Out the door at 6:15 AM. Quick breakfast - well...quick coffee and then grabbed some breads and cheeses to wrap in napkins and stuff into my backpack for later.
We took a taxi to the train station in downtown Tunis that services southerly travel - Barcelona station. We forgot to make sure that the driver turned the meter on and when we pointed it out,..."Kaput", he said...which meant negotiating a fare. The day begins with taxi driver shenanigans.
Our 7 AM train was to Sousse. There, the challenge was to climb the walls of the ribat - the fortress. It was built in the 9th century in a chain of fortresses stretching across the Mediterranean coastline to defend North Africa from European invaders Above the main gate, a room has four slits in the floor through which boiling olive oil was poured on enemies. From the tower, there was a beautiful view toward the Mediterranean, across the rooftops. We had over three hours before the next train, so we made a list of the scavenges that did not have to be done right in Tunis at specific locations. We went to the morning fish market and made a video of our choices. We visited the hamman - the bath. It was quite hard to find in the twisting streets of the old city. We kept asking directions at every turn, to try to reconfirm, but often were advised to retrace our steps. A kind man with a lovely baritone voice approached and said he had overheard us asking for directions. He offered to lead us there. We weren't far, as the bath house was at the base of the mosque, but we never would have found it - Bain Maure Sidi Bouraoui. Alex had his trusty travel towel with him for the photo op since the scavenge required: "take a towel".
We took a taxi to the Sousse Sunday Market, which our guidebook said said sprawls endlessly along the Sousse/Sfax road and that you can buy anything from a car to a camel. The scavenge was to buy something. We tried haggling for a decent price for a face/neck scarf for Sherry and one for me, decorated with gold-colored coins, but the vendor wouldn't budge from his inflated price and he bothered Alex by tugging on his shirt. We bought cold drinks to go instead. OK, unimaginative, but effective. Next was the hunt for the Casino to collect a chip. After asking about 8 people and getting mixed answers, we found that the Casino had closed, but we snapped a pic in front. Next we tried to find live flamingoes to take a picture with. There is a zoo in Sousse but we found out that the birds are in a separate location. We went to the bird exhibit, which is a tired, ill-maintained park across the street from the beach. The boulevard alinging the beach is reminiscent of the one in Nice, France (which I think is called Boulevard des Anglais). There were only two birds! One was a slender, beautiful crested something or other that I remember seeing on safari in Tanzania. The other looked like a turkey. No flamingo. Next, we tried to "take a camel for a walk in the desert". By asking people all day, we learned that none of the places we were going were in the desert, so we improvised. We bought a toy stuffed camel, walked across the boulevard to the beach, placed him in the sand and "walked" him. Funny pix! And, better than nothing.
Back to the train station for train to El Jem. The 11:48 ran about 15 minuted late and as it approached, a crush of people and suitcases pushed into us and scrambled, grabbed, shoved, yanked to push up the stairs onto the train. We had assigned seats. Ha ha ha. The four of us elbowed and wriggled to secure a seat, none of which were together. But, Alex said he had seen some fellow travellers already seated (presumably having boarded in Tunis), in the first car which seemed to be first class. Indeed! We moved into first class, and although our designated seats were taken, there were four seats open and nobody standing in the aisle, pushing into me. Plus, we got to visit with the three teams who were travelling together - Bev and Buz, Steve and Bart, and Jackie and Sylvia. So nice to see friends and compare travel experiences and information! They slept in a bit and got a later train.
We got off the train at El Jem (also spelled El Djem) to "film a team scene from Gladiator where they filmed the movie at El Jem Roman Coliseum". When we got off the train in the quiet town. There was very little around, and no taxis. We all started walking in search of a taxi. After about one minute, turning the first corner, at the end of a short sleepy lane lined with little local stores looms a HUGE, intact Roman coliseum. It is untouched! No lousy attempts at restoration, no barricades, no tour buses. You just walk up to the thing, buy a ticket from the lone, modest ticket stall and you walk in. The coliseum is only slightly smaller than the one in Rome. We had full run of the place. We wandered down the corridors, climbed the stairs to the top, and went on the center floor. There, we shared the video stage with six of the other teams who arrived all around the same time. It was pretty funny - a bunch of crazy Americans making goofy 15 second Gladiator videos.
Actually, Americans are pretty rare here. One taxi driver told us he has only met two groups. People frequently guess that we are Canadian.
We wanted to press on to Kaiouran but needed a taxi for the ride, which was over one hour drive. The trains only go north/south along the coast. No rail service in the westerly direction we needed. The bus was a possibility but we couldn't afford the time to wait for it. We asked a waiter in a restaurant facing the coliseum to call a taxi and learned we need a special tourist taxi for the long trip. Something about yellow taxis can't go on the long roads. He pointed to a nice, clean, mechanically sound-looking white AC SUV, with a dome on top that said "Tourist Taxi". It looked comfy, for what we understood from Bev and Buz was a bad road. Three of those taxis were parked alongside the outdoor cafe where we lunched. We had watched small groups of Germans and other tourists hop out to visit the coliseum. We tried unsuccessfully to hire one, but they were taken for the day. My French is hardly fluent, but it is a big asset in that it allows access to more people to ask questions of than just those who speak English. While we waited the half hour for the taxi to drive to El Jem, we ate at the restaurant and banges out the last two mandatory food challenges: Berber lamb and Berber pizza. Berber refers to the nomads in the area. We ordered lamb kebabs which were grilled on a barbecue just like we do at home. It was served with french fries (pommes frites - deference to the French). To get the pizza in, I wandered across the lane to the pizza restaurant, also facing the coliseum like the one restaurant we were seated at. I ordered a pizza and when it was ready, I walked back over for "take out" across the street. The four of us posed with the pizza for the food evidence pics, and then ate it, along with the kebabs.
