Tunisia Road Trip, Partie Trois: To The Desert & Beyond! Days Four, Five, & Six
Day Four started with an early morning camel ride before we left Ksar Ghilane for a different chunk of the Sahara. Camels: better than coffee to get the blood moving.
This is the camel lot.
It started with an attempt to get Dorothy on a camel. Which was, in a technical sense, successful. She got on a camel. But then got right off. The pressure required to manage her position atop the beast was more than her recently reconstructed hips could handle. So down she came.
I didn’t catch Dorothy getting down, but this is what it looks like when a camel kneels. Are they jointed like kangaroos? Or Erector Sets?
My turn. It wasn’t easy, but at least I’m sporting all my original joints. For now.
The camel driver was seriously fucking with me. First, he put me on the tallest camel. Which I suppose might not have been intentional. But then he kept trying to scoot me up so I was sitting halfway up the hump, rather than in the actual saddle behind the hump. There was no way to stay in that spot without sliding back down to the saddle. It’s not like I had to be in a specific position to reach the stirrups, as there weren’t any stirrups. I think he was just bored.
When we set out the driver held the leads for three of the camels, with the rear pair tethered to two of the front camels. Because the front camels were being managed from just one spot, they tended to bunch up, with absolutely no regard for crushing our legs or feet. I was the middle camel, so I was getting it from both sides.
Since I was managing the whole sitting thing so well, he rewarded me by handing me the lead for one of the other two front camels, so there would be more room for them to space themselves. Because I was clearly in complete control, and ready to manage an extra camel.
On my return I held up the lead and shouted out to Dorothy and Mohamed that I’d been promoted to Assistant Camel Driver. Mohamed named me on the spot. Thenceforth I was Ali, the Camel Boy. Like a cowboy, but without the cows. I was proud to have earned my stripes.
And he really did call me Ali for the rest of the trip.
The camel ride could have been just a tourist thing, like the ATVs screaming across the desert. Which we didn’t do, because they’re both stupid and evil. But all I could think of while I struggled to stay afloat on my desert life raft was Mohamed’s admonition to “Imagine this without roads.”
That shifted everything. I couldn’t treat this like it was a Disneyland ride. At that moment I was no different than a Berber nomad, skill level excepted, using the only tool available to survive the desert. Without the camel, there are no desert nomads, no Berbers. The camels aren’t a convenience, they are a lifeline. “Imagine this without roads.” I did, and was fully present for a dance with the past.
Douz, La Porta del Sahara
Douz, built along a huge oasis, is known as the Gateway to the Sahara. Because of its gateway. To the Sahara.
An actual gateway. Although it’s not like it’s barring access to the desert. You can just walk around it. 
There are bleachers on either side of the gate for the annual Festival of the Sahara, which takes place… 
…on this massive desert plain. And features camel wrestling, a sport I intentionally don’t want to know anything about so I can just have it live in my imagination.
Douz also boasts the El Mouradi Hotel, a ridiculous luxury hotel in the middle of the Sahara.
Qibili
Another oasis-based town (I’m sensing a pattern), Qibili was notable to us for providing a lunch stop, and for it’s exceptionally silly public art.
Zaouiet el Anes
As amazing as the sights we’ve seen so far, Zaouiet el Anes is singular in its otherworldliness. In theory, it’s a cooling tower for a hot spring, reducing the water temperature so it’s safe for irrigation. In practice, it’s a steaming hellscape, a post-apocalyptic Blade Runner outtake in the middle of the Sahara. These are not mutually exclusive options. It can be, and is, both. And like nothing else I’ve ever seen.
Which does not even approximate the structure’s overwhelming strangeness. This may not either, but it gets measurably closer than still photos ever could.
Adding to the overall weirdness was the isolation. We were in the middle of the desert and completely alone with this… thing. So, of course, a busload of Japanese tourists pulled up. Time to head out. Past an enormous oasis. Because why not an oasis? The desert is quickly teaching us that nothing makes sense, so we should just stop worrying about trivial matters, like logic, or cause and effect.
Chott el Djerid
On our way to Tozeur for the night, we went through Chott el Djerid, a dry salt lake, like the Bonneville Flats. Of course, it appears on Google Maps as a real lake. Maps was pretty convinced we were drowning.
