The Rough Guide to Tunisia 6 (Rough Guide Travel Guides) (Paperback)

~ (Author), Daniel Jacobs (Author)
Key Phrases: les hôtels, petit prince, louage station, Avenue Bourguiba, Great Mosque, Houmt Souk (more...)

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Product Description

INTRODUCTION

Sun, sea and sand are what most people come to Tunisia for, and you can easily pick up a bargain holiday here from Britain, Ireland or mainland Europe, and sun it for a fortnight on the beach at Hammamet, Sousse, Monastir or Jerba. But if you’re a bit more adventurous, there’s a land beyond the beach and hotel disco, a land of desert oases, Roman relics, beautiful mosques, and fascinating walled cities. Tunisia may be small, but it’s full of sights, and even if you’re only here on a package holiday, there’s all manner of excursions to be had. The easiest option is to join an organized tour – local travel agencies run them, and many package firms offer their own – but you can also rent a car, or scoot around the place on public transport. Tunisia is friendly, safe and generally hassle-free, but still offers an experience you can genuinely call an adventure.

Tunisia, especially in the north, is recognizably Mediterranean in character and very much moulded by a century of French colonial rule. The main language is Arabic, but most people speak French, and the French influence is still strong. As an Arab country, it sometimes seems quite Middle Eastern, but sitting on the top of North Africa, it’s a far cry from the oil states of the Gulf. Tunisian culture is firmly rooted in the Islamic faith professed by some 99 percent of its residents, but religion sits light, not heavy, on the lives of its citizens. They can drink alcohol if they want to – though most do not – and women have greater equality here than in any other Arab country in the world, largely thanks to Tunisia’s modern interpretation of Islam.

But French and Arab are only two of the many influences that have shaped this land. The country’s original Berber inhabitants, now largely assimilated into the Arab population, are responsible for much of its culture – not least the national dish, couscous. The first cities were built by the Phoenicians, a maritime trading nation from Lebanon, whose Carthaginian colonists carved out an empire in their own right, and dared challenge the might of republican Rome, a challenge which ended in their destruction. And the Romans left behind more than just ruins: they were the people who established Tunisia’s infrastructure, and introduced the olive trees that dominate much of the countryside to this day. Even the Turks, whose Ottoman empire was rather a loose confederation of territories, owing often only nominal allegiance to the sultan, put their stamp firmly on Tunisian culture, as seen most clearly in the country’s architecture.

If the diversity of Tunisia’s past cultures and their legacy of monuments comes as a surprise to most first-time visitors, the range of scenery can be even more unexpected. In the north you find shady oak forests reminiscent of the south of France, with the hill station of Aïn Draham even described as "Alpine". The south is plain desert, with colossal dunes, oases and rippling mirages. In fact, the landscape of the desert itself varies a great deal, from the sand ergs of the far southwest with their endless dunes – most people’s image when they think of desert – to the rocky hamada to its north and east. On rugged crags in this hamada, Berber villages seem almost to be carved out of the rock they cling to, and indeed they partly are. No less precariously perched are the strange fortified granaries known as ksour, where once nomadic tribes kept their food supply, ready to defend it to the death if need be. Also here are the weird salt flats known as chotts, and in particular the Chott el Jerid, inexplicably shown on most maps as a lake. The towns in these desert regions are oases, where you can stroll among the date palms to escape the fierce heat of the Saharan sun. Between the extremes are lush citrus plantations, huge fields with row after row of olive trees, bare steppes with table-top mountains, and rolling hills as green and colourful (in spring) as any English county. Just offshore lie the sandy, palm-scattered islands of Jerba and Kerkennah.

Despite this huge variation in geography, Tunisia is a very compact country, and easy to get around. Even on a two-week holiday, you’ll have no problem taking off on a tour that covers coast, mountains and desert alike. The journey from Tunis, the capital on the north coast, to Tataouine, in the heart of the desert, can be made in a little over ten hours by bus or shared taxi and, while most trips are considerably shorter, the majority of journeys in Tunisia leave an impression of real travel in the transformation from one type of landscape and culture to another. All this makes the country very satisfying to explore – an accessible introduction to the Arab world and to the African continent.

About the Author

Daniel Jacobs has contributed to numerous Rough Guides, including West Africa, Morocco, Egypt and India, and is the author of The Rough Guide to Israel & the Palestinian Territories.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 503 pages
• Publisher: Rough Guides; 6th edition (January 7, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1858287480
• ISBN-13: 978-1858287485
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,045,898 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must-Have Book for Travellers to Tunisia, September 29, 2000

By	Clark Matthews (Hoboken, NJ USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Tunisia: The Rough Guide, Fifth Edition (Tunisia (Rough Guides), 5th ed) (Paperback)

If you're bound for Tunisia, you won't want to leave without this book. I'm one of those people who thinks there is never any *one* guide that's ideal for a destination -- I always take 2 good guides. And, for Tunisia, the Rough Guide is definitely the first of the two.

It is much, much more comprehensive than any other guide. The Blue Guide (my other choice for Tunisian visits), Lonely Planet Guide (also excellent though with less background), and others literally do not have 1/2 the content of the Rough Guide.

By supplementing this book with one other one (the Blue Guide for in-depth history & cultural information, or the Lonely Planet Guide for a smaller, hipper subset of travel tips) you'll have a great Tunisian stay. Whichever "other" guide you choose, you'll want this one for the COMPLETE story of any destination in any corner of Tunisia.

Whether you're basking on the corniche at Hammamet, Bizerte, or la Marsa; travelling to tourist meccas like the Tunis Medina, Carthage, Sfax, Jerba, el Djem, Matmata and the Sahara palmeries; or taking jaunts to more out-of-the-way spots like Kerkouane or Tabarka... Take this book.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Most useful and highly recommended, January 11, 2007

By	Annika Eriksson "Annika" (Sweden, Europe) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Rough Guide to Tunisia 7 (Rough Guide Travel Guides) (Paperback)

I'm a editor in Sweden and purchased this guide (together with Lonely Planet Tunisia) after my visit to Tunisia. Both are most useful in my work now and I highly recommended them. For those who are planning to visit Tunisia - prepare by reading the Rough Guide, and use the LP Tunisia as a guidebook during your visit.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Leave it at home, February 19, 2004

By A Customer

I took this guide book as well as the Lonely Planet toTunisa for a month. I could have easily gotten along with just the Planet, and it's smaller to lug around. The Rough Guide was often either vague, or the information was so wrong that I got the impression that some of the places written about were never actually visited by the writter. Directions were hard to follow and the layout of information was not nearly as concise as the Planet Guide. I was tempted to ditch this book many times along the way as it really wasn't worth the space it took up in my pack.