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To The Last Place…On To Djerba Island
“Can I ask you something personal?”, he says from behind his camel dinner, in that way that only an American would just five minutes after introductions, “Do you think the guy who runs our hotel is kinda rude?” Well no, actually, he’s been fine, but, as far as Dennis and his cousin Bonnie are concerned, our maitre d’ seems to have failed to have made a connection. As it turns out, Dennis and Bonnie had spotted something that we hadn’t. In the way that Americans do. Because let’s fast forward now to our departure date, when immediately after breakfast a maid bursts into our room without knocking on the door,…
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Empty Roads, Desert Rain & Mirages: Matmata-Douz-Tozeur
It’s fair to say that the journey from Matmata to Douz isn’t the most challenging foreign drive we’ve ever undertaken, with long stretches of empty road cutting a perfect straight line through the desert. In terms of civilisation, there is nothing: a good hour of roadway passing not a single building, let alone anything as grand as a village. In fact the greatest – maybe the only – challenge is the patches where the sand has covered the road, the tarmac has all but disappeared and the grip of our tyres is about as good as a stiletto on a polished floor. At last we reach signs of life as…
