This is what Tunis looked like through my camera lens a week ago:

Watching the news today, I am shown images of Berlusconi going to court; a plane crash in Poland; Lebanon's government falling apart; Sudan on the brink of a breakup; an eruption of Mount Etna in Italy; terrible flooding in both Australia and Brazil; and intense rioting in Tunisia. All big news, but it was this last news story that captured most of my attention, considering the content of my last post.

When we were standing on the streets of Tunis a little over a week ago, we were oblivious to the level of anger around us. But it seems that the expression “got out in the nick of time” might be the most appropriate way to follow up on my Tunisia travel post. When we arrived back in Amsterdam we were a bit surprised to turn on the news and hear about a protest turning violent in a smaller inland Tunisian city that had likely happened while we were in the air flying home. I’ve watched it escalate in the news since then, taking interest mostly because of the narrow escape it seems we made. Today the riots are at their worst, and I read in the Dutch news that 145 Dutch tourists are being prematurely sent home from their vacations.

Glad we weren’t sent home from our vacation.

The problems being reported from there include widespread unemployment, particularly among the young graduates, high costs, and stifling online bans. I sit here on my comfortable sofa watching live images of people in Tunis throwing rocks amidst the sound of gunfire. And I still have Tunisian sand in my shoes. Of course I am glad that it was quiet and safe while I was there. But it is a baffling illustration of the unpredictability of travelling in a place where I know very little about. Quite a lot can be bubbling under the surface, apparently.

What is happening is terrible. But I look at it this way - the Tunisians are standing up for what they want, demanding change, and it might be a bit ugly for a while. It isn’t the first time in history something like this has happened. And we were there, right when it all began, a part of history.

Tunis in the news today:


http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/spotlight/tunisia/

Tunisia

We went to Tunisia for the week that 2010 became 2011. It is a small country in comparison to its North African neighbours, Algeria and Libya. It is where the Sahara starts and where there’s also a long, lush coastline along the Mediterranean Sea. We rented a car and drove as much through the country as we could with the time we had, and we ended up visiting varieties of rocks.

I wanted to write “old rocks” there, but really, all rocks are old. It’s the arrangement of them that can be interesting: ruins from ambitious human societies long dead or the natural scattering of them as a result of the Earth’s shifts and movements.

The Romans had a heyday in Tunisia in the wake of the Phoenicians. I won’t bother telling you about Carthage and its monumental sacking by the Romans– you can google that story yourself. As modern visitors we spent some time walking amongst some of the lingering old ruins and photographing them in low, late-day sun. The ruins in Tunisia were often better preserved and similarly impressive as the remains that are heavily visited in Greece and Italy and scattered around Europe. El Jem had a grand rival coliseum, and in Sbeitla we were the only visitors in a huge Roman forum. All were impressive, carefully arranged piles of old rocks.

There are mountains and water in the desert. The sandy brown countryside contains oases of palm trees in low lands at the foot of mountains or crevices in the flatter desert where water would naturally flow. Because water evaporates immediately in this desert atmosphere, we encountered enormous blocks of gypsum and salt deposits. We even drove across an immense inland salt lake, named Chott El Jerid, and it shimmered like fresh fallen snow with salt that covered the dried-up sand. Every tourist stop accosted us with piles of desert flowers for sale.

Our rental car was a little, white, dented Fiat Punto, so 4X4ing in the Sahara wasn't an option. When we reached the beginning of the Sahara, we parked the car and jumped into the sand. Our few minutes in the desert ensured that later we were packing a substantial heap of the sand back to the hotel with us in each shoe. The Saharan sand is incredibly soft and fine. As I held it in my hands I wished that it wasn’t so cold overnight in the middle of winter because I’d have loved to sleep one night in the open desert.

This seemed like a perfectly peaceful image until the moment when we decided to stalk desert wildlife hidden during daylight hours under rocks. We wanted to find a scorpion, and after turning over about 25 mini-boulders, encountering beetles and caterpillars almost as long as my mobile phone, we were rewarded with a beautiful specimen of the north African desert scorpion. It was green and scary-looking and apparently nocturnal. It paraded around in for us with his front pincers reaching forward ready to grab and its tail perfectly poised in the air. It was thrilling to find him, and now I understood better why people who do sleep in the desert often do so in a hammock!



When we got home we were, of course, curious to google our little scorpion to see what kind it was. It turns out that it’s one of the most frightening kinds. In fact, it is known as the “Deathstalker” and according to Wikipedia it is “regarded as a highly dangerous species because its venom is a powerful cocktail of neurotoxins” which causes significant pain and illness if one gets stung. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deathstalker)


And finally, if you haven’t yet been there yourself and you want to know what Tunisia looks like, watch the introductory scenes from Star Wars Episode IV (the “first” film from 1977). Luke’s home on the planet Tatooine was set in southern Tunisia, and was named after a nearby town, Tataouine.