Tunisia Motoring Reports
P.S. No 1 - Contributed February 1998 by : Anon
QUOTE :
Motoring in Tunisia
Tourism is Tunisia’s major foreign exchange earner. Tourists, especially from Europe, flock to the Mediterranean country—and they ought to. Few other countries offer the same range of tourist attractions: beautiful beaches; extensive Roman ruins; desert scenery; historic Islamic sites. Tunisians are also well educated, friendly, and open-minded, national characteristics that pleasantly and effectively complement their country’s natural attractions.
Although most tourists visit Tunisia in package tour groups and are ferried to and fro in large buses, a combination of factors makes Tunisia ideal for automobile touring. First of all, Tunisia is a relatively small country; there is almost nowhere in Tunisia that cannot be reached in a day’s driving. Second, the road infrastructure of the country is as good as any on the African continent, with the exception of South Africa. That being said, for a variety of factors, driving conditions in Tunisia make motoring a challenge.
My family has been in Tunisia since August of 1997. In that span of time, we have put almost 15,000 km on our vehicle, most of it in touring the country, since neither my wife or I works farther than five km from our home. Here are a few of our observations about motoring in Tunisia.
Road/Vehicle conditions: As mentioned above, the roads are, for the most part, in good condition in Tunisia. All roads, from the one 200-km stretch of modern motorway, to city thoroughfares, to country lanes and sand/rock tracks are well maintained. Most of the vehicles one encounters are in fairly serviceable order, too, although Tunisia’s status as a country perched between the poverty of Africa and the wealth of Europe is a factor to consider on the road. The country is rich enough to have many vehicles, making the roads crowded at times. At the same time, Tunisia is not yet rich enough to enforce a regime that keeps the worse vehicles off the road. So, although most vehicles are fine, there are enough ancient Peugeots and Renaults lacking brake lights, blinkers, and the ability to surpass 60 kph to make long drives exercises in some frustration.
Here are some excerpts taken from various trip reports I’ve written since arriving in Tunisia. They are in no particular order.
A few general considerations:
General Notes :
Road Signs: Someone has to say it, so it might as well be me: Road signs in Tunisia are pretty terrible. Most major intersections turn into games of "Tunisian Roulette," in which one spoke of the intersection will have the sign you need, but the others will not. If you’re on the right spoke, you’ll be lucky; if you’re not, you’ll be lost before too long. For example, in Sousse, if you’re heading for the museum from downtown, you’ll go through an intersection with a big sign that directs you to the AutoRoute to Tunis. If you’re coming from the museum, however, from that side, the same intersection will NOT have a sign, so you’ll probably sail right through it and find yourself downtown again. It’s worth paying attention to all road signs, since you might need to remember where they are later on.
Another nasty variation on this theme is the annoying way roads in Tunisia will tease you with a sign you need and then abandon you when you want reassurance that you’re on the right road. In Kairouan, for example, one major intersection has a small sign telling you that El Jem is to the right (or left, depending on the direction from which you approach the intersection), but not specifying which of the three roads heading "right" is the appropriate one. If you choose correctly, you will wait about 54 km before another sign on which the words "El Jem" appear. If you choose incorrectly, who knows what fate will befall you (we lucked out). All of the above is, of course, somehow linked mysteriously to the way in which the names of towns that appear on road signs are never the same as the towns mentioned on your map, but that’s another chapter. I suppose in the long run we’ll all be happy that being lost so much of the time enabled us to see parts of Tunisia that we might never have experienced; in the short run, however, it’s a cross(ing) to bear.
Compass: Although we initially thought it was a pretentious little toy when our truck came equipped with this little navigational aid, we now realize that we would be literally lost without it. Every single time we have traveled in Tunisia, we have depended on our compass to get us back on track when we were lost. If you don’t have one in your car, you should consider getting one.
Police radar: The warning signs about police radar are, it turns out, true. Imagine our surprise when I was pulled over outside of Gafsa not, as we assumed, for a routine check, but for doing 104 kph in a 50 kph zone! Cops are usually friendly and chatty with us when we’re stopped; this one was brusque and businesslike, and demanded all my papers. When I asked what was up after he disappeared with them to talk on his radio, he gave them back to me and said the radar had caught me but that he’d let me go with a warning. The key here is that many of these towns have an arbitrary 50-kph speed limit zone that extends well outside the city limits. You could be in the middle of nowhere with a straight road and no obstacles but still be in 50 zone. Just keep in mind that they will stop you and that, apparently, they have invested in radar guns, not just signs that say that they have radar guns.
Here are a few travel vignettes from these same reports:
Sousse/Port el Kantaoui to Kairouan: Well, we really don’t know how to do this, since we took, shall we say, an "alternate route." Read this only if you want to hear about our adventures; if you just want to get there, take the main road from Sousse.