Day Five
Our final day of adventure. But there’s still plenty to see. Today’s focus is on oases. Sweet.
Tozeur
Before we head out, there’s Tozeur itself. We took a walk through the Old City, which was, of course, charming. But what really stood out was the local building design, which features three dimensional decorative brickwork. We’ve seen a little bit of this in surrounding towns, but I suspect that it’s leakage from Tozeur, which is ground zero for this motif. It’s a delight to see such specific vernacular design.
Oddly enough, this is a restaurant/pizzeria. 
The mosque. 
Breeze block, rather than the decorative brick. We didn’t see much of this, but this is an outstanding use of the material. 
Obviously not architecture, but exceptional graphic design from one of Tozeur’s luxury hotels. It was inside a building, so it counts.
Since we lost a full month of street food to Ramadan, we haven’t had much to say about the local cuisine. But we’re making up for lost time.
Lunch in Tozeur featured Tunisia’s national dish, Brik. It’s paper-thin crepe dough turnover, filled with egg and potato and flash deep-fried, and it’s every bit as good as that description makes it sound. It’s served with harissa and fries, like everything in Tunisia.
Chebika Oasis
Chebika sits at the foot of a mountain range, in what had been an ancient ocean. It’s a fossil rich environment, and the locals that dot the mountain path sell fossils, minerals, and shark’s teeth they’ve collected locally.
The spring that drives the oasis is accessible through a pass in the mountains. It’s a lovely, modest hike, that features more vendors than is strictly speaking desirable. There’s a bunch of them, and there’s no way to buy something from each of them. Plus, rocks are just about the worst thing we could try to bring back. It’s way easier, for us, at least, to exceed airline weight limits than volume limits. All that Nabeul pottery.
Looking down to the Ksar and the oasis from the mountain. 
You have to squeeze through this gap to get to the trail. You can see rocks and fossils, all gathered locally, spread out for sale on the right. 
This gives some sense of scale. In the center are some palm trees that have cropped up around the water that courses from the spring to the oasis on the plain. But if you look carefully to the top left, you can see another group of hikers on their way around and back down to the spring. We’ll be there shortly. 
On the path, which makes the hike less mountain goaty than the previous picture suggested. 
More palm trees, happy to pop up wherever there’s a bit of water. 
The pool that’s formed right at the head of the spring. 
A rare daytime sighting of a pair of mated Desert Waldos. Flora and fauna. We’ve seen everything on this trip. 
The pool leads into a little stream, which… 
Meanders about, until somehow becoming… 
This. A waterfall in the desert.
One of the things a true oasis does is enable three level agriculture: Dates at the top; a middle layer of shade tolerant crops that live under the palm canopies, such as olives, almonds, figs, apricots…; and the bottom level, garden vegetables that thrive in the rich soil. This arrangement has nourished the Berbers for centuries, and is only possible with a substantial source of water. Chebika is every inch a working oasis.
Here, apricots and pomegranates nestle under a palm.
I’m sure there’s something learned to say about the geology of Chebika’s mountains. But I have no idea what it might be. What I do know is that the range of geologic morphologies is off the charts. It looks like a mountain range went binge drinking on spring break and threw up its lunch.
In addition to the minerals and fossils found here, Chebika is also a major source of Desert Roses, gypsum crystals which present in complex fan shapes. Although to be fair, just about every location in Tunisia seems to be a major source of Desert Roses.
Tamaghza el Gdima
The spring at Tamaghza el Gdima starts in the Saharan Atlas Mountains and flows downhill to fuel the oasis that sits on the plain. Like Chebika, it’s astonishing to see the volume of water at play in these oases. It seems inexhaustible. Perhaps it is.
Naftah
Naftah is a Star Wars set. It served as the city of Mos Espa, wee Anakin’s home town. It’s inspired by the local structures, but it’s 100% phony. It’s also still there, and doesn’t seem to be owned by anyone, so it’s populated by folks trying to make a buck. Which is fine. It’s not like the desert is awash in job opportunities.
