Tunisia Itinerary

Part I: the North

Sicily and the Ferry

In October 1999 I quit my job in southern Italy, and took a couple of weeks to ride Tunisia. I wanted it to be a really adventuresome trip. I spoke with anyone that I could find that had ever been there. I purchased maps, including Soviet military topographic maps of the southern part of the country from Daerr's in Munich. Sadly, I've read that Daerr's closed during the pandemic.

On the ride down, I was shocked to see how close Sicily is to mainland Italy. I think that I could have swum across at the closest point without much difficulty, although I was much younger and much more in shape when I first wrote this trip description. I rode along the northern coast of the island and passed through a little town just filled with beautiful ceramic tile shops. I bought some tile that I still have in a box somewhere! I didn't write down the name of the town, but there are many towns in Sicily known for tile, and two that I would have passed through are Santo Stefano di Camastra and Patti. In my searching, it seems that Caltagirone may be the best known ceramics town in Sicily, but it was further inland and I did not get to see the town.

On the outskirts of Palermo, I found myself behind an Italian couple on a BMW sports-tourer in heavy traffic. They were either locals, or a combination of skill and stupidity that match well. They were riding with the aggression of a cocky 18-year old, with the skill of seasoned riders, and in the context of southern Italian driving, which is already far more insane than driving in the US. I sped up to stay with them and decided to not lose them at any cost, I found myself racing through the rush-hour traffic - or is Palermo always that busy and congested? I've had a lot of fun on motorcycles, but being in a foreign country, with the ocean to my right, and the license to be crazy (because I was just doing what the locals in front of me were doing:), made this moment possibly the most fun I've ever had on a motorcycle! They clearly were passing through as well, as they didn't stop or slow down all the way through Palermo. I made it across the city in what must be record time for a non-Italian, and simultaneously had one of the several perfect moments of this trip.

The ferry only leaves Trapani on Mondays, so missing the boat is a horrible thought. It also created the interesting fact that my trip could not have been made in any length of time other than increments of seven days. There are also ferries from Genoa, Naples, and Marseillie, although I think that the ferry that I took is the same ferry from Genoa and Naples, I just didn't pick it up there. In editing this write-up many years later, I don't see a ferry to Tunis in 2025, so perhaps it no longer exists, but there are other ferries. I bought an apple just before the ferry left that was probably twice as big as the biggest apple that I had seen prior. It was shockingly good for its size - I had been expecting a soft mealy apple.

Tunis

By the time that I had passed through the lengthy bureaucratic process of entry and getting my passport stamped, and was on my way over the road that crosses the lake between the harbor and the city of Tunis, darkness had begun to fall. I had made no plans for where to stay, so I immediately fell into the Hostel plans of a French couple that I had met on the ferry. They were touring Tunisia for several weeks on bicycles with their young (roughly four year old) daughter in tow in a covered trailer. I ran into them on the other side of the bridge and I followed them the rest of the way. I would have never found the Hostel in the confusing and convoluted medina, had it not been for my French-speaking guides. I followed them through all of the dark and narrow (quite dark by now) streets of the medina. Because of some renovation work and the resulting street closures, coupled with the darkness, it took us over a half an hour to find the Hostel. The hostel in Tunis is a beautiful old palace in the heart of the Medina (old-town). They even allow you to bring bicycles and (sometimes) motorcycles inside. I met several interesting tourists there, including the Algerian track team in Tunis for a marathon. Everyone was super friendly and the Algerians even showed me around town a little.

I left Tunis the next day and headed north towards Bizerte. I wanted to see some of the northern coast as well as two big cargo ships wrecks I had read about, as well as try out some off-piste riding and get my first taste of sand on my big cow of a bike. Although my BMW R100GS is a really heavy machine, the new R1100GS, R1150GS are even bigger pigs, geared higher, and with street sized wheels, yet morons still head into sand with them! I'd like to say that you'd never catch me being that stupid, but my bike was inappropriate enough that I'm not justified in making fun of them. The bottom line is that if you do this tour on 500+ pound bikes, you'll have some trouble in the soft stuff. If you want to have a lot of fun off-road, get in on a group with a hired truck and have tons of fun on a light-weight, unencumbered bike. Check www.overcross.de for truck-supported German trips to Tunisia, I'm sure that they could accommodate an English speaker.

