Thursday 18th April

Another 7am start on our way south through the outskirts of Tunis towards Thuburbo Majus, a small Roman city of about 2000 founded in the 200s AD & still only partially excavated but with baths, a small amphitheatre (stadium) & some temples later converted to churches. The town survived until the Arab invasion in the 700s when it was moved down the hillside closer to the river. It had been
supplied by an aqueduct & had a huge cistern to pipe the water
around the town. The suburbs we drove through are very patchy with many half built places & masses of rubbish. Civic pride seems to be totally absent from these areas.
On the way we passed the ruins of a huge aqueduct which supplied Carthage with water from a source K150+ away. It was a magnificent piece of engineering as it rose to 30m in some places as it traversed its route.
The countryside is very green with apparently endless lines of olive groves mostly well tended & sometimes interspersed with fruit trees or occasionally vegetable patches. Otherwise there are fields of grain or sheep grazing on vacant land. The villages are all have many cafes full of men of all ages sitting around, other shops & very few adult women are seen around.
From Thuburbo Majus we moved on to Sufetula, (now Sbeitla) a Roman & Byzantine city before the Arab invasion of the 647AD. It was much bigger than Thuburbo & has the ruins of 3 temples on the forum dating back to about 200AD, several churches & a large bath complex. When we were there we heard what seemed to be gun fire but as we had passed a military base on the way in, assumed it was on a firing range. When leaving the complex, at the first roundabout we looked back down the road to see a tyre burning in the middle so we don't know what was happening there.
It was a 3 hour trip to Tozeur, an oasis on the edge of the Sahara. The countryside became less lush as we drove along & the olive groves became less frequent whilst date palms started to appear. After about 2 hours we were into semi-desert with scrubby bush at intervals & a narrow gauge railway running nearby. We passed through Gafsa, quite a large town which is a centre for phosphate mining, where our guide told us 3 revolts had been put down before the Arab Spring of 2011. From here the road passes through desert & we saw a herd of camels before arriving in Tozeur which has many of its buildings constructed from white bricks apparently in a Mesopotamian style. For dinner we drove into the oasis to a theme park where we were met by 2 men on horseback who gave a fine display followed by dinner inside a large arab marquee. The floorshow had a band of musicians who accompanied themselves singing folk songs with various drums & a strange very loud pipe. There was also a balancing act, fire stick men in a very weird act & belly dancers. Quite an evening.