After collecting him from the airport and jostling our way through Tunis rush-hour traffic, I manage to find a parking spot carved out against an ancient fort wall and nestled deep within a narrow alleyway. Fortunately Pat turns-in the side mirror after exiting the passenger seat otherwise it would have been lost in the parking process. Either way, we won’t be moving the rental car again until we are positively leaving. My father has just arrived and we’re set to embark on a two-week road trip that will circumnavigate the entire country. Our first night is here—within the narrow and walled medina quarter of Tunisia’s capitol city—and now with the car parked and luggage shouldered, we’re off to find our hotel.
Leave it to my dad to make friends and be invited inside a local residence before being in the country for even an hour. A man hears some foreign strangers jabbering outside his bright yellow front door—admiring the facade of his well-kept house—and he pops his head out to investigate. We all shake hands with Ahmed who begins to detail some of the refurbishment work he himself has undertaken on his house—music to the ears of my architect father—and even though he is in the middle of cooking supper, he nevertheless invites us to come inside. Pat, never one to hesitate, leads the way.
While we find places to set down our bags, Ahmed pulls his cooking from the stovetop and then commences with a full tour of his residence including a bunch of personal history because the house has been within his family for generations. Ahmed lived in Canada for some decades—hence his excellent English—but he is returned to spend considerable money and effort in restoring the the house of his grandparents, an expense which is vividly and tastefully apparent. Before sending us on our way, Ahmed gives us a sample of tonight’s dinner, some tips on local cuisine and wine, a restaurant recommendation in the area, and clear directions to our hotel. Guess it pays to be overheard outside a stranger’s front door!
The next day sees us visiting the Great Mosque, haggling for souvenirs somewhere in the maze of the souk, and strolling the cafe-lined and statue-studded boulevard of Bourguiba. Tunis in a morning. By the afternoon we’ve relocated to an outlaying suburb of town, checked into a waterfront Airbnb, and are strolling the picturesque streets of Sidi Bou Said, renown for it’s white-washed walls and bright blue doors. We visit a series of ancient Carthage and Roman ruins the next day before leaving Tunis altogether and making our way up the NE corner of the country. We find a hotel with just enough sunlight left to pace the old harbor area of Bizerte before settling in for a nice meal on a floating restaurant. After the next morning’s ever-present complimentary breakfast of coffee, boiled eggs and baguettes, we load up the car and hit the road for our next reservation-free destination. Wash rinse repeat. The pace and method of our round-the-country-road-trip is now established.
I think there is one town in there where we stay two nights—or was it three?—who can remember, but regardless each day has us in the car criss-crossing the country to snap photos at any and every worthwhile stop.
“Sometimes I don’t even look at the scenery” my dad confesses as we all topple back into the vehicle, quick to regain the highway, “knowing that I’ll see it later when I go through my photos.”
We take in all we can: Dramatic rocky coastlines; horseshoe-shaped castle-reinforced beachfronts; steep-pitched mountain-top perched villages; Islamist controlled arid highlands; desert oases inundated with date palms; hidden canyons full of ancient twists; limitless salt flats extending to every horizon; original Star Wars filming sets; endless undulating Saharan sand dunes; remarkable and still-inhabited cave dwellings; millennia-old mosques and fortifications; and of course, a vast collection of leftover ruins including the 2nd-biggest and best-preserved Roman colosseum in existence. Oh yeah, did I mention we have a sailboat in Tunisia? Guess we should see that too.
As the chief tour guide and sole driver on our 2000 km road trip, I wore myself so thin that I actually became fevered and ill on the day my father left—fortunately, such occurred after driving him 3 hours to the airport and hugging him goodbye in the security line. Clare finally gets behind the wheel and experiences for herself the rabble of Tunisian driving only after I pull over at a fuel-stop on our long journey home and find myself simply unable to drive further. Despite this unfortunate ending, we all make it to our intended destinations and count the trip as a resounding success. We certainly have the pictures to prove it.
By way of comparison, my father joined us in Tunisia after completing a 5000 km road trip across South Africa, complete with many stops and long visits with good friends. We left him catching a plane to Israel where he’ll tour the country and then move on to Greece for a couple of island hops before finally making the long trip back to Alaska. You can see where I got my travel bug from, even if I can’t keep up with him!
To bountiful inheritance.