The Forêt du Remel and Bizerte

https://magazine.lapresse.tn/2025/02/03/rimel-bizerte-entre-mer-et-foret-la-detente-autrement/

Slightly east of Bizerte is a park filled with pine trees and the occasional dune. My guidebook mentioned some off-road routes through the park to get to Bizerte. I misunderstood the directions, and turned off the road much earlier than I had expected. I found myself heading towards the beach on some fun sandy dirt roads. I think that I was already aware that I wasn't on the trails that the guidebook was directing me to, but the trails were so much fun, and the view of the ocean so beautiful, that I decided to just go to the beach and follow it to Bizerte if the trail didn't continue. That way I would also be guaranteed of seeing the big wrecks that I could already see on the distant coast, right below the looming city of Bizerte. The guide book that I used, and the only that I have seen that cover small roads and off-road to any degree was a German guide from "Reise Know-How". I highly recommend them, there is nothing that comes close to the quality, and nothing available at all in English for a traveller with their own vehicle. If you don't speak German though, there's not much that you can do. Remember that I wrote this in the late 90's and things may have changed.

The sand at this point was standard big grain beach sand, just like any beach that I've seen anywhere. I continued along the beach, long after any trace of a trail had ended. The going got tougher and tougher until I finally got stuck in sand so deeply that I could no longer paddle my feet and power the throttle my way out of this one. I was new to sand and still too afraid to go fast enough to float on top, so I often found myself paddling with both feet, teasing the throttle in first gear. With no sand experience, my situation only worsened. The more I dug around the back wheel, the more the whole rear-end sank in. Eventually, the front wheel was in the air and the license plate was buried! I lost several hours here, but learned some lessons I would need later. One of the many lessons learned includes taking the time to remove luggage and gear from the left side (my pushing side) as soon as I got stuck, instead of thinking that I'll save time by not unpacking. I learned that digging below the wheels made things worse. I tried the lay-it-down-and-then-pick-it-back-up-again method but it didn't work for me very well for some reason. I've seen others use it successfully.

After several hours of digging, pushing, thinking, and sweating, I finally got it out. It's amazing how fear of getting stuck again overcomes the fear of going too fast in the sand. Once I was out, I flew through the sand to the next patch of rock. I was excited as I approached the ever growing ships, but at around a quarter-mile away, I had to stop at cliff that dropped off about 15 feet in front of me. It went all the way to the ocean, and, believe it or not, there was a military shooting range on the other side of the dune paralleling the water. There was no place to go but back. The return trip saw no bog-downs and the little experience that I had gained brought me back to the trail's end in a fraction of the time. The encroaching darkness made it difficult to see the trail while riding, so I set up camp right on the trail. I've already said it, but what I learned this day, in the large grain beach sand, before I hit the hot desert, made later parts of the trip possible.

I spent the next morning in Bizerte, looking around the old fort and taking in a cafe or two. I yearned for the adventure awaiting me down south, so I didn't stay long. After a half-day in Bizerte, I rode south for a while, then went up onto the Jebel Goraa mountain and camped there. There is a big communications station up there, and I passed some semi-nomads in their Berber tents up on the plateau with horses and other animals. I saw some tiered planting areas, although they looked like they hadn't been used in a while, maybe years. There was a rocky outcropping at the top, and from there I could see the whole valley before me and had a wonderful sunset.

Dougga

Dougga - Roman ruins (shortly after a town called Teboursouk) https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/794/ UNESCO qualified Dougga as a World Heritage Site in 1997, believing that it represents "the best-preserved Roman small town in North Africa". https://skjtravel.net/index.php/15-features/469-well-preserved-ancient-roman-ruins-in-tunisia The Mausoleum of Ateban is one of the very rare examples of royal Numidian architecture. This tomb is 21 m (69 ft) tall and was built in the 2nd century BC.

The next morning I rolled into Dougga shortly after it opened. That's the way to do it. It's not as hot early in the morning, and, at popular times of year, the place is overrun with German senior citizens and other tourists. When I showed up, there was only one car in the parking lot. A couple of hours later, the staff had found me wandering around the old structures and asked me to move my bike, because all of the RV's (AKA Caravans) were having a hard time parking. The picture to the right is a detail from Roman ruin at Dougga. UNESCO called this the "best preserved Roman small town in North Africa." and qualified it as a World Heritage site in 1997, shortly before my trip. There was plenty of evidence of restoration and recording efforts, so it should be around for a long time to come.

