Saharan sidestep

If you look at a map, you’ll see that Sicily is only a few hundred kilometres from North Africa. We did, and got excited. So we jumped on a ferry and a few days later were standing in the Sahara cooking in 48 degrees…

If you’re anything like me, you know nothing about Tunisia (not even that NZers are supposed to get a visa in advance to visit. Ooops. That made for good times at the port). It turns out that it’s quite the interesting place. We were only there for a few days but visited Tunis, the capital, which is surprisingly European but definitely not Europe. The market is big and fun and I got to indulge in Tony’s favourite passtime, sheesha. Really does taste like apples. So keeps the doctor away, right?

Kairoun is a very old city a few hours south of Tunis. It’s the 4th city of Islam. It’s got a massive old mosque:

and a lot of other old stuff and some cool architecture. A nice place to explore. But our real target was the desert:

It was so hot! Of course it was. Stepping out of the AC was like opening an oven door. Being in the desert is like nothing else. You can look in every diretion and see nothing. And it’s incredible to know that it continues more or less the same for 1000s of kilometres too. But for nothingness it’s really quite varied. There is real sandy desert, and rocky desert, and occasionally a bit of tussock, and salt lakes, etc. And we were, Star Wars sets too. And people selling you camel rides.