Kairouan to El Jem: Well, good luck. We performed our usual trick of missing the unmarked turnoff and getting 10 km further down the road before discovering it. Briefly, the road to El Jem is a small (green milestone) secondary road that one joins from a roundabout in southern Kairouan (taking the road from downtown that heads toward Sfax). You cannot, as we hoped to, avoid downtown and skirt the city on the convenient bypass that runs along the west of Kairouan. If you do, you miss the turnoff, located a few km back in the bowels of Kairouan.
Once you are on the right road, however, you will be delighted. It is a pretty country drive through flat, semi-arid countryside, with broad vistas, little traffic, and good asphalt. We were lucky enough to see a herd of about 50 camels grazing on the side of the road. Signs for El Jem itself show up only once you are within about 16 km of the place. Soon enough, the town will loom before you and you won’t have to guess if it’s the right place, since you’ll suddenly spot an enormous Roman coliseum.
A final note is that El Jem is one of the few places we have visited in Tunisia where it is darn near impossible to get lost. The coliseum is smack in the middle of town and is visible from everywhere, so it’s a handy landmark as you wind through the small alleys and streets.
Notes on Tozeur region (excerpted)
- Metlaoui to Mides via "Rommel’s Road": A few km south of Metlaoui on the road to Tozeur, a turnoff to the right is marked "Selja." If you take that road (sand) and go about 20 km, there is a turnoff to the right (unmarked). (Along the road you will see several abandoned tanks and armored vehicles. They were probably used as targets or abandoned during other military exercises, since they look too new to be of WWII vintage.) Take the turnoff and you will soon be on cement road that climbs up and over the mountains that run parallel to the original dirt road. This road is quite steep and winding, but it is cement and thus not dangerous except in rain or snow. According to the driver of the tourist Land Cruiser we followed, Rommel’s forces in WWII built the road. The views over the valley and the Chott from this road are magnificent and the mountains the road winds through are also very beautiful. This road ends in the town of Redeyef, from which you can drive easily along the paved roads to the "mountain oases" of Mides and Tamerza.
- Ang El Jemel and the Dunes: This (approximately) 90-km round-trip from Tozeur was our favorite outing. We went in a friend's Land Cruiser with their driver, but it would not be difficult for anyone with a 4WD to attempt on his or her own. The wide excellent road winds from Tozeur across the Chott (Jerid or Gharsa, I’m not sure, since I wasn’t driving); 4WD is only needed in a few sandy patches. The road goes through a couple of valleys full of mica rocks that poke out from the sand, glittering in the sun. You can stop the car and harvest some mica pieces as souvenirs of the trip. Ang el Jemel itself is an outcropping of sandy rock in the shape of a camel sitting down that looks over a sandy valley with an expanse of water and mountains beyond. For 48 days, according to our driver, "The English Patient" was filmed there. When I commented that the road was certainly good, considering that it went to what was essentially nowhere, he replied that it had been built to film "The English Patient" and that there had been no road there before the movie. Perhaps instead of development aid, donor nations could just promise to encourage film-making; the road was at least as good as an aid project’s road would have been and was probably made with a fraction of the red tape and "consultant" fees.
Seven km from Ang el Jemel, one enters into an area of big sand dunes. Nestled among the dunes are two "villages" built for sets for the next installment of the Star Wars movie, filmed during the summer of ‘97. In addition to playing and sliding in the sand of the dunes, tourists can clamber all over the little villages and pretend to be Ewoks or Jabba the Hut. We climbed to the top of the highest dune and waited for the sunset with champagne. It was calm and beautiful. According to our driver, camping on the dunes is allowed; several tour outfits, it turns out, set up evening "desert dinners" and/or camping programs, providing everything, including tents and bedding to their customers.
This section is taken from a long letter I sent relatives and friends about our trip to Tunisia from Italy by ferry.
The next morning, our 7 am arrival time stretched to 11 am and we still didn’t appear to be too close to docking. At about noon, we all trundled down to our cars and got in. At about 1:15, we finally got out onto the docks and into the first of many lines of cars we would face that afternoon. Apparently, our ship was so late that it arrived concurrent with another ferry’s disgorging its load of overloaded cars into the unprepared (again, why?) immigration and customs service. We snaked through the hot sun to the passport check, then through the vehicle registration and insurance check, and into the mother of all vehicle lines, the immigration check.