The second you get out of the car someone’s offering you something. In my case, it was a fox kit. It took an effort to avoid having it thrust into my hands. I declined for two reasons. First, I had no idea how much holding a fox kit would cost. I’m completely pro sharing the wealth, but I don’t much care to write a blank check. Second, I wasn’t entirely sure what it was. At first I thought it was just a kitten with bizarrely large ears, but I couldn’t resolve it into an actual creature I recognized, so I avoided it. Dorothy explained that it was a fox. I’d probably have paid a reasonable amount for a picture of me holding a fox kit. Too late.
The point of this location was not the set itself, but the setting. It had been created in a particularly scenic chunk of desert, no surprise, so we took advantage and wandered loose. It was an appealing site, to me, at least, in no small part because of the height of the dunes. The dunes at Ksar Ghilane were modest, maybe six feet tall tops. The dunes in Naftah easily towered above twenty feet. So tall that when I stood atop a ridge and thought I’d walk down the side, I looked over the edge and reconsidered. Too steep, too far. Better to follow the ridge until it gradually lowered of its own accord.
This is prime desert real estate. 
Featuring excellent dunes… 
People and camels… 
Weird formations… 
And sand of such obvious quality that Dorothy felt compelled to wallow in it. 
Here she is stuffing a bag with sand to be bottled on our return to Tunis. 
With souvenir sand in hand, she sets off to explore the trackless wasteland. 
I spotted a rock formation in the distance, and had to explore. Despite the fact that it was objectively very far away. I’m the little speck in the distance. 
Upon closer inspection, I deemed them to be excellent rocks, well worthy of the hike. 
And back to base camp.
I walked back from my Desert Rock Junket on the ridge of a dune which started to give way under my weight. So I ran. I ran at the top of a collapsing dune to outpace its disintegration and avoid tumbling in a sand avalanche to the bottom. I’m not generally a fan of forms of entertainment whose primary benefit is that you survived them (looking at you, roller coasters). But damn. That was some Indiana Jones shit. The grandkids will never believe it.
You know that thing in Dune, where you have to train yourself to walk the desert in a random rhythm, so as not to summon a sandworm? Well, there is no fucking way to walk on sand dunes in a regular rhythm. How can you keep a steady gait when what you’re walking on is constantly moving beneath your feet? I call bullshit.
Day Six
Leaving Tozeur to race back to Kairouan, we’re traversing the desert for the final time, with some noticeable regret. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ll miss the desert. Although, to be fair, we know it in neither summer nor winter. I might miss it less if we’d visited in a more extreme season.
We watched some tourist videos when we first discussed visiting the Maghreb, and when they got to the desert my knee-jerk response was, “That looks foreboding and unappealing.” Which, to my modest credit, was immediately followed by, “But it’s sure to be an adventure. If we’re going to be that close, why would we intentionally miss the desert?”
Which response fell well short of comprehending what an incredibly rich experience the Sahara offered. The best way I can describe it is that the desert was somehow both completely empty and incredibly full at the same time. Completely empty in the sense that there are seemingly boundless vistas with nothing but sand and rock. But incredibly full in the sense that life is still deeply embedded in that environment. Ksars and springs and camels and oases and agriculture and people squeezing a life out of the desert the same way they have for century on century. Including people so successfully hidden that you don’t even know they’re there. There’s a reason neither the Romans nor any successor colonists ever conquered the Berbers.
So let’s say goodbye to the lush desolation of the Sahara one last time.
Day Six is just a straight shot to Kairouan, so we can get a louage back to Tunis at a reasonable hour. The closest we came to sightseeing was stopping for lunch in Kairouan and picking up fresh makrout for our adorable landlady. Makrout is a date and nut cookie common across the Maghreb, but Kairouan’s version is renowned throughout Tunisia. It’s a perfect Thank You gift.
And that’s it. Mohamed helps us get our louage tickets and slips the driver a bill, when he thinks we’re not looking, to make sure he sees us into a cab and doesn’t just slow down to five in Tunis and roll us out. I’m pretty confident we could have managed a cab without help, but the gesture is touching nonetheless. We made it through the desert together, and Mohamed just wants to make sure Ali and his faithful companion arrive home safely. Which, both exhausted and exhilarated, we do.