Some places to go and how to get there

If you don’t mind wasting money, for small distance you can travel by taxi. It’s much cheaper than in Poland and drivers are not as dishonest as they are considered to be. The funny thing is that in many places you can see more taxis than casual cars. Although Tunisia is rather reach in African perspective, many families just can’t afford to buy a car. They travel using ‘louages’, kind of small buses similar to our Polish ones. There are few kinds of them signed with different colors of stripes, depending of the distance they ride on.

Souse
We were staying in a small village near Souse, which is the third big city in this country. Therefore that was our first destination. It is also the most popular area visited by Polish tourists, so I will write a bit about it and possible trips from this place. City is very crowded and noisy (using horns is common) and can by tiring. Especially walking through little streets of old medina and trying to neglect pushy traders can cause a headache. When you need to rest, you should go to local ribat. Ribats were kind of fortified monasteries inhabited and defended by fanatic monks. Built of sandstone, as most old buildings in this area, fortress looks quite ascetic and inaccessible, but rooms inside are pleasantly shadowed and quiet. You can climb up to the tower, which lets you admire all surrounding.

Even more you can see from a massive tower of a castle in the northern part of the medina. The tower is still in use and it serves as a lighthouse. During our vacation the castle and its museum were renovated, but its workers were happy to show us everything (our guide did perfect job) for few dinars. We were offered to see more than it’s normally available also in Souse’s catacombs. They are well hidden so not many tourists get there, especially that many citizens don’t know about their existence. The catacombs have about 5 km, but only a section is prepared for visitors. If you let local guide earn some extra, he will use his secret keys and show you all :-)

Kairouan
Another interesting city where you can get by louage (or by bus, but it will take an extra hour) is Kairuan. For Tunisians is something like our Częstochowa. If they are not reach enough to go to Mekka (which is one of the duties every Muslim must do in his life), they can replace it by 3 peregrinations to Kairuan. It was the first city founded by Arabs in Tunisia. If you start visiting it from Basins of Aghlabites (first Arabian dynasty in this area) you can buy a carnet for all tourist attractions with map which will guide you all over the city. The Basins are the rests of old aqueducts and huge reservoirs which used to supply the city with water.

The biggest attraction in the town is surely Great Mosque. Unless you are Muslim, you will not be allowed to get everywhere, but you can see praying worshipers from beautiful yard decorated with columns from conquered Carthago. Worth of seeing are also other sanctuaries (little mosques and mausoleums), museum of carpets situated in old governor’s house and amazing well powered with camel in the center of medina.

Mahdija
From Souse you can easily get to Mahdija travelling by ‘metro du Sahel’. Actually, this ‘metro’ is a small and very cheap railway. Try to imagine our ‘wukadka’ in times of PRL, but a bit older, more dirty and devastated. If you are very sensitive person, it might be not the best form of communication. All the way long we were the only foreigners :-)

Mahdija is a village located on the scenic penisula with great Turkish fortress from XVIth century screened off from the centre with huge walls. Their ruins are partly covered by sea and Arabs use them as comfortable place for fishing :-)

South
Our journey wouldn’t be complete without excursion to desert. This time we decided to participate in 2-days trip organized by travel agency because of long distance, high prices of renting a car in Tunisia and permissions requested from foreigners. Description of our excursion would need one more part of the presentation. To not make it longer, I will just say that during this fantastic tour we were traveling by bus, jeep, rig and camels. Some of my pictures should be the best recommendation :-)

Definitely 2 weeks in Tunisia is not enough to visit everything, especially if you want to spend also some time resting (we were traveling with little children). Accordingly we are planning to go there in few years again to see northern part of the country with Tunis, Carthago and Bizerte :-)