Matmata, Tunisia

Catchup Postage: Skywalking to Matmata

Another day, another planet - this time the one that featured in Star Wars!

Tozeur lies on the northern shore of the Chott El Jerid, which at 7000 square kilometres is the Sahara's largest salt pan. The morning is a blue void above the widening sere expanse of the lake as we rumble across the the causeway toward the troglodyte town of Matmata.

Our exertions yesterday have sapped Amber's strength and this morning she's feeling pretty low, but rouses when we pull into a rest stop far out on the salt flats. The landscape is eye-scorchingly bright and already the Fata Morganas are dancing above the horizon.

Ah yes. All the normale conforts of home...

I'm sure this would be the most photographed toilet block in Tunisia. Perhaps even in the whole of North Africa. I reckon most people would label these colours garish, but in this bleached and dessicated landscape they look fantastic.

While we sip tea and check out the vast array of souvenirs available the wind strengthens to the point where we have to drop the tarpaulins that shield the open sides of the truck. By the time we arrive at Douz on the lake's southern shore the sky has yellowed and Saharan grit fills the air. Fills our mouths and ears and noses too, but at least we have a the shelter of a subterranean hotel and hot showers awaiting us at day's end, unlike those who eke out a living in this harsh environment.

The sun is doing the big red ball thing in the dust-filled sky, but the wind has begun to abate as we roll into town.

Matmata occupies a depression in a desert plateau and all the action's underground. This is the town where you'll find the Hotel Sidi Driss, which was the location for Luke Skywalker's home in the first movie and some of the set still adorns the walls of the hotel's open craters. So I've been told anyway - I opted for climbing a hill on the edge of town with Nick, Kevin and Tania rather than doing the Star Wars tour.

We check in to the similar Hotel Marhala, right behind a busload of shisha smoking raucous teenagers on a school trip from Scandinavia. Dammit! We get set up in our little sleeping cells that are hollowed into the hotels various craters while we wait for 'em to finish preening in the shared bathrooms.

It's night by the time they're done and a bright full moon floods cool light into the pits of the hotels open spaces as we negotiate the tunnels to the bar for some pre-dinner drinkies

Amber's feeling pretty bad and resorts to double shots of the local firewater as an anaesthetic. It seems to work a lot better than the drugs we have! George appears disappointed when we all retire before 11.00, but he's had the relative calm of the cab all day. You might think a day sitting in the truck would be relaxing, but the constant bouncing on poor roads and the incessant flap-hammer of the tarps in the desert gale sure has taken it out of us. A tour bus it ain't!