As I said before, my original plans to head south had been foiled. I have some friends who live in the northwest, and it'd been about five years ago when I saw them last. Everyone says their area of the country is the prettiest, so I decided to head that direction.
I looked into taking a train instead of a louage, which is sort of like a small bus. (Technically, a louage is a 9-passenger van. But I'll get to that in a minute.) I've taken louages before, and they're not the most pleasant experience, at least for this single woman who would be traveling alone. I imagined being stuck against a window, with Arab men all around, smoking, and refusing to stop talking to me. I also imagined the louage breaking down and me being stuck in the middle of TimbukTunisia with a bunch of annoying Arab men. Plus, I'd heard the roads were curvy and I didn't want to get car sick. On a train, I can walk away from the annoying people, and I don't have to worry about motion sickness.
The internet will tell you that there IS a train between Tunis and Tabarka, and it even gives you a time schedule and a price. I'm sure this is the only occurrence of this ever in the history of all mankind, but the internet is wrong. There is no train between Tunis and Tabarka because Tabarka doesn't have any train tracks. Oops.
Louage it is.
I prayed for no pestering men and no smokers and no motion sickness and no break downs and headed towards the louage station. The way it works is that you find the van headed to where you want to go, grab your spot, and wait for it to fill up. You pay the driver upon arrival. Turns out, there was a van ready to go and just needed one more spot to fill. That was convenient. So was the fact that the last seat had plenty of leg room for my long legs, was next to a window on one side and a nice, cute young couple on the other side. Here was my inside view for the 3 hours of the trip:
(I took more photos through a vehicle window during these 2 weeks in Africa than I took outside. Go figure. Sorry for the dirty-window-filter these all have...) I saw olive tree groves.
I saw lots of poppy fields. JOY!
I saw some small towns.
I saw rolling green hills. Did you know that Africa would look like this?
I saw small quaint streams.
I saw lovely small bridges.
And big aqueducts!
And more rolling green hills.
The young couple next to me eventually couldn't resist and asked me if I spoke French, and when I replied, "oui," they asked where I was from. When she found out I lived in Marseille, she was thrilled. She'd just returned from there, having participated in an internship for archeology school. She asked if we could be friends, and did I want to go have coffee upon arrival in Tabarka, and could we be Facebook friends, and taught me that the word for "selfie" in French is "selfie" (but with a French accent, of course). Her boyfriend was sweet and a bee-charmer who easily scooped up a bee by my window into his hand and got it safely back out the window. They were really nice and hospitable and made the trip pleasant.
My friends picked me up from the louage station in Tabarka and took me up to their house. This is the view from their roof. Ridiculous, right?!
The view out to the left from the roof.
The view behind (opposite the water) from the roof.
I took a nap while Mrs. Legit finished homeschooling the kids. (I was on vacation, after all.) I woke up feeling so refreshed, and felt like that nap was when vacation-mode fully kicked in and I relaxed and let all of Marseille melt away. It was a good nap.
We left and started walking down to town. This was my view on the way:
That's an old Italian castle on the island. The water was gorgeous.
I mean, seriously? The next time someone asks why I take vacation in Africa, I'm going to show them this picture. Look at that water.
We met up with Mr. Legit in town, and he showed me his art studio (which I'll write about tomorrow), and I got to see a small bit of downtown. People everywhere, just enjoying the beautiful weather.
And then we headed out of town to one of the Legit's favorite spots. We passed this friendly cow on the way.
A small little bay that had almost no people. Just lovely.
Almost no people. Almost.
The kids went and played and I got some good time catching up with the Legits. It was that good kind of afternoon that settles deep in your soul and you want to take deep breaths of it to capture as much as you can.
Later that night, as we were sitting in their living room talking deep in the night, I went to cross my legs and heard a large rip. EEP! thecamelridingcowgirl pointed out on Facebook that this is no hole--it's a "crater!" Haha, so true. The problem was...since it was just a quick overnight trip, they were the only pants I'd packed! So the next morning, I spent the morning hours (while Mrs. Legit homeschooled) sewing up this crater well enough to survive the journey back to Tunis. Good thing I'm no stranger to hand sewing...!
The next day, we headed out to get me back to the louage station. On the way there, we passed this sign. Can you read what the top left one says? It's a little crazy that we were close enough to the next country that there was a border for the sign.
If pictures taken from inside the vehicle were the norm for this trip, so were pictures of animals on the road. This time, it was a herd of sheep.
The sheep on the right had his front two legs tied together. When I asked Mr. Legit why, he said that the shepherds will do that to independent or disobedient sheep who have a mind to break away from the pack. The hindered mobility keeps the strong-willed sheep close to the herd, and teaches him to depend on the shepherd. That image stayed with me the whole two weeks as I don't want my Shepherd to bind me up so that I stay where I'm safe. I hope I know better already. Lord, let it be so.
We went down by the water to see beach and rock formations that Tabarka is known for. They really are beautiful.
The Tunisians have painted the side of the walkway, and as one who enjoys artistic graffiti, I liked it. I'm sure there are some who don't, but to me, it would otherwise just be plain concrete. Now it is colorful, full of life, full of stories. I wished I'd had time to walk along and look at each mural, maybe discover a little bit about what's important to the young people of Tabarka.
Mr. & Mrs. Legit. Why do I call them that? Because they are fluent in French and Arabic and speak the latter rather well, I'm told. Because they are the only expats in Tabarka, and I'm not sure I could do that. Because they homeschool their kids and do their job and love Jesus and do all those things with excellence. They really are the real deal, legit.
We first met nearly 16 years ago (what?!) when we went through training together to move overseas. They were single then and got married promptly after our return to America. I was going to work with them when I moved to Tunisia five years ago, but at that time, they felt they needed to move back to the US. So I didn't get that much time with them five years ago, but it sure was good to catch up this time, even if it was only for 24 hours!
A lone fisherman out on the water. I think that's how I'd feel if I was the only expat living in a tiny corner of North Africa.
We walked down by their touristy port to find a cafe to grab a coffee before I got into a louage. We didn't want to wait too late in the day to find that they'd already filled up and no more were going and I would have to stay another night. I'd didn't have pants that could last another day! :)
Not every place in Tunisia looks like these beautiful restaurants, but I'm only going to post photos like these so that people will be convinced that all Tunisia looks like this and will come there as tourists.
See how pretty? ALLLLL of Tunisia looks just.like.this.
One last view of the port in Tabarka.
I caught my louage back to Tunis. No one bothered me in it, and we didn't break down. We did get stopped several times by police, who checked the id's of all the men in the car but not the women. And then we stopped so that a guy could hop out and buy bread. (I can't make this stuff up.) Then the woman behind me got irate with the driver because he was driving fast and passing people and putting our lives at risk and we don't pay him to be our death mobile. (Okay, I don't know everything she said and so maybe I made up the "death mobile" part, but I could imagine it was something along those lines.) He drove more sanely after her fit, thankfully.
So that was my quick 24-hour stint in Tabarka. Perhaps I'll be back again some day. At least I know now that I'm brave enough to handle taking a louage by myself to get there!
1 comment:
so gorgeous!! your photos look like paintings. I love following your vacation (months late, I know)...can't wait to see where you go next!
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