We had a solid night’s rest in a real bed for once. German and Austrian beds tend to be two twins pushed together with a separate duvet for each. I’m sure that throughout most of the year in these climates that is absolutely perfect and hygge and all those things. In the warmer months, however, it’s a bit limiting. Too cold to sleep without it, but sleeping with just a duvet leaves you in a rather uncomfortable sweat.
Anyway, we had a long drive ahead of us. This was not the original plan. Our destination was Tozeur, which has its own airport and direct flights from Paris. We wanted to do a one-way rental, but nobody seems to do this, and more importantly, there are virtually no rental cars in Tozeur at all. So we will be needing to circle back to Tunis with our longest drive being all the way across the width of Tunisia. Despite getting stuck behind a few slow trucks, we progressed at a decent rate, so in some ways it still seemed easier than our first couple days in Bavaria.
After checking in to the Anantara Resort just outside of Tozeur, we attempted to drive to Luke Skywalker’s childhood home, which George Lucas inexplicably chose to film on the other side of the world in Tunisia rather than some place like . . .the Mojave in California. The pin on Google maps was in the middle of a salt pan, but we figured there would be some obvious signage. There was not. So we continued on to another Star Wars filming site that had a pin next to a road. 25 minutes later, we arrived at Mos Espa — home to the prequel’s famous pod races and young Anakin prior to his psychotic breakdown.
Upon arriving, there were about twenty or more white tour jeeps there. We were the only normal car. We were immediately surrounded by two hawkers. A man on Nicole’s side of the car was trying to convince her to get a camel ride, and my guy was insistent that I should drive 5km up the road and get a special tour. They were both so annoying, I literally drove away while they were talking and parked about 50m away. As we emerged from the car, everyone else left. Like literally. We were suddenly the only car left. We were worried that would paint a very large target on us by the hawkers, but no one else bothered us.
I should mention, however, that most of these photos are artfully cropped. The main thoroughfare of the “village” was inundated with hawker stands. While a few were offering sad Star Wars costumes for photo ops, most were completely irrelevant to anything Star Wars in nature. The interiors of buildings are empty by the way. The futuristic metallic looking antenna things are just made of a cheap wood. From a distance, it looks convincing, but up close not so much.
I guess in the end, our timing was decent. We were able to walk around unimpeded, though we had to shoot around all the stands. On our way back, we saw some camels walking through the desert and stopped to watch them. These appeared to actually be free and not conscripted into carrying unsuspecting tourists around the desert.
We drove the 25 mins or so back to the Anantara and ordered some dinner back to our room. Housekeeping turned on the fire pit for us on our porch area to create a nice mood.
We have a decent drive tomorrow, but not as far as today. We are researching if it’s possible to get to Luke’s house with any ease. Hopefully it doesn’t cause too much difficulty. After all, we have a busy day. I wanted to go down to Tosche Station to get some power converters.
passports & pepto bismol 