Eclipse in Tozeur
The sketchy Internet connections have resulted in new logistics for writing these memoirs. Now we write them on the computer, and put the file on a CD along with photos we’re backing up. Then, when we get to the Internet cafe, it’s just copy and paste. It’s easy even if they don’t have a US keyboard layout, though I’ve learned how to install that on Windows as well. Tunisia reportedly has “forbidden” sites — I have no idea what they are. Maybe the bad connections are because some central Tunisian ISP is keeping you from going to the bad sites. But there were large signs in an Internet cafe in Tunis which tell you not to go to them, and if they were blocked, why would they bother asking you to avoid them?
Friday we drove to Sbeitla. We took a small road, and a wrong turn onto a smaller road (we wondered why there wasn’t a sign), whose pavement ended and became an occasionally sandy occasionally bumpy dirt road. Miraculously we came out on the correct road after awhile and we didn’t have to turn around and do it all over. The guidebook told us that the ruins there were best viewed in the morning, so we just headed for the hotel. The one recommended, which we had tried and failed to call from Tunis, seemed not to exist — we never could find where it was or where it had been. We went to another one which was pretty minimal — we had to ask for pillows, toilet paper, and another blanket, which they raided from various other rooms.
The monuments in Sbeitla were pretty nice, but we got there too early to get a guide; we hadn’t realized that it had just become not daylight savings time. There were some nice temples, a restored bridge, a restored theater, and some baths which had collapsed so you could see where the heating went. It all looked pretty nice in the early morning light.
We left around noon Saturday, and drove thru the desert to Tozeur, stopping briefly in Gafsa to see the Roman pools which a kid dived into, twice, a dinar a dive. The second time he bounced off a wall just like Boris’s cat. The landscape looked much like Nevada, with the occasional olive orchard. We checked into our world-class $96/night hotel that looked pretty empty and whose rooms smelled bad. It does have a nice clean pool, though, and I guess we’ve gotten used to the smell. Tozeur is a pretty tourist-oriented town, and has Tunisia’s second-largest oasis of palm trees.
Sunday we took a long day trip. First we backtracked to Medlaoui and boarded the Lezard Rouge, a tourist train which goes up into the gorge of the Sedla river. It goes up to a phosphate mine and turns around and goes back. The cars were extremely cute, dating from the 1920s, and there were some nice views of a muddy green river cutting through a dry canyon. Then we drove west to Mides, Tamerza, and Chibika, three oases in the mountains where a 22-day rainstorm in 1969 washed all the residents out of their mud-based homes and they all had to start over. In Mides, a guide led us past souvenir stands, through the old village, and down into a gorge where scenes from English Patient and Star Wars were filmed. Tamerza was similar — it had a tiny waterfall which we found with some difficulty, since the guides were unpleasant to deal with. By the time we left, it was dark, and we returned to Tozeur.
Today, Monday, was Annular Eclipse Day, and it was beautifully cloudless all day until late in the afternoon just in time for a cute sunset. For the eclipse, which reached its peak around 10:15 am, we went downtown so that we could share our viewers with locals, and experience their experience. It didn’t get very dark at all — the tiny faraway moon took four minutes to cross the sun. There were lots of little plants and trash grates which cast nice projections of crescents and rings during the various phases of the eclipse. We ended up in front of a cafe, and probably 50 or 60 people came up at some point and looked through our carboard goggles left over from some previous eclipse. It was disturbing to see that someone else had gotten some goggles in town that had some cheap blue filter of some sort that didn’t protect at all.
This afternoon we took a break and didn’t go anywhere. We took a dip in the pool, I read my book, and Ray wrote lots of postcards. But the action will continue tomorrow as we drive through Douz and Matmata on our way to Tataouine.