Tunisia adventure

Officially I spent my last week in Africa - in Tunisia. I personaly don't think about it as African country, for me there is one more "continent" - Arabia and Tunisia belongs to it:) but official things also count:)

So randomly - first week in African land (we've been almost everywhere pointed on the map:)):



Houses of Berber - native people in Matmata and my sister at one of the oasis:) I had a vision that oasis is a small spot of land with three palm trees and a pond, yet it turned out to be much bigger and with many more plants. There are three layer of plants - first they grow palm trees until they are big enough to create the shade. Secondly - smaller useful plants - like bananas and other fruit. And only then grass is added to finish up. Yet the size of oasis is still counted by the number of palm trees. The biggest oasis in Tunis has over 200 000 palm trees. I wonder who counted them;)


At the lake of salt and prepared to ride a camel and gather Sachara's sand to those bottles:)


Amphitheater at El Jem - it could fit in 30 000 of people and at that time the city had only 35 000 citizens:)

At Carthage - the richest city of ruins:) one of the loveliest places in Tunisia. And it's here we encoutered most adventure as we decided to go here on our own with local transportation:) At first it was really scary, as we entered this big "bus" station with lot's of microbuses and men... One of them grabbed us and asked if we're going to Tunis - we said yes and he puts us in one of the microbuses. Then another man comes and we drive off... Us too and two arabs... then we stop in the middle of nowhere and they tell us to leave the microbus and go to the other side of the road... luckily another microbus was waiting there and it was almost full (with women as well;)). So we reached Tunis with no problem and got a taxi to Carthage. Quite interesting to go when you're not sure where you're going:) But Carthage didn't disappoint us at all. Now is just a rich suburb of Tunis, but it used to be a wealthy port. I'm sure you've all learned at least something about it in your history lessons;)


What I love about Tunisia is their DOORS:) Really they are a piece of art. The houses themselves are pretty simple - a white box and that's it. But the doors is another thing - they are usually light blue or write and have different paintings on them. Most common are fish, which are believed bring luck and the "hand of Fatima", which saves from evil eye. These symbols are everywhere, even on the doors of berber people:)

And this is in the town we stayed at - Sousse. It has a huge area, called Medina, which means "the old city". Medina is surrounded by a big wall with towers and inside it there's a market. A huge market. You can find lots of things from clothing to ceramics, jewelry etc. And of course - you have to bargain:) I had fun doing that and even though I bought all my things at least 2 times cheaper than the start price I've found most of the things cheaper in other stores:) But I find it fun;) And I'm sure this practice will be handy in Ghana, right?;)

All in all it's been a very nice week... And if you have a chance - Tunisia is a very nice place to visit;)