Tunisia

Ok, so after Greece the plan was to cruise through Italy for a few weeks then sneak up into Europe... that was the plan. As with any good plan it was bound to change. While Rox and I were looking at some maps and some ferry times it came to our attention that aside from the culture, social and economic golf that separates Europe and Africa, its actually not that far at all, so we thought for the Europe half time show we could mix it up and down to Africa... best decision ever.

We spent a couple of nights in Tunis, exploring the markets, smoking shisha (oh how I missed that smooth sweet taste), eating street treats and generally enjoying the north African vibe. It was rather European actually, well, they tried to. Fortunately for us it was still very Arabic. Super liberal though! I was expecting Cairo styles, but in Tunis you can see girls and drink beer! What the!


Sport and Africa.... the perfect combination.

From Tunis we headed down to Kairouan for a day to see some impressive mosques. The town is one of the top four most important places for Muslims, up there with Mecca, Jerusalem and some other one. There are 300 mosques in a medium sized town!


From there we went down to Tozeur to get real hot. Walking around it was 48 degrees Celsius... that is pretty hot! We did some exploring, found a brick making village which was actually interesting, sifted about town, got invited to some old ladies house to get out of the heat in (she feed us too, good old Tunisian hospitality).



We then went by 4WD to the SAHARA DESERT!!!! whoop. It was frickin awesome. When you looked into the wind it felt like you had just opened up the oven door, but there is no tasty pie smell.

Ok, you all know that I am super cool right? One of those people that are up with the latest trends, likes arty movies and has style... well, I am sorry, but I may have misled you... I am not cool at all, in fact, I am very very geeky. Which made the next thing we did the most exciting moment of my life....

..

...we went to the exact spot where George Lucas filmed STAR WARS IV: A New Hope!!!!! Woah... We walked around and explored the exact set they uses... oh my goodness.. Mark Hamil was here! It was very cool.

Tunisia has confirmed what I think I already knew... I love the Middle East and North Africa. It was not just a 5 week stand I had a few months ago. That's the thing with travel, so many places you fall in love and say you will return but in reality the odds of you coming back are really quite slim as the world is so big. There is so much I want to do but so little time and money! But I have a sneaking suspicion I am serious about North Africa...

Carpe Diem.