Dougga is an old Roman city site, built upon an old Phonecian site, and still has a tower, that, I was told, is one of the only examples of Phonecian architecture left. In its day, Dougga apparently wasn't as wealthy as some of the larger Roman cities up north, but you can still see signs of opulence. The highlight for me was a beautiful theatre with the engraved writing still very clearly visible in the stone. Get a guidebook to better understand what everything is, and how the city worked. The Lonely Planet guide to Tunisia has a map and lots of details about the city and it's ruins.

The city itself was never occupied after the Romans, I believe, but there are still some people living above the city in little shacks. I bought some cactus fruit and an old Roman coin for what I thought was cheap, but was probably way too expensive for the local economy. The cactus grows everywhere, but I wasn't about to figure out how to clean all of the sharp needles from the outside of the fruit. Once you learn to not chew too hard and get the seeds stuck all in your teeth, these cactus fruits become addictively tasty.

Ghafsa

Stayed in a school - gateway to the desert south.

I left Dougga in the afternoon and made my way down to Ghafsa. I had read that you can stay in youth centers, similar to hostels. It seemed that these might just be schools that are out of session. Once I found the place, it was pretty obvious that not many foreigners had stayed there. It was a big dormitory, and appeared to be used mostly by athletes and sports teams traveling within Tunisia for games and meets. I had missed the dinner that they cooked, and with a little bit of gesturing and their limited knowledge of English, I got one of the students to show me to a place where I could still get something to eat that late. He took me to a little corner market. I had a veggie sub-style sandwich (maybe it had some fish in it, I can't remember). The fresh bread, olives and hot sauce were great! I ate it in my room, since there was no common space that I found, and it was already after dark.

When I awoke in Ghafsa, I noticed that I was already in a different land. The trees and vegetation were gone, as was most of the topography. It was flat in all directions without any clouds breaking up the pure blue sky. I made my way south towards the real desert. My next stops were two places I had read about near the Algerian border: Chebika, an oasis and Tamerza, a small village abandoned in the late sixties.

In the open desert you can see for miles. Off in the distance, I saw dozens of moving reflections, but couldn't tell what they were.

Part 2: The Desert

The Desert

As I approached the turn, the distant glints slowly turned into the windshields of a long line of tourist-filled, white Toyota Land Cruisers: the only vehicle in the only color that you will see in the south. (On the other hand, in the urban north, the Peugot 404 had a near complete monopoly, but available in more than just white.) We were all headed for the same place. After not having seen a European for three days, I was entering a world where the only Tunisians that I would see, were those working the tourists over.

Oases and ghost towns: pic of a map here: https://www.getyourguide.com/en-gb/tunisia-l169186/visit-of-mountain-oasis-ong-jemel-and-star-wars-set-in-4x4-t720154/?visitor-id=DDXTYOH593VSWZ64TE67O04YIFMJ4C8Q Chebika tourists in a million land rovers and spring Tamerza abandoned town with one white building https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0RCY_v8xVo

Chebika

This picture is not an exception. This is the rule here. I haven't counted the vehicles in the picture, but all of them are white Toyota Land Cruisers, other than my motorcycle.

I can't imagine that this is one tour group, but there wasn't a single vehicle in the lot fifteen minutes prior, and in a bit, the lot will be emtpy again and I will be alone with the three Tunisian shop owners. I did this for about an hour or two, leaving ten minutes after the tourist hordes, seeing the places in peace, then quickly catching up to them and following them to the next location. That way I was sure to see the most, in the most logical order, and still maintain some sort of control over my trip.

Tamerza

Map here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Tunisia_Antica.jpg https://tunisia-travel-guide.com/de/tamerza-berberdorf/ Pic of a cool map: https://www.wikiloc.com/offroading-trails/tunisie-matmata-douz-11-avril-09-361852/photo-91674 One route through: https://www.wikiloc.com/offroading-trails/zeraoua-martmatra-189246450 Many other routes: https://www.wikiloc.com/trails/offroading/tunisia/qabis https://journals.openedition.org/craup/12586

After the first stop at an oasis with a date farm and a waterfall tucked into a neat crevasse, I followed the Land Cruiser train to an abandoned village. I was told that the buildings were made of unfired mud bricks. Erosion and weather control measures don't really exist because of the extreme low rainfall in the desert here. They said that there was a massive rainfall at one point in the 60's, of between 20 and 30 inches in a month, washed away much of the village. Only the mosque or shrine (I'm not s had been rebuilt.

