relieved when we found the valley that our trail would follow down off the mesa.
We walked past the fabulously old and picturesque looking Mosque of the Seven Sleepers. And back up the side of the Mlmesa to the village of Old Chenini. It's hilltop fortress was even more spectacular than the one in Douriet, and just as abandoned. But down the hillside, some people still lived in Old Chenini. Some of them scrape out a living from visiting tourists (Tunisians in cars, foreigners mostly in tour buses). We had cups of sweet black tea with rosemary sold by a Berber guy whos appearance was so fair it made us think that maybe Tunisians who'd asked if Sarah was Berber weren't entirely joking. He'd priced the tea exactly right…. About five times what it would have cost at a cafe in town, and exactly the amount I'd said to myself was the most I'd be willing to pay without being grumpy about having done so.
While it was probably more impressive to look at than Douriet, the many more people around left it feeling that we couldn't really explore the ruined sections of the village at will like we had in Douriet, so we soon headed back down the road towards new Chenini. On our way down a Loauge passed us heading the other direction. We made hand signals asking if he was heading to Tataouine. He made hand signals indicating that he would be after he headed up to Old Chenini and turned around, and maybe twenty minutes later we got our way ride back to town.
This day was a really great one. Sarah and I have observed that we do get to see and do a lot of amazing stuff when we travel, and we know (at least intellectually) how lucky we are. But once in a while, on days like this when you experience something really special and have it all to yourself without another soul around, and you have the sense that very, very few others get that experience… It really drives it home, and you really feel your good fortune as well as just knowing it.
Back in Tataouine we had one more night going out for dinner Sandwiches before taking our leave the next morning and heading north across desert and then a kilometres long causeway across the Mediterranean to the island of Djerba.
Djerba is meant to be one of the highlights of Tunisia by many people. I'm afraid I can't really agree with that. Nor disagree. Unfortunately somewhere along the line I'd picked up a cold, and spent almost all of our two days in Djerba in bed. I did get up to do some cooking.
And on our last full day I joined Sarah for a walk around Homt Souk, the main town on the island. It was made almost entirely of whitewashed buildings. And the souk itself was kind of pretty, but also filled with souvenir shops and tourist restaurants of a sort we hadn't really seen since the Tunis Medina.
So really my highlights of Djerba were limited to this short walk, the ferry ride off the island (boat trips are always fun). And most importantly, a visit to a disused bakery in the town of Ajim where the ferry dock is located.
This bakery was a bit rundown, and had clearly seen better days. It had a few mechanics shops, farm supplies vendors and a hair salon nearby. All of this belies its coolness and importance, which arise from its use for the exterior shots of the Mos Eisely Cantina in a New Hope. Never have I been more excited to see a wretched hive of scum and villany.
And with this nice Star Wars bookend, I'll conclude this entry for now and continue with our travels north next time.
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