Our taxi driver appeared just as the restaurant bill came. Having asked around of other restaurant patrons and the waiter, we were armed with some data points to negotiate the rate. As usual, he started at double where we thought it should end. Settling on 75 dinars which was higher than we hoped, we followed him to his car. Surprise!! Not only wasn't it a comfy safe-looking tourist taxi or even a yellow taxi, it was a small private car Peugeot. We were over a barrel time-wise, so resigned, the four of us squeezed in. First stop: gas station and the driver wants us to pay for the gas, plus payment in full of the fee. Ken in the front seat: "No. You get half now and you can pay for gas with what we gave you". OK OK.
He warmed up to us and gave us all Arabic names. Mine was Shaquira. We named the driver Obama.
As we had been warned, Tunisian drivers drive too fast, are aggressive about passing on two lane roads, and ignore you when you ask them to slow down. We lived to tell about it. Part of our not-particularly-well-negotiated pricing package with our driver was that when we arrived in Kaiouran (pronounced "Care Wan"), he would drive us to see the three elements of the scavenge and then get us a driver who could return us to Tunis (he couldn't take us all that way). We did not want to be stranded, so we made his payment conditioned on his securing us a ride back.
The main attraction in Kaiouran is the Great Mosque of Sidi Uqba, the fourth most important in Islam, after Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. Non-Muslims are not allowed to "visit" it. So basically, we paid a lot of money and time to look at the outside wall of a fourth-rate mosque. Besides "looking" at the mosque, the scavenge required visiting the medina ("old city" - where we already were because that's where the mosque is) and make a short video of "your favorite vendor giving you his pitch". Our taxi parked alongside a souvenir shop across the street from the Grand Mosque. As we squeezed out of our cramped car to take a pic of the mosque's exterior wall and stretch our legs, a vendor from the shop dashed out and made a beeline to us, rattling his pitch in English. Pushing the video button on the camera, I recorded while he was talking and got the pitch scavenge without even trying. His gig is that the rooftop of his shop allows for a great view to spy and take pictures over the mosque wall, into its courtyard. No thank you; but thanks for the fervent pitch. Final element was to find the street that doubled as Cairo in Raiders of the Lost Ark. An English-speaking, purported university student (maybe/maybe not), was in earshot of our discussions about the spurned offer for a view and lining up a driver to take us to Tunis (that rolls off the tongue nicely..."Take us to Tunis"). He heard our inquiry to see the "Cairo" street and he offered to walk us there, saying it was difficult to find through the winding lanes of the medina. As we walked and walked and twisted and turned, our doubts loomed. Chatting with him, trying to trust him, as the streets got emptier and narrower and darker, I spoke up and we bailed. We told him we were in a rush and our driver was waiting (true and true) and we turned back, madly snapping pictures along th way, of hard-to-believe winding North African streets, hoping that one of them was right. Better to risk the wrong movie set pic than to get jumped in the bowels of the medina by the "university student" and his friends. Neurotic? Maybe. But, so what?
We got into the car and settled in for the ride that ended up being about two and a half hours. Prior to leaving Kaiouran, he had told us that he could not take us all the way in to Tunis but would find a taxi for us before he left us on the side of the road. Again, the deal was half pay up front so he could get gas; balance upon arrival. The road surface was fine - probably new since Bev and Buz had done the trip on an unpaved road a few years ago.
As we approached Tunis, the driver pulled over about 2km outside of the city and said we had to get out and get into a taxi. He flagged a yellow taxi for us. We paid him and swapped cars for a quick few scavenges before 10 PM deadline. We headed right for the Zitouna mosque which we tried to "visit", but got yelled at in Arabic by a disembodied voice as we tried to advance past the doorway. I stuck my arm in, crooked it around, snapped a pic and retreated quickly. Sleazy, but we got the points. Besides, the camera allowed us to see what we could not have seen with our own eyes.
We walked through the medina, hoping to see the souks, or markets and do a bunch of scavenges. But, it was too late. The last call to prayer had already occurred and the shops were locking down for the night. All that work plotting out the souk route was for naught. We had hoped to visit the fabrics and lamps, have a chichi (hookah) and more. Crossing off much of our remaining checklist as impossible, we did the few remaining ones that time allowed: snap a photo at Bab el Bahr, the old french gate to the city, go to the central market, take a team photo at Bab el Khadra (a double old gate into the old walled city), and buy something to eat at Halfaouine (after much struggle, learned that it is pronounced "half a ween") - we bought a sorry-looking shriveled orange from one of the remaining street vendors. Done whether we were done or not. It was 8 PM and we had two hours until meeting.
We showered (much needed) and walked outside to get a light dinner near the hotel.
We stayed at Hotel l'Afrique, which is on the avenue that looks like a mini Champs Elysee. The evening breeze felt heavenly on my very-appreciated-clean skin. The avenue is lined with Parisian style cafes. We chose one a few doors down from the hotel and ordered familiar, safe and delicious comfort food after a 14 hour day. Alex had a 4-cheese pizza and I had quiche and salad. A little adjustment in this Muslim country is that instead of "jambon" (ham), they use "jambon de dinde fume" (smoked turkey faux ham). My nod to northern African cuisine at dinner was to order the tea, which was quite delicious. It was very sweet, served in a small glass cup the size of a small juice glass, and had a layer of pine nuts floating across the top. It was delicious.
At the meeting, we learned that we had the "day" off tomorrow, in that we will meet again at 11 AM to learn where we go next, and there will be no scavenges all day.
Wahoo! Sleep in! No going to bed with my mind racing about the next day's plans!