Tamerza was also a frontier town of the Roman Empire called Ad Turres.

Arabic signs with French transliteration into the latin alphabet, but not always consistently. Sometimes a town name would be one thing coming in, one thing leaving and a third on the map. Once you get used to the spelling, it wasn't too bad. The posters in the back (except for the coca-cola ones) are all for President Ben Ali's election which was in two weeks. He only had one competitor in the elections and had asked him to run to keep the perception of fairness. Ben Ali won of course. I heard a lot of varied opinions about him, but only from tourists. No Tunisian would dare say anything negative about him in Tunisia. It is a police state and still practices torture (according to the Amnesty International 1999 report on torture), with police everywhere you go.

My first camel sightings. All camels supposedly belong to someone. They roam free without tags, collars or markings that I could see, but somehow the farmers (or whatever you call them, camel-masters?) all just know which belong to whom.

Touzuer Brick design. Someone told me that it kept the houses cooler because of the extra shade, but I don't buy that.

Looking across the great eastern sand sea from Ksar-Ghilane. 90km of soft sand beyond is Douz, but just a couple of kilometers up is an old Roman fort on the xxx line, the southern defensive line of the Roman Empire. But I don't get there for another week or so.

Note: spelling of locations and names varies a lot depending on the scheme used in transliterating from the Arabic. So if something is spelled differently on your map than here, neither are necesarrily incorrect.

Tozeur and Nefta are at the NW end of the Chott el Jerid. The pic of the house with the decorative brick work is in Tozeur

Did I go to Nefta?

Cross Chott el Jerid - the salt lake

Douz - town on the other side

This is where I tried to hire guys to take me to Ksar Ghilane

Over the Jebil National Park (all the sand the Germans crossed)

Douz is where the internet cafe pic is and where I got the hotel where i rode my bike in, the scottish guys told me they were complemented on their english, and the older english lady told me not to buy a sailboat for retirement, but rather buy brick and mortar until then. There was also dancing and drinking in the evening. The cover pic of the current Jancada iteration is also just after Douz I think?

Ksar Ghilane

Tisavar

- the little round Roman fort where I met the Germans

https://tunisia-travel-guide.com/tisavar-fort/

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleinkastell_Tisavar

Impressive list of off road routes with descriptions in German:

https://www.mdmot.de/de/pyrenaeen/figueras/114-deutsch/buecher/afrika/tunesien.html

Tropical Tours Erlebnisreisen GmbH

https://tropical-tours.de/Tunesien_Internet.pdf

Tataouine

Chenini was that village on a ridge. There is also a new Chenini town lower down with stores and such. This may be where the pic behind Bani und Feli

Nice article about Chenini here:

https://thearabweekly.com/beaten-path-cheninis-rare-maritime-oases-southern-tunisia

Ksar Ouled Soltane (This Ksar is 1:20 south of Metameur)

Metameur, left one hour to Old Matmata

The islands to the east are popular tourist destinations, but I didn't have time to go to the coast to see them.

Old Matmata Hotel Sidi Driss

Zraoua

The old town with the tower with the washed out pic of me: (I'm pretty sure)

Is this Zeraoua on Google maps? Did I go out of my way round trip to go here?

map here:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Le-Dahar-septentrional-implantation-du-village-de-Zraoua-dans-le-contexte-montagneux_fig1_371245456

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Le-Dahar-septentrional-sketch-de-reconstitution-de-levolution-urbaine-de-Zraoua-en_fig4_371245456

Here is the journal article about the architecture there that the two above links are from: https://journals.openedition.org/craup/12586

Sfax (Did Dagmar fly into Sfax or Tunis?)

one hour from Sfax to El Jem

El Jem

one hour from El Jem to Monastir

Monastir

Sousse

Ruins of Carthage

Here is a well-described tour of Tunisia:

https://www.mosaicnorthafrica.com/tour/highlights-of-tunisia-tour/

Mongolia van trip for Jimmy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm5BUyYh4XA