Fri 7 March 2008

Day 6

Tunis - Bizerte (north coast)

143Km

What a day for disappointments. All was going well to start with, with a hot bath and good breakfast of cakes, egg, halva and hot chocolate. Checking our email at about 11 am we were suddenly hit with a shock as Bruce got an email from our Libyan guide, Hadi Baki. Something had happened between Libya and South Africa in the last few days and now they weren't talking and weren't issuing visas to South Africans! Oh no!!! This is a disaster and I felt sick hearing this since we'd applied on our SA passports. The plan we devised involved a lot of admin…there goes our sight seeing! We needed to:

A - get an Arabic translation into our UK passports (thank god we now both had these)

B - get a 7 day transit visa using our British passports OR

C - get a 7 day transit visa using our SA passports

….so it was off to the British embassy in search of an Arabic translation stamp. Before we left we conveniently bumped into our Libyan travel partners, Andy and Noeleen, so put them in the picture. After much searching we found the British Embassy CLOSED and then found the Libyan Embassy also closed. What time do people finish work here? It was only 3:30pm. However we did meet a lovely Tunisian lady at the internet café who let us use her phone to call the British embassy and we got through to a man who told us they can do the translations for free on Monday! Horray, some good news.

Knowing we had to be back in Tunis on Monday we decided to head North to the pretty beaches in Bizerte, but getting there it was awfully rainy, wet and cold, and finally meeting Mr long fingers at the dodgy campsite we resided on the fact we needed a hotel. After more driving around on the wrong side of the road, nearly hitting a bus and finally finding a hotel for 30 TD we had a local corner shop chicken rotisserie dinner (great and cheap). What a disappointing day!

DOUGGA RUINS

Sat 8 - 9 Mar 2008

Day 7 & 8

Bizerte - Dougga Ruins - Hamman Lif (Tunis)

191Km & 164Km

After driving around Bizerta and waiting and hour for our phone to be activated with another sim card we realised that Bizerte was a s*** hole! Now called Disserta Bizerta. The cold weather and imminent rain didn't help and Bruce was hating the traffic. When things couldn't get any worse Bruce got pulled over by a policeman, whom we never saw in the chaos diverting the traffic at a 4 way stop. Luckily after a quick chat about South Africa we were on our way heading to the northern most point of Africa!

We perked up as we stopped along a disserted rugged coastline for a cup of tea AND the sun came out! Horray! But soon the police arrived AGAIN asking us to clear off as it's not safe hear and a gang of youthful thieves operate around here! Aish, we've been in trouble with the police twice in 4 hours!

Driving south to Dougga was beautiful! The green rolling hills reminded me of the Transki and after 2 stops of tea with our Kelly kettle our moods were lifting as we felt we were actually seeing something of Tunisia. Arriving in late afternoon we were allowed to camp in the car park of an expensive hotel and layering up with 4 blankets we had a good nights sleep in freezing conditions. I recon it was about 0 deg….oh and our phone still doesn't work.

We explored Dougga Ruins the next day…again it was freezing cold and windy…but the ruins made up for it as the roman columns and ruins were quite impressive, dating back to 166AD. We then drove the 150km back to Tunis and found a great beach campsite in Hamman Lif where we finally got around to doing some chores like sorting out the packing system. It's also much warmer. Fingers crossed all goes well tomorrow with our Libyan visas.

TUNIS - VISA ADMIN

Mon 10 Mar 2008

Day 9

Hamman Lif campsite (Tunis) - Hammamet

93Km

Today was a good day. Things are looking up and turned a big corner this evening when we finally got hold of Hadi who said "no problem to organise us a Libyan visa on our British passports in 7 days". He was very pleased we had UK passports. Thank god Bruce stayed long enough to get his. With Libya in sight we can start thinking of moving south.

The rest of the day was focussed around these visas and we still have seen nothing of Tunis. Today we:

A - got our Arabic translation stamp in our UK passports for free

B - asked our nice lady at the publinet office to translate our passport details into Arabic. At first she was horrified to be writing in an official document but we persuaded her to since the UK embassy said that anyone can do this.

C - emailed the scanned copies to Hadi whom, at this stage we still had had no response from.

D- wrote letters to the Libyan embassy for our backup 7 day transit visas

E - found a nice man to translate these into Arabic

F - Called the SA embassy to ask them how we can extend out 7 day Tunisian visa issued at La Goulette and were advised by Sweetness, who wasn't very helpful, to go to the airport…so after a great schwarma we

G - went to the airport to negotiate an extension on our visas. Only to be told this is impossible but we can pay 10 TD/week we stay passed our visa and just pay this on leaving the country.

Leaving the airport feeling slightly better about not getting thrown out of Tunisia let alone getting into Libya, we headed back to our campsite and repacked the whole car so that it was more organised. Things are looking up so lets hope it stays that way.

Tues 11 Mar 2008

Day 10

144km

After a slowish start and yoghurt and muesli breakfast we drove back into Tunis to continue our admin. First stop was to visit Sweetness at the SA embassy who was far from informative but very sweet.

In the end she sent us over the road to the Tunisian Foreign Office. Two scruffy travellers arrived at this posh building and met with someone important and in the end were told that yes the police were right and we could stay passed our visa expiry date and just pay extra onleaving! With our minds at rest we returned to the Publinet office to get our Arabic translation document for the Libyan transit visa but th poor lady hadn't finished and was struggling through. The funny thing is, she can't even speak English so who knows what our translation is going to say! We eventually paid and asked her to email it to us as we couldn't wait any longer and may not even need it now if we can get our visas on our UK passports.

Finally our sightseeing can begin! We visited Sidi Bou Said north of Tunis. A picturesque, almost Greek looking village with white washed walls and blue window shutters with gorgeous ornate blue and black wooden doors. The same style continued through the village which look out over the Mediterranean sea on a glorious day. We meandered through the cobbled streets and unwound.

The day finished with a fantastic almond pastry drowned in honey. Truly delicious.