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I headed out to two major tourists sights in Tunisia today, Matmata and Douz. Matmata is a countryside town set amongst the hills to Tunisia. The landscape around this region is typically described as lunar - it kind of looks like the moon - rough edged, cratered floors, dry arid sand.
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Wandering to Sahara

K.thambi
2006-01-06 15:42:29

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I headed out to two major tourists sights in Tunisia today, Matmata and Douz. Matmata is a countryside town set amongst the hills to Tunisia. The landscape around this region is typically described as lunar - it kind of looks like the moon - rough edged, cratered floors, dry arid sand.

What Matmata is best known for is its troglodyte homes. Since the temperatures get quite high, the locals build there homes underground in pits. In fact, these were the exact homes that were used in Star Wars Episode 4 as the home of Luke Skywalker. It was pretty cool to wander through the rooms - they were incredibly cool considering the extreme heat outside. You could tell from the height of the roof though that many of the inhabitants were short - even I had to stoop over in some of the rooms.

Next on the agenda was Douz. This involved a lengthy trip combining 2 louages and a bus that arrived one hour late. Thankfully there were a number of events to keep me amused along the way. For example, one of the passengers in the louage descided to vomit all over the floor, so we had to spend the next 30 minutes smelling her vomit until we reached our destination. I also had to priviledge of sitting next to the fattest man I have ever seen, plus a giant with super long legs who didnt understand the fact that he had only paid for one seat, not two. Tunisian men seem to have no concept of personal space, so on the bus, I found the guy next to many leaning against me and sometimes leaning on my shoulder, which was quite disconcerting.

Anyway, after a 5 hour journey I arrived at Douz. The town is on the edge of the sahara and hence is a popular destination for those wanting to see the fabulous desert

The sahara looks just like the movies: lots of sand and the
occasional bush in the distance. There are lots of dunes, though the
ones around Douz are mostly quite small except for one massive one.
Tou ...