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Oases Under the Sun
From the Mediterranean to the Sahara, an Alternative Look at Tunisia
By Sue Dobson Sidi Bou Said, a magical village of blazing white houses and medieval cobbled alleyways, clings to the rock face.
In a mesmerising blue, decorative wrought iron drapes sinuously over windows shuttered against the sun. Curved Arabic doors, heavy, studded, and shaped like over-sized keyholes, add drama to the symmetry of the architecture. In the market square where the buses stop, stalls display brass trays and camel leather handbags, rugs and wallhangings, pointy-toe slippers and colorful pottery.
But slip through into the main street where, heading up the hill towards the trendy Café des Nattes - a gathering place for young locals, there to see and be seen - little shops sell more distinctive souvenirs.
Here you'll find Saracen puppets, delicate jewelry, nougat, dates, figs, and the white, Ali-Baba-style bird cages that are Sidi Bou Said's signature gift.
Bear right at the café, follow the road as you meander among cubed and domed houses, and look for the gate leading to the Sidi Chabaane café.
Popular with trysting couples and families with much-loved children, this cliff-top eyrie is the place to sip tea, invest in a posy of jasmine, and drink in the view of the glittering blue sea below.
Carthage is just along the coast. You need a good imagination to visualise the extent and importance of this legendary rival to Rome, founded by the Phoenician princess Dido in around 814BC.
The excavation sites are spread widely among expensive, bougainvillea-clad villas, and Punic harbors, once great shipyards, look more like ponds in an upscale suburb.
At the water's edge, the vast Antonine thermal baths, among the biggest in the whole Roman Empire, are overlooked by the well-guarded Presidential palace. The museum, situated alongside the cathedral crowning the hill of Byrsa, is excellent. With superb mosaics and intriguing artifacts of daily life, like votive razors from the third century BC, it makes the major periods in history of the city - Punic, Roman, Christian and Arabic - accessible.
Carthage and Sidi Bou Said, both easily reached on the TGM light railway from Tunis, are a favorite day out for city dwellers.
Tunisia's capital mixes traditional and modern ways with visual reminders of its French colonial past. The boulevard-like Avenue Habib Bourguiba, its central island of trees punctuated by cheery flower stalls, leads to the walled medina at its Hafsid Gate.
Pursue your way through the main alleyway, crammed with brightly-colored souvenirs, the ubiquitous leather and beaten brass, and find the Zitouna (Great) Mosque. Worshippers have been called to prayer there for a thousand years.
In the narrow lanes that fan out in a maze around it, the trades and craftsmen separate into their own souks, in the way of the medieval guilds.
Streets of gold, of wool, silk, or carpets; the jewelers, perfume makers and apothecaries; the brass beaters, the woodcarvers, the sweet and sticky-pastry gurus.
Tailors labor over elderly sewing machines; hat-makers brush their red felt fezzes with pride. Tiny cafés serve strong coffee and refreshing mint tea, hammans (Turkish baths) dispense heat and ritual, and grand houses hide behind secretive doors.
Onto the desert
In early April, the swimming pools in hotels on the Tunis coast were empty, being cleaned for the holiday season about to start. In the desert resorts they sparkled an inviting aquamarine under the intensity of the sun's rays.
Hop on an internal flight, and in just one hour you can be in the Sahara.
Tozeur has the airport for Tunisia's deep south. An old market town famed for its date harvest, it has attracted caravans and merchants for a thousand years.
Now it is a burgeoning desert tourist center amid a quarter of a million date palms, with a mile of hotels the color of sand. It is the setting off point for myriad wonderful sights. You are entering 'Star Wars' and 'The English Patient' country.
A ribbon of tarmac splits the desert into ever-changing vistas. Here are fertile oases, towering red rock mountains, great canyons, hills of sweeping sand, and arid rocks from where a surprise of water gushes forth.
The Chott El Jerid, a 150-mile long, shimmering salt lake, is so flat and barren there's nothing to block your view of the earth's curvature at the distant horizon. Mirages dance on its surface.
The 'Lezard Rouge' train, with carriages from the Twenties and seating that runs from plush to wooden benches, leaves the phosphate mining town of Metlaoui for the Seldja gorges, slowly twisting and turning across a series of bridges and tunnels built by the French.
But the Romans were there first. They diverted water from ravines and built an aquaduct. The train is very touristy, with Wild West musak all the way, but the scenery is mesmerizing. There are stops for Kodak Moments, to capture the most dramatic of the sheer-sided drops on film - and time to stand and stare.
Small towns, isolated villages and desert encampments always surprise. In the mountain oasis of Mides, where pomegranate, lemon and orange trees flourish under shady palms, a deep gorge winds round the village and a few hardy souls proffer fossils, pink mineral 'roses' and ordinary-looking stones that reveal a colorful inner secret.
Legend has it that the holy oasis of Nefta, a crater with half a million date palms hemmed in by cliffs, was settled by the 'son of Shem, son of Noah'. The basin is fed by natural springs and wells; mosques and minarets rise from the narrow passageways of the medina.
We had a superb buffet lunch by the pool at the Tamerza Palace Hotel, rising like an ochre castle from the desert sand about an hour's drive from Tozeur.
The terrace looks out over a wide wadi to old Tamerza, the village abandoned after torrential floods in 1969. Its crumbling mud, stone and palm-fiber houses exert a strange fascination. Rooms have panoramic vistas that incorporate an oasis of date palms and desert as far as the eye can see.
Tozeur's distinct desert architecture is translated into its hotels, with light bricks set in geometric patterns and Moorish arches. They span the comfortable to the glitzy.
The desert, in all its guises, is there to be discovered.
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What's on the menu?
Tunisian cooking has been influenced by Arab, Turkish, French and Italian cuisine. Eggs, tuna, lamb, fish and vegetables, olive oil and local spices are the basic ingredients.
Brik à l'oeuf: a deep-fried envelope of filo pastry encompassing a runny egg and flat-leaved parsley. May also contain tuna and potato. A snack or starter, served warm
Salad mechouia: grilled tomatoes, onions, and red peppers in olive oil. Served as a starter, it may also include tuna and hard boiled eggs
Kamounia: a slowly cooked stew of lamb, chicken or beef
Couscous: the national dish - a vegetable stew with lamb, poultry or fish on a bed of steamed grain semolina
Watch out for the small saucer of fiery haryssa on the table. Locals dip bread into it, but it could decimate your tastebuds
Fish - red mullet, sea bass, bream, whiting, perch and grouper - is usually grilled and good, but can be expensive as it is determined by weight
Tiny glasses of tea, usually dark, stewed and sweet, arrives stuffed with fresh mint leaves. Thé aux pignons is sprinkled with pine kernels
Alcohol is served in tourist hotels and restaurants. The light Tunisian beer and wine are cheapest; spirits expensive. Try Thibarine, the local date liqueur, or boukha, a fig brandy.
Palm trees
They serve up huge bunches of delicious dates, but they have many more uses.
The trunks of trees are used in the construction of houses, fences and 'bridges' to cross irrigation channels. Elastic fibers covering the bottom of the trunks are used to stuff camel saddles.
Mats and baskets are made from the stalks; parts of the leafstalk form trowels for masons and women use it to beat washing.
The sap is used for a drink called lagmi, and while their owners eat the fruit, camels enjoy the stones.
When to go: October to April. June to August are the hottest months.
Shopping tip: don't even ask the price if you don't want the article being offered!
