2/2/06
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… Jedi masters Ced and Avril stepped out of a Tunisian Police station and breathed a big sigh of relief after hearing the words that all backpackers MOST want to hear in a foreign Police station…
“…OK… You are free to go…”
Well OK… it wasn’t in another galaxy OR a long time ago… it was actually this morning in a town called Matmata in southern Tunisia and Holy Crap… we were as relieved as a Jedi can be, especially since over the last adrenalin filled week we also defeated an evil emperor tour agent, almost got stranded in the Sahara and then managed to also bust several vertebra on the Dakar Rally circuit!!!
…In fact this last week would have to be the most PUMPED UP EXTREME week that we have ever had!!!
It’s like we’ve had our very own Choose Your Own Adventure Star Wars epic so this is going to be a long travel blog so don’t read any further if you get bored easily…
Episode 1: The Phantom Lamearse
Well, we arrived in Tunis the capital of Tunisia a week ago and we first noticed a disturbance in the Force when we managed to leave our Lonely Planet guidebook to Tunisia on a bus in London.
It initially FREAKED us out completely as we’ve never traveled in a non English speaking country without a guidebook before. And since we didn’t have a lot of time, we decided to let the Force guide us, so we flew directly to Tozeur in the southwest of Tunisia to check out where George Lucas filmed a lot of the original Star Wars movie.
Episode II: Revenge Of George Lucas
Tunisia is actually a hugely amazing country squashed between Algeria and Libya in Northern Africa and it has some fantastic desert landscapes and an amazingly rich culture, and we were completely blown away by how much George Lucas actually stole from here for the Star Wars movies.
The whole desert landscape is completely out-of-this-world like Luke Skywalker’s home planet Tatooine… And even the buildings and clothing such as the Jawa and Jedi cloaks that George Lucas used in the movie were copied from the semi nomadic Berber people who live down here.
We actually found a website called Star Wars Traveller that tells you how to get to a lot of the most famous sites from the movies and it even gives the GPS co-ordinates for the real diehard geeks…
But unfortunately George Lucas filmed in some really way out desolate places on the Algerian border and since there were also several sites across the whole south of the country, we realised that getting to all these sites ourselves without a GPS would be almost impossible…
…and that’s how we met the evil Emperor tour agent Kamel and his right hand man Darth Mohsen…
Episode III: Attack Of The Bones
The evil Emperor Kamel was a sleazy dude who promised us an amazing trip through the Sahara to Tataouine where we would then tour some other amazing Star Wars sites… Yes… Tatooine actually is a REAL place but spelt differently.
Against our better judgement, since we are normally independent travellers… we teamed up with 2 other Australian Jedi… Adrian and Sam from Melbourne and decided to head across the country over 4 days with the Emperor’s driver… a young Jedi called Mohsen… and just like Anakin Skywalker, we found him initially to be a likeable dude.
Initially our fears of a dodgy trip were diminished when we spent an amazing night in the Sahara on camel back which then ended with a camel ride through a camel GRAVEYARD enshrouded in mist at dawn. It was freaky and cool, but the best was yet to come…
Episode IV: The Sahara Strikes Back
At the time of organising the tour, we had expected Mohsen to drive us along a desert road from Douz to an oasis town called Ksar Ghilane so we could check out the huge Saharan shifting sand dunes from there…
However, we soon realised that he was a VERY POWERFUL JEDI and the Force was strong in him as he chose to actually drive us THROUGH the shifting sand dunes instead of around them, which we later found out is something that most drivers do NOT attempt!!!!
Initially it was cool as the first part of the journey is on the Dakar Rally circuit and is really just a red dirt desert road…. Although he rallied so fast through the tracks that we definitely busted several vertebra when we went airborne several times… gee… it really didn’t seem that painful on the Playstation…
However, we soon hit the sand dunes and that FREAKED us out TOTALLY!!!!
There is about 40km of dunes between Douz and Ksar Ghilane and the dunes are called the Shifting Sands as the wind actually causes the dunes to migrate all the time. It was all a bit scary since there were no navigatable landmarks and hence we ended up following the disappearing tracks of someone else who had attempted this before us…
Again it was fun initially as the dunes were like waves where you have to accelerate down the slope of one dune to get enough speed to get up to the crest of the next dune especially since some of the dunes are actually higher than a 2 story house!!!
