Le Sahara...

@matmata
@matmata
@ matmata
@matmata
@ El Jem (the roman colloseum)
Bonjour!

It's 8pm here on Wednesday night we just arrived back from our Dessert Trip! wow was a really great experience....

Started off having to be at the hotel at 630am on Tuesday morning ready to be picked up. The bus was about 25 minutes late we thought we had missed the one we were supposed to get on but it eventually arrived. our tour guide Mohamed met us and took us onto the bus. It was packed. We we're very very very lucky bois to get the tickets that we did. At this time of the year in Tunisia it is the busy tourist season and for example in Sousse where we are staying for every 1 Tunisian who lives here there is 4 tourists!!! We were on a bit coah probably of 36 people or so.

We started off by going to see a roman Colossium in El Jem, it is the third largest Roman collosium in the world and we walked around what is left of the Stadium and also into the Arena where the roman's (cant think of the proper name) would fight.... Gladiators! We went down undeneath where all the animals where kept and it was pretty dark but Sarah's torch came in handy hehehe:D

Next stop was Matmata where the native Tunisian people live in “caves” into the sides of the mountains. They are realy nice houses though, really really cool even though it is boily HOT in the sun just outside the doors. We had some traditional bread and tea. Yummy. This area is also where Star Wars was filmed!!! Pretty neat, I don't recognize anything in particular but will definitely be watching the movies when I get home to see if I do. It's quite an amazing land scape really. We also went into what is now a hotel which is where some of the Star Wars footage was filmed.

That afternoon we went on a camel back ride as we had actually arrived into the Sahara Dessert! it was pretty kool. We got dressed in turbins and dresses to protect us from the sun and sand. It was to see the sunset over the dessert! We got gipped, they came offering us coca cola and we said no but they basically put it in out hands and cracked the lid off and then made us pay 3 dinars each! lol was annoying, funny now that you think about it but still hehe. It is like that a lot here have to be very careful not to get tricked into anything.

We arrived back at the hotel it was perhaps 8am, we had tea and then went straight to bed. We had a 450am leave from the hotel to start our next day.

Got up had a shower, had breakfast and just relaxed next to the pool for a little while. Atleast it was still nice and kool and just looked up at the stars. Got onto the bus and then slept for most of the next little trip where we got to the Salt dessert. Huge salt lake. didnt get many nice photos of it as the sun hadden't really risen yet.

Next stop was to go into the 4wd and go into the Atlas mountains! Wow OASIS!!!!! a real one, spring, pond, waterfall... palm trees! cliffs, moutains, was amazing! And the view from the mountains was also pretty spectacular. We saw the Algerian border and this area is also where Indiana Jones was filmed! I didnt realise so much filming was done here.

Then back into the 4wd, by the way we had a slow driver lol BORING everyone was overtaking us! and then we headed back to the city where the bus was. The bus then took us to another oasis, where people worked and lived on the date palms, fruit trees and animals. was amazingly cool underneath all the trees. Around this we were taken on horse and cart! pretty neat:)

Got to meet some pretty nice people travelling too. Most though didn't speak english even tho they were on a english tour hehe. I guess if it is booked out like we were told you just take whatever tour you can find. the guide spoke five languages anyway its just most of the history and talking was all in english.

We stopped at a rug factory and also at a mosque, the mosk was closed so we didnt even get out cause ya couldnt really see anything. these were just quick stops before we headed back into Sousse.

All in all we did over a 1000km round trip in the two days. Great experince glad we were lucky enough to get tickets the day before the tour!!!!

Well that's all for now, time for a shower and some dinner. Hope all is well with everyone, we leave for Germany on Friday at 3am, so tommorow is last day in Tunisia, we are going to spend the afternoon in Tunis (Capital of Tunisia) and then go to see the second Largest Collosium (Carthiage), second only to the one in Rome. We are also going to see one of the cities inside Tunis, “Sidu Bai Sa Id” (I'm not sure of the spelling hehe)... And then hang around in Sunis for the evening before we head to the airport and catch the plane out to Germany. So there we go missing another whole nights sleep again hehe, thats travelling I guess. And I guess everyone had no choice since that's the only flight each day:)

Aurevoir.