Tataouine is an area of visually striking architecture not that unlike Cappadocia in Turkey. There are "cave houses" dug into the soft rock, "Berber ksour" (ruins of villages built atop mountains), and "Arabic ksour" (ruins of complexes of grain storage units). These all inspired George Lucas to film many scenes of Star Wars in the area and to name a city in the story after it.

The road out of Tozeur crosses a seasonal lake atop a causeway. We could see the old road on the lakebed, and we could see where they had dug enough material to build a 20-foot-high causeway so that the road wouldn't be flooded out during much of the year.

Typo.

Camels along the road.

A little village on the way into Matmata.

Cave houses.

In Matmata, a cave house turned into a cantina set for Star Wars, now a hotel. All of the futuristic surfaces are made out of foam rubber.

Nearby, a Berber woman let tour guides charging exorbitant rates bring hordes of tourists to see her cave home, carefully decorated for that function.

Mannequins in a room in the house.

Just outside Matmata was a much nicer little village. This guide, who spoke no English, didn't ask for much. He took us to a real cave house where the owner was busy pressing olives, with the help of his donkey. The fresh-squeezed olive oil was the best we'd ever had. It tastes like olives! You know all those super expensive oils ... they don't taste good actually! You now have an excuse not to buy them.

The terrain near that house.

"Retention dams", many built hundreds of years ago, prevent flooding and trap fertile soil in artificial meadows suitable for planting.

Tatouine itself didn't have much to offer. We spent a day driving around east of the town visiting a series of Arabic ksour (plural of ksar). But on the way we walked around Beni Barka, a Berber ksar.

This is Ksar Ouled Soltane, the best-preserved and most famous Arabic ksar. The chambers are called ghorfas and were used for storing grain, or olive oil. There are a few external stairways but many of the chambers were accessed by climbing up tiny ledges.

I'm holding a watercolor I bought from the guide, which he painted in his spare time.

Some earnest boys near the town of Mghit. There was supposed to be a ksar here but nobody knew it. What do they think of us?

Another ksar in the town of Ezzahra. More pictures from Arabic ksour...

The next day, we drove around west of Tataouine looking at a series of Berber ksour. But the tour began with an Arabic ksar: Ksar Haddada heavily promotes itself as a Star Wars filming location. Here's the blueprint of the project to turn it into a hotel.

Some parts look pretty finished.

Some aren't quite so finished. I assume these guys are Star Wars fans and not workers on break.

These bottles in various little food stores are labeled as "Eau de Toilette". Basically, they are various flavors of brandy relabeled so it won't appear people are selling alcohol to drink. This was also done in the US during prohibition years.

Guermassa is a large Berber ksar ruin. We took the long way getting there, including a walk, which, of course, was good for us.

There's a nice little white mosque between the two hilltops with ruins. More pictures of Guermassa...

Near Chenini, the Mosque of the Seven Sleepers has a particularly Dr. Seuss-esque minaret. Stories of people who sleep for decades or centuries and wake up in a new world are universal, and the Seven Sleepers of Chenini are closely allied with the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus and other locations around the Mediterranean. They were Christians who were walled up in the Pagan era of Rome, and awoke later to find that Rome's official religion was Christian. Except, in the Muslim version, they slept through the whole Christian era and awoke after the Islamic conquest. They then converted to Islam and died. The sleepers of Chenini kept growing while they were asleep. The tombs are 15 feet long.

Inside the mosque.

Showing our guide the GPS, who immediately seemed to understand what it did.

Chenini is a little like Guermassa, a Berber ksar on two adjacent hilltops with a white mosque at the saddle point. But while Guermassa is entirely a ruin, there are several families still living in many of the stone houses in Chenini. More pictures of Chenini...

Another Berber ksar, Douiret, at sunset.

Good camouflage.

On to El Jem and Kairouan