Tripoli to Tunisia, Tunisia
Sunday, 30th September 2007
Having left the surprisingly European city of Tripoli in our rear view mirrors and swiftly covered the 180km to the Tunisian border, we were well set to make an early morning border crossing and attack our last kilometers on the African continent. Libya had proved a breeze relative to some of the countries further south and we had traversed the entire country without witnessing any of the dark goings on that Colonel Gadaffi and his henchmen are constantly accused of.
Another wonderfully boring border crossing (amazing what pleases you after a month on the road in Africa). Libyan number plates handed in and our bike registration papers and passports presented on the Tunisian side, we burst free into Tunisia and waived goodbye to Waheed, our pleasant, but compulsory, Libyan guide.
Not much change in scenery from the Libyan side except for a spectacularly unregulated petrol industry. For the first 100 km or so, the road side was littered with little stalls selling petrol in rows of plastic containers. We could only assume that this must be petrol bought in Libya at the ludicrously low Libyan prices and smuggled across the border. This was confirmed at our first Tunisian petrol stop where were treated to petrol at about 10 times the Libyan price. Oh well all good things must come to an end and even the petrol price could not tempt me to immigrate to Libya.
Our first petrol stop, however, brought minor disaster. Luigi’s bike cut out and stubbornly refused to start again. Some hasty dismantling and a frantic call back to South Africa established that the battery was properly done for. A failed attempt at temporarily swapping batteries between bikes to get it started saw us come to another grinding halt opposite nothing else but, would you believe it, a line of parked tow trucks.
Our humour was reaching its limit and Tunis was not getting any closer so we wasted no time in beating down the ridiculous price quoted by the tow truck owner and loaded the bike for its second undignified run in a truck (remember the goat truck in Northern Kenya), for this trip.
So, Luigi and bike comfortably housed in the tow truck, the remaining three bikes carried on west. The scenery began a rapid change as we wore down the kilometers between us and Tunis. Olive groves, fields of chili bushes, melons and pomegranates started to open up and the flat horizons were disturbed by hills and then mountains.
After several thousand kilometers of every flavor of desert, this fertile scene struck us as vaguely surreal and it only improved as we neared the capital city until we could be forgiven for thinking that we had blundered across the Mediterranean and into Southern France.
The strange sense of order about this African country also became difficult to ignore, traffic officers in neat, well pressed and very formal uniforms, well signposted roads (if only in Arabic and French), fairly new looking cars on the road and almost sane drivers. This was not like any African country that we had passed through so far and the city of Tunis did not disappoint either, given this build up. If Tripoli had a vague European air about it then Tunis must be the Southern most European city.
Tunis, as we were to learn has in fact had a long history of mixed involvement in European affairs from the old empire centered in Carthage (now modern day Tunis) that spawned Hannibal’s elephant powered march into Italy, where he gave the Roman empire a bloody nose, to Roman conquest and some time spent as the ‘bread basket’ province of the Roman empire to the Turkish invasion and a spell as part of the Ottoman empire and onto a sneaky deal between Britain and France in the second half of the 1900’s that cleared the way for French forces to sweep in from Algeria and snatch Tunisia out from under Italian noses to become a French colony before finally reaching independence in 1956. Since then it has had only two presidents, the current incumbent, enjoying his umpteenth term in office and maintaining a tight strangle hold on the political life of the country. So it is, that Tunis today is outwardly an unmistakably French city but with a strongly beating conservative Islamic heart.
We are now comfortably housed in the centre of Tunis and have reconnoitered our route to the ferry boarding tomorrow morning and our passage to Europe.
Our last night in Africa, brings a conflicting mix of melancholy and relief at our impending departure from the mother continent.
Melancholy at the collage of sights sounds and adventures that have come our way since the frenetic police escort from Johannesburg, 30 days ago, north into the wilds of Botswana, across the empty bush horizons of Zambia, under Kilimanjaro’s shadow in Tanzania, into Kenya and its punishing northern waste lands, up over the green damp of the Ethiopian highlands, down into the searing heat and sand of the Sudan, racing the busy Nile Valley through Egypt, west across the parched skull of Libya and now into a fertile and orderly Tunisia.
It is definitely too much to make sense of in our travel weary heads, right now, but I am sure that we will have many forgotten images of our over 12,000 km dash through Africa popping into memory for months to come.
Melancholy aside, we cannot escape the relief that comes with our last African stop, the many nasty little ‘hotels’ that we collapsed in overnight through east and central Africa, the grueling riding hours and unending early mornings, the punishing mindless bureaucracy of the border crossings and disappointment at the pressing mass of humanity that has banished any romantic notions of wild Africa from much of the route that we took. Africa would seem to be a continent groaning under the weight of too many people and hopeless mismanagement. Certainly it has its fair share of jewels but these are at times, set against an ocean of filth and despair that leave one feeling quite beaten. Our beloved continent has many challenges in its future and we can’t ignore these as we try to order our feelings and prepare ourselves for the final straight across Europe and into London to complete the Pizza challenge that we have set for ourselves.
Tomorrow we must get Luigi’s stricken bike onto the ferry and to Italy where it can be repaired. If fortune smiles on us, we may even be able to talk our way out of the deck seats that have been booked for us and into a cabin for the 22 hour crossing.
Bring on Europe, bring on flush toilets, and bring on London.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. Nine days, several thousand kilometers and two ferry crossings still stand between us and our wives and families in London.
Let’s hope that our bikes, bodies and friendships can with stand the last remaining challenges on the home straight.
In the name of Pizza, we continue!
uke1 
