32. Tunisia - 4 April to 9 April 2010

With only a one-week visa for Tunisia, our first priority was to organise the ferry across to Sicily from Tunis, which we had been unable to do on-line, maybe just as well with our shorter than anticipated stay. So in our last country on the African continent, we headed north from the border towards Tunis and immediately everything felt different, as we've noticed it so often does the moment a border is crossed. In this case, rather than Libya's desert landscape, we were driving through acres and acres of olive groves as far as you could see, in a slightly richer-looking ploughed desert soil with neat rows up to 20 metres apart and each tree looking quite aged with a huge gnarled trunk - but obviously still productive judging by the continuous stream of roadside stalls selling plastic containers of olive oil. White washed buildings seemed to add to the Mediterranean feel of the countryside, but despite a predominantly French-speaking community, the road signs were in Arabic and, thankfully, English.

Our first night was in Gabes, where a young local walked for at least a kilometre with us to help us find the campsite when we were just about ready to give up. We felt very welcome there and enjoyed a meal served at the restaurant which seemed popular with the locals, and the next morning the chef delivered a fresh baguette and two Tom Tom cakes after we'd enquired about fresh bread.

Travelling more inland the next day, it must have been slaughter-day as we saw literally hundreds of sheep carcasses hanging and swaying from the beams in front of shops, in various stages of butchering. We were heading towards El-Jem and another Roman ruin, but this time to a colosseum, the third largest in the Roman world, and further revealing the extent of Roman civilization in Africa. It was certainly worth the stop, a huge structure which had three tiers of seating for up to 30 000 people, and on one side you can still sit in the upper tiers and imagine the excitement of the crowd. You can also wander through the underground passages used for housing the gladiators and animals and imagine how they must have felt in their final moments before providing the entertainment to the masses above. Before we left we visited the museum which houses a display of beautiful mosaics from the ancient city that surrounded the colosseum. We've been fascinated by the remains of mosaic floors in many of the ruins we've visited, so it was a treat to see them resembling their former splendour.

Our destination for the night was Cap Bon, a peninsular not far from Tunis which juts out into the Mediterranean pointing towards Sicily and is a favourite tourist destination in the summer for its beaches. The drive from El-Jem was now through beautifully rich agricultural country with citrus trees, vineyards and green crops, and our campsite at Nabeul in the grounds of Hotel Les Jasmines was very pleasant with a restaurant where we had a fabulous fish meal.

We ventured into Tunis the next day, finding the port and feeling very pleased that we were able to book our ferry for the following Saturday 10 April, and spent the rest of the day exploring La Goulette, the town at the port, before we headed north of Tunis to Cap Blanc, and Bizerte where we stayed at a delightful old hotel called Le Petit Mousse which overlooks the Mediterranean and is better known for its restaurant than its rooms. But we found it to be very adequate, and needless to say we enjoyed the restaurant that night, where the specialty was ..................... seafood!

Our mission the next day was to find the most northern part of the African continent, having visited the most southern point at L'Agulhas in South Africa on a previous visit. With the help of our GPS we found it, not signposted, or heralding its northern-most location in any way, but quite a pretty little beach and white cliffs nearby. Mission accomplished, we had coffee in Bizerte overlooking the Old Port, and spent the rest of the day in Tunis which has Arabian, African, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and European influences, with both an orderly 'new city' of the 19th Century created by French colonials, and an ancient and interesting medina, with an enticing souq displaying the most colourful and beautiful range of goods we have yet seen in the markets. We also had an interesting lunch in an alleyway of the medina squashed at a table with a Tunisian couple as we ducked at times to avoid the elbows of the passing pedestrians.Later we enjoyed a coffee in the 'new city' to experience the sidewalk cafe culture there and observe how life is lived in this interesting city.

The next three nights we camped back at Hotel Les Jasmines, exploring a little of Cap Blanc, but not having the time to travel further afield to see as much of Tunisia as we would have liked. On our last day in Africa, we had our last drive in Africa, and our last meal in Africa, and our last everything in Africa, feeling excited to have completed the African journey and to be nearly on our way to Europe, but sad in a way as well because we had really loved the whole African experience and now it was nearly over. After spending a few more hours in Tunis before heading out to the port, we eventually arrived at the ferry terminal about 7pm for our overnight trip to Palermo, Sicily, and joined the queue of vehicles and the party atmosphere waiting to board and depart at the scheduled time of 11pm.It was 1.30am before it glided out of the port but we were very excited with our first-ever ship's cabin (and it even had a little ensuite!!) and having safely deposited the vehicle in the bowels of the vessel, and explored most corners of the ferry, we enjoyed watching the lights of Tunis and Africa disappear into the darkness of the Mediterranean. Europe was well and truly in our sights.

A good time to look at our African trip stats: 284 days of travel; 80% of nights camping; 35 500 kms and 17 countries and 23 border crossings. What an adventure it has been.