We traveled south from Tunis in a chauffeured car. I met the driver at the company’s office at five am and we picked up the three other passengers in Sidi Bou Said before heading south, to Djerba. At one point along the way, the driver recited a poem he had written a few days before, then set about explicating it for me for quite some time. He was delighted that I could speak Arabic and suggested that I stay in Tunis forever, marry a Tunisian man and teach English. His good mood, however, did not last beyond that first day.
Dj is an island on which lives the majority of Tunisia’s Jewish population. It is also the site of a synagogue to which Talmudic scholars are purported to make pilgrimages and boasts beautiful beaches and famed architecture.
We saw none of these things because our trip began on Eid al-Adha (it was during this exact holiday last year that Number Six and I came to Tunisia for the first time). Everything was closed.
For instance, on the way to Jerba we paused in the town adjacent to El-Jem, a well-preserved Roman coliseum. The coliseum was closed but its exterior is impressive.
We were then shuttled to Djerba by ferry, where we passed through streets jam packed with closed shops and silent restaurants before being delivered in our hotel. 
The hotel was one among many resorts that abut and surround the beach, all of which looked spookily empty. There were other guests our hotel, mostly from Eastern Europe, but the area seemed rather deserted.
The next morning, our driver had instructed us to be ready to leave at 8 am. It was about 8.20 when he found us in the hotel’s restaurant, finishing up our breakfast. He scolded us for our tardiness and then, perhaps as punishment, drove like a complete maniac to our next site. Because of our late start, we skipped the synagogue and were instructed to spend only ten minutes in Medinine.
This was the first of several historic sites we visited under duress, for the driver was convinced that only those locations sanctioned by the tour agency’s itinerary and his personal wisdom were worth our time. This particular place was once a storage place for grains and the like and now houses small curio shops. The best part was that we were able to climb onto the roof. Things are always more fun when you can climb them.
Next we headed over winding mountain roads and continued at a punishing pace toward our next scheduled stop. The driver increasingly agitated because he was convinced we would not arrive at our final destination, a desert campsite, in time. The roads out there are treacherous at night, he informed us, and he did not want to have to drive them after dark. Therefore after we dawdled atop the mountain, snapping photos and greeting sheep, we were forced to argue with him for at least half an hour about whether we would skip the next sites and go straight to the campsite or see them and risk arriving at 9 pm. We even were forced to turn around several times as we argued this, which did not improve our timing. In the end, we insisted upon seeing the scheduled places, chance the consequences.
An immediate consequence was the driver’s grumpiness. He drove at top speed down the mountain and some of the more susceptible members of our party began to feel sick to our stomachs. The troglodyte houses were a welcome respite from the punishment of the road.
Troglodyte houses are built into rock faces. To enter the house we went through a cave-like hallway, at the other side of which was a small courtyard. Our tour here was extensive – the driver insisted upon explaining every room’s purpose for a very long time, to the point that I went outside to get some fresh air and commune with the resident kitty. He told us, for instance, that the people here have sex only on Thursday and Sunday so that any possible conception will be made at an auspicious time. As it turns out, he was quite the fan of this sort of information.
The residents of the home gave us a snack of home-made bread. We dipped it into honey mixed with olive oil. Most delicious. One woman demonstrated how the bread was made, or at least the beginning of what is certainly a laborious process through which she ground grains into flour. I turned the grinder for only a few moments before exhaustion set in. 
On we went, zooming over the terrain once again until we reached Tattouine, a site famous these days for its connection to the Star Wars film series. The director of those films took inspiration from the site, and even named a city or a planet or something after it. I have to admit that I haven’t seen that movie, although I am, of course, a colossal dork. That dorkiness is better expressed in my love for mustaches and goofy accents than in an appreciation for sci fi movies; luckily for me there were plent of the former to be found on the trip.
On the road again, we visited yet another storage place, this atop a lovely hill. Afterwards we entered the dangerous portion of the evening where the driver felt it necessary for us to hide our passports in the glove box lest we be kidnapped by marauders. He informed us that two Europeans had been snatched by Al-Qaeda while driving on that very road four years ago. They were held for eight months. Perhaps it speaks to the seriousness with which I reacted to his warnings by this point that my first reaction was - think how good my Arabic would be after that! 
The only living beings we encountered, however, were the two lovely kitties who greeted us at our last pit stop before the desert. For despite our driver’s fears, we arrived at our campsite at 6 pm and in plenty of time both to avoid danger and to eat dinner. The two D’s of travel, you might say. We did not avoid the cold, however. Instead we shivered through as many layers of clothing as we could accumulate as we awaited the dawn.
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