We spent next couple of weeks travelling from one oasis to another, staying at camp sites and moving on when the mood took us. Some sites were tranquil but others noisy, bustling with groups of tourists (mainly Tunisian, Italian and German) on guided tours into the Sahara, either on quad bikes, off road motorcycles or 4×4 cars. Camel treks were the quieter option – we did neither.
We continued to take advantage of dinner being cooked by our hosts whenever it was on offer. Renata was the Swiss wife of a Tunisian and she produced an amazing meal with an assortment of starters followed by a colourful dish of couscous topped with grilled vegetables and four gigot chops. Normally a gigot chop would be a slice of lamb leg with the bone in the middle but this juicy tender meat wasn’t lamb or beef (and not pork, Tunisia being a Muslim country). The next morning Renata told us we had eaten turkey meat. The pinky, dark leg meat was tasty and fell off the bone and was a far cry from the turkey we were used to eating in the UK – we wondered whether it was a different breed of the bird.
At the oasis of Ksar Ghilane we spotted the group of BiMobile owners that we had seen at Gafsa the previous week. They created quite a stir when the eight or more vehicles thundered through the narrow streets of the village and on into the sand dunes of the Sahara. We were surprised when they returned a few hours later – our intrepid drivers had chosen not spend the night out in the desert.
