Day 11: Tunisia

Fountain at Tunis Airport
see all photos »

Today we set off at 4:30am to catch the train to Gatwick airport. After a few train changes we made it to the airport in time to grab a coffee and head to the plane. We touched down in Tunisia at about midday and had to organize a Visa. This took about half an hour, and I had to walk through airport security and customs out into Tunis airport, find an ATM and return to pay the necessary Dinars to purchase three 7-day visas. Once we finally got out we were immediately bombarded with people wanting to help us with our bags and taxi drivers wanting to know where we were headed. Of course as soon as we mentioned Hammamet the bombardments continued as that is a good fare. I waved them away and we sat by a fountain for a short time.

A hotel nearby ours
see all photos »

With that out of the way we went over to the taxi rank, again waving away people trying to help us with our bags (which of course we didn’t need help with). The first lesson was learned as I spoke to the taxi driver, as I was trying to negotiate a price, the others around had put our bags into the taxi and the price was then non-negotiable…$80 Dinar saw us ripped off (mind you, it was over an hour taxi ride so would have been pretty good in Australia).

The overtaking lane is in the middle of the road, waving your arms apart to tell the other cars to move over ...

The introduction to driving in Tunisia was breathtaking to say the least, if this sets the standard for what I’m to expect driving in Italy, it will be interesting. The overtaking lane is in the middle of the road, waving your arms apart to tell the other cars to move over as you speed between them creating your own personal lane. Once you get out of the heavy traffic and into the highway traffic going about 120kms you sit in the middle of the road so you can weave easily between the other cars. Senior taxi drivers appear to have extra kudos as they can direct traffic while driving, get pulled over by security (every couple of kms two police randomly wave cars over) and mumble something, shake hands and continue barely stopping. The horn is equivalent to the finger, if you don’t like someone’s driving, pull along side them, then blow the horn to let them know about it.

Strangely neither of us felt like we were in any danger, but it certainly was an eye opener. The country is very undeveloped, there seemed to be a lot of agriculture in this part of the country, with grapes and fruit trees along the highways. However, the housing seemed to be in major disrepair and tiny milk bars seemed to be the main source of food. All the houses are low (nothing more than 3 storeys).

We arrived to the resort hotel and entered reception, they spoke a ‘little’ English as well as German and French. We learned later this was a German resort, and mainly Germans visited with some French. We have failed to find any other native English speaking here. Having said that all the signs are in English, and the activity people are called ‘Animations’. The staff here seemed to attempt to do as little as possible, we believe it’s their motto, the activity staff don’t seem to run activities, the mini club person hides from children and is yet to actually have a child under her care, the bar staff tend to walk out from behind the bar to stand three metres in front of it perving on the girls while ignoring people waiting at the bar for a drink.

Kim wanted a diet coke, so we went to the pool bar and asked for one, the bartender didn’t really understand what we wanted, but suggested we go to the Wanderbar (the bar inside). We went there, and on the menu list it listed ‘Coca Cola Light’, so we asked for that, however, we were told that they only had Cola not light. Kim asked are they getting some in, or if they ever have it and were told they don’t. The menu disappeared shortly thereafter from the bar (mind you it had the sister hotel’s name on it ‘Bahia Beach’ – maybe we should be staying there).

We had a swim in the pool which was nice, although I’m not sure we can spend 6 days in a pool, we are already extremely bored and wandering how to get out of here. The worst thing, particularly with Billy is that it doesn’t feel very safe at all to be out of the resort compound that is ‘Yasmine Hammamet’, although we will be going for a walk around the compound tomorrow.

We have worked out how to order a coffee, although a large (grande) coffee is the size of an English cup of tea, while a regular coffee (café) is an expresso shot in a tiny cup (normal around Europe of course). It was very warm here today, although yesterday it had apparently been around 48 (maybe high thirties today…tomorrow will be interesting).

Dinner was good, an excellent buffet selection and included chips which was fantastic as Billy had refused to eat anything else.

Internet is available for $5 Dinars per hour downstairs, not sure whether it’s decent speed, but we will test it out tomorrow. They do have outings/tours however, because they don’t speak English and everything is advertised in German it is difficult to figure out the finer points.

Anyhow, we think we’ll probably go stir crazy by the end of this week and definitely look forward to hitting Italy, civilization and freedom in the form of a car.

Tool of the Day

While I was getting something upstairs with Billy, the staff took the opportunity to speak to Kim, and to try to sell her a crap music mix CD he had been playing near the pool that he put together himself!