However, as we got deeper into the Saharan sands, the waves got steeper and bigger and we actually had to get out and push a lot AND we also had to dig the jeep out of the sand several times which was really hard work…
… Where was Yoda’s levitating powers when you need them…
Not only that, but there were also 3 times when the car ended up sideways on the crest of a dune and almost rolled down the dunes, so we had to all get out to counterbalance it from toppling over…
Yoda must have taught Mohsen well because he kept his cool. However, when we eventually ended up CRASHING the car into a sand dune that was too steep to climb… smashing the bumper and burying the front and back of the car… I think he started freaking out too…
.
We managed to dig the car out, but I think he started doubting whether we would make it as the dunes were getting bigger and the sand was getting softer and he kept swearing and checking for phone reception all the time…
And unfortunately, as we hadn’t expected to cross the Sahara, we didn’t bring much water, so we weren’t too sure how many days we could survive in the desert if we actually rolled the car or got bogged.
But somehow after 6 hours we made it… and I can tell you now that I have never been happier to see an oasis in my entire life and I think it was the same for Mohsen as he started bragging to all the dudes at camp about how he had made it.
Episode V: A New Hope
Even though Mohsen couldn’t speak English, we really bonded with him after such a scary ordeal, so we were completely shocked when the next day he turned to the Dark Side and became Darth Mohsen. At the instructions of his evil Emperor boss, he refused to take us to some of the Star Wars sites that we had agreed on…
We have no idea why he got so nasty but he must have succumbed to the Dark Side as he actually started getting aggressive and wanted us to pay him before the end of the tour which of course we refused to do.
Eventually, he dropped us off in a town called Matmata which is where Luke Skywalker’s house was filmed and we all ended up having a huge fight on the street since we decided that we wouldn’t pay the full amount especially since we would now have to pay someone else to drive us 300km back to the sites that he missed.
Things started getting VERY ugly when his mates on the street started calling other Tunisians to come over to sort us out…
And then the police arrived and saved us…
Episode VI: Return Of The Jedi
The main police dude was actually a scary looking detective with a gaunt face and a big beige Inspector Gadget trenchcoat and the brownest teeth I had ever seen. However, after about 30 minutes of broken French and English, he took our side and let us go without paying, which was great since I didn’t want him breathing on me anymore… Bleeaagh…
We then moved on to check out Luke Skywalker’s house but we FREAKED OUT TOTALLY when about 1 hour later the detective turned up again!!! He had tracked us down as he wanted to take us down to the police station for further questioning!!!
The driver Darth Mohsen was also down there and we really weren’t too sure who was in trouble… us for not paying, or him…
And if we weren’t FREAKED OUT enough by then… They actually took me separately into a small scary office which was the stereotype of every second world police station that you see on TV.
There were 2 khaki uniformed police officers and a translator and me in a poorly lit small concrete room with a slow ceiling fan throwing dancing shadows across a rotting wood desk.
There was a lot of uneasy silence and a fat chubby Jabba the Hut police officer strumming his fingers on the table whilst thumbing through my passport with the slow painful ‘tak tak’ noise of an ancient mechanical type writer cutting through the background noise of sheep and chickens coming through the single small barred window high up on the wall.
It would have been completely funny if I wasn’t pooing my pants wondering whether I needed to bribe them or not…
Anyways, thoughts of where the nearest Australian embassy was, crossed my mind when they got me to sign a statement in Arabic…
But then, things ended suddenly and weirdly… The other Aussie Adrian got pulled into the room as well and after a lot of commotion, Jabba the Hut stormed in and scrunched up the statements only to unravel them for Adrian to sign them again. WTF?
And then all the officers stormed out and drove off leaving us in an empty Police station thinking ‘what the fuck…???”
In anycase, after about 5 minutes of us standing dumbfounded, the translator told us that we were free to go and in the end, although we aren’t too sure what happened, we think that it was the evil Emperor tour agent who is now in trouble…
And thus ended our Star Wars epic…
Anyhows… we have another week here so tomorrow, we are off to rent a car to go back to Tataouine to rescue Han Solo… er… I mean check out the other Star Wars sites…
Despite this, we actually have been completely blown away with how interesting Tunisia is, so we’ll write more about the real Tunisia later.
May the Force be with you…
Ced Chu-bacca
Avril Bowie-wan Kenobi
PPS If you are wondering how we keep our cool when stressful shit happens like being hauled into a police station… well we keep a Japanese Sushi Pop song called “Fantastic Cat’ by Takako Minekawa on our laptop and play it when we are stressed… Cracks us up everytime…
Hey guys!
I just luurrrrve reading the blog things, they’re really fun and exciting style…I wish I could write like that! Wow! You badasses!!*Shakes head*…THE POLICE STATION!!!! —–>“What the fwuk…????†tehehehe!!