Two things I had been counting on did not happen: 1) Someone from the Embassy was bound to turn up at any minute to whisk us through the process in the manner to which spoiled diplomats everywhere have become accustomed; 2) The fact that I was the bearer of a diplomatic passport should enable me to eschew the onerous requirements others were subjected to. Admitting that option number one was unlikely to happen after three hours in line(s), I began an aggressive campaign with the customs police agents that were everywhere. "I am a diplomat," I explained, "Can’t you help me move through the process more quickly? After all, you can’t search my car anyway." All of the officers I spoke with were friendly and helpful but, ultimately, unable to do anything. There were fifteen lines of cars being searched. A sixteenth lane was an "emergency" lane, to be kept open for ambulances, official vehicles, etc; it, too, was full of cars being searched. Oh, yes, they were searching these cars, by the way. In Morocco, I had encountered this kind of thing pretty often at ferry borders (which, thanks to God, had diplomatic lanes) and was always surprised at how quickly these overburdened cars were waved on after a smile and a "handshake." Not so in Tunisia, apparently: stereo speakers were removed from car doors, seats were unbolted from chassis, and loads were taken off the roof for close inspection (I was amazed to see that one large cardboard box contained a fairly big disassembled motorcycle!). We just weren’t going anywhere soon. But we got lucky! One officer, motivated by his desire to learn more about our own visa process, parted a few waves in the sea of vehicles for us and led us to the last stop, the place where we got a paper authorizing us to drive our car for four months in Tunisia. Things were going great—until the officer behind the desk told me I had to pay one dinar (Tunisian currency, more or less equal to the dollar) for a stamp for the authorization. I had no dinars; I offered dollars, lire, or French francs. Nope, it had to be a dinar. So, I stopped a guy getting into his car and offered him 10 francs (almost 2 dollars) for one dinar. Another cop observed this illegal currency exchange and collared us. I explained the situation and he smiled and said "Don’t worry about the stamp! Welcome to Tunisia."
So, we escaped, bloodied but not yet beaten, from the port complex, hoping that someone still might spring up and say "Hi. I’m from the Embassy; you must be the newcomers." A quick scan of the parking lot outside the port revealed no diplomatic plates of any kind, so we took to the roads. We navigated from a little map of Tunis that had been sent us with a sort of welcome kit folder of stuff before we left. Also useful was our car’s compass, one of a group of ostentatious gewgaws on the dashboard (temperature, altitude, vehicle roll indicator, barometer, trip timer, etc) that I had dismissed as mere gimmickry. Anyway, we found the Embassy and showed up in front of the guard. He was quite helpful and did his best to find out who was supposed to have met us and what happened and where we were supposed to go and all that. The most he could determine, however, was that we had a phone number listed in the new Embassy book.
This section is on tourist destinations on the Cap Bon peninsula, close to Tunis:
Note on Monday departures from Kelibia: Monday is apparently market day in Kelibia. If you are heading north, this makes getting out of town very harrowing or delightful, depending on whether you’re driving or sightseeing. The main road north is all but completely blocked by merchants, stalls, and shoppers. Parting this crowd to get out of town is a slow and somewhat dangerous process, but also a bit like shopping while riding an escalator. The wares on display glide by slowly and you have a chance to compare the merits of cous cous pots offered by about a kilometer’s worth of merchants without having to leave the air-conditioned comfort of your car.
Oued el Abid: If you don’t want to be a slave to the main road and the well-known beaches, this might be the place for you. Heading south, a small dirt road just after the bridge over the Oued el Abid leads to a magnificent beach. It’s easy to miss; the road is only marked by a small green sign with yellow writing (in Arabic) from the Water and Forests folks telling you that it’s a protected area and that hunting and fishing aren’t allowed. The road goes for about 2.5 km before it hits the dunes that shield the beach. NOTE: DON’T ATTEMPT THE ROAD WITHOUT 4WD. If you have a 4WD vehicle, however, it is a gorgeous place and, if permissible, would be an excellent camping spot. From the beach, you can look across the Bay of Tunis and see the hill and houses of Sidi Bou Said.
Driving into Korbous from the south (the Korbous "exit" off the main road is south of town) leads you along a beautiful winding coastal road, carved into the high cliffs over the sea. The road is a lot more beautiful for passengers than for drivers, however, as its narrow width and obvious perils (will that be swan dive or smash into cliff, sir?) require the driver to keep his or her eyes on the road. There are a few laybys in which to seek refuge if your imperfect recollection of physics deserts you just when you need to figure out speed, volume, and force of oncoming traffic as it relates to available road surface.
