Today we started the day by going diving. The dive center is near the marina office. We met at 0800 and piled into a large speedboat. The boat took us out about 15 minutes away from the marina to a site called Rochio Venus. It is a nice dive site, with excellent visibility and warm water.

Like in Greece, there isn’t a whole lot of color in the water here. There is a plant we believe is called Posidonia that dominates the area. Posidonia looks like thick, long grass. It is green near the roots, but turns white higher up on the grass blades. We saw it in Crete, as well, but there is not very much of it there. Eric said he felt like we were flying above grain fields.

In and amongst the Posidonia is a round, green, delicate plant about the size of the top of a soda can that looks like a green flower. There is also a little of that ribbon plant that we mentioned in Crete. We saw a few sponges. There were just a couple small spots of orange, though we are not sure if the orange is coral or something else.

The dominant fish in the area is definitely chromiums. It must be breeding season because there were literally zillions of baby chromuims swimming around, being shepherded by the parents. We saw a few carp, line snapper, and sarre, but only a few.

After the dive, we went to lunch at one of the real restaurants. The menu was pretty generic. There was only one thing that stood out, veal brain. We didn’t order it.

After lunch, we rented a car and went to Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. We had found out there is a nice museum in Tunis, and that the Roman ruins in Carthage are just north of Tunis. It was an hour drive into town, through mostly flat farmland. Other than a few olive groves, we couldn’t identify the crops. There were a few small, non-descript towns here and there along the way. The small towns were bustling with people walking around. The men generally wore short sleeve, button down shirts and long pants. Women’s clothing varied. The conservative had head coverings with a loose fitting long sleeve shirt and loose pants. The liberal end was a tight fitting t-shirt and tight capris with no head cover, and we saw everything in between. We didn’t see a single woman with her face covered. We did, however, see a few traditional wooden carts pulled by donkeys.

The map we bought wasn’t very good. We got off the freeway at the “city center” exit and had no clue whatsoever where we were on the map. The city center has a pretty clock tower and fountain in a traffic circle. As we passed through the traffic circle, we were thrilled when we spotted the board of tourism office on our right. Bingo! Now we’d find out about everything to do in the area and hopefully get better maps.

The tourist office sign said they close at 1800 (6:00 pm), but when we arrived a little before 1500, the office was closed. We weren’t too surprised. This is the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, where followers are not allowed to eat food or consume liquids during daylight hours. They eat breakfast an hour before sunrise and do not eat or drink again until after sunset. Nor can they smoke during those hours, either. We had been told that business is normal in the morning, but in the afternoon people start to fade. Many businesses close early, and often people will go home and nap until sunset. Then they stay up late and eat all night. Dinner is a celebration.

On a side note, Ramadan moves up 10 days every year. We can imagine it isn’t so bad in the short, cool days of winter, but we can’t imagine how hard it must be in the long, hot days of summer. Currently the days are 12 ½ hours long and they are roasting hot. To go for 13 ½ hours without any water in the searing heat is truly a testament to ones faith.

We got back in the car and drove around, hoping to find a sign directing us to the museum. There are a lot of banks in downtown Tunis. Many of the buildings in the banking district are nice and look to be relatively new, though we found out of you turn the wrong corner, you quickly find yourself in an area with dilapidated buildings.

We saw a sign for Carthage and followed it. We figured the road had to be going north since Carthage is north of Tunis. The next road marker we saw was a sign saying “Welcome to Le Kram”. Great, we said, we are only a few miles south from Carthage now. The next sign we saw was “Welcome to La Goulette”. Hmmm. We were now even farther south from Carthage. Somehow, we had gone north and back south and we can’t figure out how.

We were hungry, so we decided to drive around La Goulette and look for a place to eat.
Goyette is an odd eclectic mix. Some of the buildings are absolutely gorgeous, aesthetically appealing with beautiful appointments, such as tile work, metal work, and/or wood work. Others look run down and shabby, and the two will be side by side. Even more odd, is within the same building, sometimes one floor of a building will be beautiful, another floor shabby. There are many buildings that are only partly completed, with people living in the completed portion, most having the desolate look like they will never be finished, which reminds us of Egypt. Actually, Tunis has some neighborhoods that fit the description of La Goulette, as well. Here is a picture of a typical street to give you a sense of what it looks like.

Every single restaurant in the entire town was closed, which was no huge surprise. Food suppliers, such as bakeries, butchers, produce stores and grocery stores were open. Many of the other businesses were closed. We noticed that the beach was jam packed, almost all of the patrons men. We saw that there is an old fort and we stopped by to see if it was a tourist attraction we could visit. We never did figure out of it was open to the public or not, but at that moment, it was definitely closed.

We got snacks from a bakery to tide us over until we could eat a real meal. Both looked like pieces of cake. One was a dry, crumbly peanut concoction that turns to dust when you touch it. It is not sweet at all, and kind of reminds us of that complimentary peanut dessert we got in a restaurant in Turkey. The other one is cornbread soaked in honey and topped with chopped almonds and pistachios. That one was sweet.

After wandering around for a while, we decided to head back. Pretty much every business had closed in the time we were wandering. Restaurants and stuff would open in 2 hours when the sun set, but what were we going to do for two hours, especially when we were starving? This is why we like to have Kosmos in the center of town. If she were nearby, we could go to the boat for a couple of hours, have a snack, and then go back out again for dinner and enjoy the evening festivities. Since Kosmos isn’t close, once we get back to her, we won’t be going out into town again.

So we headed back to the marina. We took a different road back than we had taken up. This way the land is a lot hillier, and while still mostly farmland, it looked like they were growing mostly olives and grapes in this region. We have noticed in all of our driving today that the uncultivated land is similar to the rest of the places we have been in the Mediterranean. There are a lot of trees, cactus and big bushes, such as oleander, hibiscus, evergreens, eucalyptus, pepper trees and the occasional bougainvillea. All grass and smaller plants are dead. We will also notice the occasional livestock animal, or sometimes even small herds of them, grazing at the side of a road.

We have also decided, after all our driving around, that Tunisia reminds us of a greener, more densely populated Oman, probably because of the similar architectural style. Also, like Oman, it looks very up and coming. For example, we drove through a neighborhood with a network of streets and street lights, but few buildings. The infrastructure is in place for it to be a big neighborhood, but the houses have yet to come. But you get the sense it won’t be long until the houses are there and the neighborhood is full.

At the marina, we got dinner. We went to another real restaurant that had a few local dishes on the menu. We tried ojjos with shrimp, which are scrambled eggs in a rich and zesty tomato paste with bell pepper (capsicum) and, of course, shrimp. It was good, a little on the spicy side. They even gave us a glass of complimentary mint tea at the end of our meal. Mint tea is yum.