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Empty Roads, Desert Rain & Mirages: Matmata-Douz-Tozeur
It’s fair to say that the journey from Matmata to Douz isn’t the most challenging foreign drive we’ve ever undertaken, with long stretches of empty road cutting a perfect straight line through the desert. In terms of civilisation, there is nothing: a good hour of roadway passing not a single building, let alone anything as grand as a village. In fact the greatest – maybe the only – challenge is the patches where the sand has covered the road, the tarmac has all but disappeared and the grip of our tyres is about as good as a stiletto on a polished floor. At last we reach signs of life as…
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Going Underground: Matmata
As soon as we heard that some former troglodyte homes beneath the ground had been converted into a place where you can stay the night, we knew we had to do it. The temptation of spending a night in one of these most unusual cave dwellings was just too much to resist, especially when our route south and west was taking us close to their very location. An entire population of troglodyte people lived in and around what is now Matmata, in man made cave dwellings constructed in intriguing fashion. Some of these cave dwellings were simply hewn into the rock, often behind tight entrances between tall natural pillars, but…