The next section is from a report describing travels in the northwest of the country:
Tabarka to Sidi Mechrig: Leaving Tabarka, we decided to explore the "Coral Coast" a little bit and, taking our cue from a colleague's recommendations, chose Sidi Mechrig as the first stop. You reach Sidi Mechrig by turning left off the main Tabarka-Bizerte road just east of the town of Tamra (the sign, unfortunately, can only be seen by people coming west on the road, so you’ll have to note the intersection when heading TO Tabarka to remember it when you come FROM Tabarka). It’s a good road, mostly paved, that runs for about 20 km to the small settlement of Sidi Mechrig. Sidi Mechrig has a nice beach, surrounded by rocky areas and dominated by the ruins of a Roman bath. Exploring the bath on foot from the beach or the path from the road is easy and interesting, but if you want to drive there (about 300 meters off the main road, down a sandy path just past a large white house as you head NE), you should have 4WD or be prepared to push.
The beach, while beautiful, is very dirty with litter. Right on the beach is the small Hotel Sidi Mechrig, reached by a good short road off the main road. It is a white concrete block structure with a patio and covered restaurant overlooking the water. I checked out the rooms and found them clean, with very white bedsheets and individual sinks. The toilets and showers are communal but clean. The hotel costs 8 TD per person per night. It looks like the kind of place that would be a lot of fun for a group of people to take over for a weekend. Unfortunately, they have no telephone, so ascertaining the availability of a certain number of rooms would be difficult.
(Detour) The good people around the town of Nezha apparently celebrate Columbus Day in a big way. Thousands of people and hundreds of vehicles all but stopped traffic on the main road a few km east of the town. Makeshift stores and restaurants had been set up on the side of the road and people were dressed up in their fanciest clothes. The older women, in particular, looked fantastic in their traditional (mostly magenta and fuchsia) robes and silver brooches. What was happening was, I think, some kind of religious festival (moussem?), since a long line of people was snaking its way up a hill to a shrine/marabout nearby.
Sidi Mechrig to Cap Serrat: A dirt road runs 12 km from Sidi Mechrig to Cap Serrat. Although it is sandy, it is completely passable for any car (except maybe in heavy rain, during which it would be best to avoid the flash flood prone area altogether). From the road, there are gorgeous views of the rocky coastline and some small islands in the distance. It’s a little hard to find the road as you leave Sidi Mechrig, since it’s not marked, but if you keep heading for the coast, you’ll end up on the correct route.
Cap Serrat: The cape itself has a lighthouse and, according to the guidebook, a nice view. We did not visit, but continued east searching for the turnoff for the beach. We found A beach, but are not convinced it is THE beach others have described. After crossing a small one-lane bridge and climbing up a hill, there is a large turnoff toward the coast. It runs for less than a km and ends up on a somewhat deserted beach (there is one concrete structure, perhaps a fish-buying station). At the edge of the beach is a small group of pines that would serve very nicely as a campsite. A series of small dunes abut the beach itself, offering yet another somewhat sheltered camping area. The beach itself is gorgeous and wide, with much less litter than others we have seen have seen. [Note: a recent trip back to the area confirmed that we had found the wrong beach. There’s a beautiful one with paved road right to it that we somehow missed the first time.]
NOTE: This small road would be difficult without 4WD. We were in 4WD for the entire last 300 meters or so, as the sand is deep and the road not very wide. The Guide Bleu says only "risk of getting caught in the sand upon arrival at the beach." If we were at the right beach, it would be more appropriate to say "abandon hope of seeing your rental Renault or Peugeot again."
Cap Serrat to Mateur: The road from Cap Serrat down to the Sejnane-Teskraia-Bizerte road described above is fine. It is mostly paved and its 15 km run through beautiful cork forest. Once you hit the turnoff for Sejnane, turn left and then right toward Mateur after a few kilometers. This road, the C58 on the Michelin map (not marked as such on any signs) climbed just about to the top of our short list of favorite drives. It winds through agricultural areas, small towns, and river and lake valleys before joining the main Tabarka-Tunis road (G 7) just outside of Mateur. We thought it was a beautiful drive, although the road itself is in pretty bad shape in most places, with potholes and treacherous shoulders.
The next section is from a trip to the southern Tozeur and Douz regions of the country:
Tozeur to Douz is an easy and interesting drive. You cross the Chott el Jerid, a dry lake bed, on a road that is built on a berm above the Chott. To the north, mountains line the route; to the south, the sand of the Chott stretches as far as you can see. The road is good and you can make good time.
Shopping note: You can buy lots of desert souvenirs on the side of the road as you drive down the Chott. We bought a number of desert roses for about half what they charge in Tozeur. In fact, we astonished the poor salesman by not even arguing with his opening price, it was so reasonable (5TD per large desert rose). He must have felt guilty for gauging us, however, because he threw in another one of the same size for free! The little stands have much of the same array of stuff you find in Tozeur, but without the tourist hard sell. We also enjoyed the feeling of standing out in the desert while we shopped, surrounded by emptiness everywhere we looked.
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