Internet Café, Mersa Matrouh, Egypt, 24-12-10
Smiley, happy, friendly
people
Tunis to Kairouan
(2+ cycle days; 173km; 867m)
Tunis suburbs to Tunis city centre (14km; 12m)
Tunis to 10 km after El Fahs (73km; 490m)
10 km after El Fahs to Kairouan (86km; 365m)
Leaving
After 4 weeks, you can imagine we are definitely ready to get pedalling
again. Tunis has a certain charm, but living out of a hotel room for
so long - albeit with internet and breakfast and wonderful staff
- becomes pretty tiresome. We visit a few tourist spots, meet up with
a few locals and travellers and on more than a few occasions see
the inside of the waiting room at the Libyan Embassy.
I am quite familiar with the scant decor, the studded brown
leather stools, the old fashioned drapery and the lone, but ceremonious
photograph of Gadafi hanging on the wall; those Lee Major sunglasses
and pastel blue robe of embroidered finery will remain forever in
my memory. It should, I stared at it for long enough...
Tip of the Month: putting rack extenders
to good safety use
Many articles on travel security
suggest putting your valuables in a hotel
safe, which is fine if there is one. In our
experience that luxoury doesn't come by very
often.
After our room at Hotel Casablanca in
Flores, Guatemala was searched by staff,
we felt we could never really leave anything
behind anymore. Traipsing around a town
with all your electronic valuables is not
really an option either. So for a long
period, one of us always stayed behind.
This quite frankly became a real drag.
So, we decided to find a way to create
a standard sort of cupboard handle lock.
The lock is made is using two
rack extenders like these from Jandd and two
small padlocks. All of these items
we carry in our panniers anyway, so instead
of just sitting there, they have been
put to regular good use. Sure it isn't
full-proof, but we are still firm believers
that even the smallest deterrent might
just send a thief looking for an easier
target.
Tunis - Kairouan (Tunisia)
Kilometres: 173 km and 260 m
Riding days: 2 and a bit days (the rest waiting for our visa)
Alti meters: 867 metres
Weather: unpredictable
Best accommodation: Hotel La Maison Dorée. Very friendly and helpful staff. Good room with private shower & free wifi smack bang in the middle of Tunis.
Special thanks to:
Nadia
& Olivier for showing us some of the finer culinary
and historical pleasures of Tunisia • Slim
& the staff at Hotel Maison Dorée in Tunis for
their friendliness, cleanliness and first-rate helpfulness • Peter
Sinclair for bumping into us at the Libyan Embassy and then
sparing a few afternoons chatting about the wonderful world of
travel • Mohamed for
taking the time out to meet up for coffee and a chat • All
the Couchsurfers who sent us messages,
helped us out with information and wanted to meet up. Unfortunately,
we didn't get the chance to visit everyone, but we were grateful
for the amazing enthousiasm from all the Tunisian CouchSurfers •
Breakdowns:
none
