Truckin Around Tunisia (Or "Clutch in, Nerd out!!")

And there we are.  The part of the movie where dots get plotted across a map

Ah Tunis, I remember it well...

Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) said:

Everyone got their #3 Robertson Head Non-Slip Screwdriver?

 

Okay, three things. No, four.

1. Everyone should have a Victorinox Huntsman stashed somewhere. This should be made law.

2. Have you considered referring to your family as The Four Huntsmen? Just - I mean, you don't have to, necessarily, but...

3. Seeing as it's too dang hot outside to head to Tunisia today, Little Monohue and I are watching the referenced machine uprising on TV. It is sweet and charming and hits a little too close to home.

4.  Not only are you taking your family on great adventures and taking us all along with you by sharing it here, but you reminded me to add a few Robertson screwdrivers to my Epstein's Day order. Truly, you live a life of service to your fellow man.

Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to VikkiDp :

You are very right about how easily "later" becomes "never".  Ukraine is a good example of that.  Since 2009, Mrs. Hungary and I have always wanted to travel all over Ukraine, but it was just SO CLOSE that we could always put it off until "later" (let's just do this place first, and then we'll...).  Now... well, we know what's happening "now"

 

 

I understand this, my family is from Ukraine and I had planned on visiting one day.

I think it'll be awhile before I can do that.....

Oh man, saw this on the 4th and picked through the first few posts that were up. All caught up now and absolutely love what you're doing! Between this and the refuge thread you're absolutely killing it in the life's karma game. 

Following another great adventure 

Following for OBVIOUS reasons. Full nerd here.

I almost visited Pompeii in the Navy, but the guy we gave $ to for getting our trains tickets got us on the wrong one. We eventually bailed in some town with skull and crossbones on buildings and figured out return tickets (Naples).

And I remember the driver's in Cairo. No lanes, you basically got your nose in front of someone to claim "right of way".

Eric (Ottawa) said:

Ah Tunis, I remember it well...

Darn it!  I only missed you by a decade!

In reply to DarkMonohue :

Honestly, that movie hits WAY too close to home for my comfort (and I love it).  I am very much that dad with our army knives and absolutely can not survive without mine.

"The Four Huntsman" it is!

In reply to Antihero :

I very much have hopes that when this is all over that we'll be able to do a family road trip around Ukraine, the country just has SO MUCH to offer (And hopefully that happens sooner rather than later).

lownslow said:

Following another great adventure 

Hopefully it doesn't disappoint.  We're at the dull part now (stuck on a boat for 24-hours)

Jerry said:

Following for OBVIOUS reasons. Full nerd here.

I almost visited Pompeii in the Navy, but the guy we gave $ to for getting our trains tickets got us on the wrong one. We eventually bailed in some town with skull and crossbones on buildings and figured out return tickets (Naples).

And I remember the driver's in Cairo. No lanes, you basically got your nose in front of someone to claim "right of way".

Oh man, the younger Huntsmen were just talking about 4x4-ing it through Egypt.  And as awesome as that sounds, I don't think we'd ever survive Cairo...

johndej said:

Oh man, saw this on the 4th and picked through the first few posts that were up. All caught up now and absolutely love what you're doing! Between this and the refuge thread you're absolutely killing it in the life's karma game. 

One more quick update to keep the momentum:  There we were.  Stuck on a boat for the next 24 hours...

We end up parked in front of our Hungarian Taxi friend, and as you can see a lot of these guys have their cars absolutely LOADED with stuf to bring into country.

I mean we joke about "everything but the kitchen sink" but there's at least one car that packed that too!  (bottom right of the photo)

We're really just kicking around the boat at this point.  The younger Huntsmen get soft drinks and ice cream as a treat, and the elder Huntsmen get brews.

The youngest finds futbol on TV in the ships galley and excuses himself to go watch.  It's Ukraine V Romania and Romania will win.  There's also a group of kids that are running up and down the hall and making a lot of noise.  I try to convince the kiddo to join in but he cites the language barrier as a reason to stay put.

Mrs. Huntsman and I are playing cards and eating sandwiches for dinner with the eldest (we brought a little lunch meat and had some bread in our snack bag).  It beats paying out the bum for more bad food, but also I don't see anything open for dinnertime chow...

We did try to fix our locked card, but no network was availabe.  It's not the biggest deal in the world as we brought two credit cards (from different banks) plus our two bank cards (we have individual accounts) so only 1 of our 4 spending options is blocked at this point.

We do get up for leg stretchers every once in a while (it's been many hours at this point) and in doing so we go up and down a stairwell at the back of that hallway.  On one trip up with the younger Huntsmen we were passed by those many screaming children much to the chagrin of a very grumpy man.  On the way back down about 15-minutes later we again had to make room for the kids but by this time the guy had enough.  I thought there was no way he wasn't going to think that we were all together but luckily the kids peeled off and headed towards their mother and we went in a different direction.

Also lucky was my view from our card table because I got to watch as this very grumpy man complained endlessly to a very stern mother who just wasn't having it at all.  I mean this guy stood exactly zero chance of getting this mom to intervene.

When we went up to bed later, we couldn't help but notice that the grumpy man's bedroll had been removed from the area around the stairwell.

Good times.

For a night cap, we had exactly one kid-appropriate movie downloaded to Mrs. Huntsman's phone so we connected that to our bluetooth speaker and that's how we called it a day.

There we were.   They found us.  I don't know how but they found us...  RUN FOR IT HUNTSMEN!!!!

So I'm up at 6:30 and the eldest is as well.  He claims that the engine noise kept him awake and when he finally got to sleep the engines stopped while we were in port at Sicily and that woke him back up again.

Me?  I slept like a rock.  But I can tell we were in port because my phone is updated with a million notifications.  Since there's nothing else to do, the elder Huntsmen put on our pants and go get coffee from downstairs

Yup, 100% leaving the younger Huntsmen locked in the room right now for some peace and quiet.  They both have keys and know their way around the ship at this point.  Plus this sponson is one door away from our room.  So, all my "I'm not a bad parent" excuses lined up.  Time to sip some Joe.

The phone does come out though because while playing cards last night I did peruse iOverlander and I did find some port entry procedures listed.  Now that we have a moment of quiet, I pull those back up so Mrs. Huntswoman can review.  The one thing that jumped out to us was that we might need a "certificate of departure" from the boat before leaving.  We took screenshots of everything and decided that searching for that doc would be a good leg stretcher for the fam and off we go.

(plus this distracts us from thinking that with food and drinks yesterday, we've easily spent 100-euro on this darn boat and still don't feel like we got enough to eat)

Back downstairs there are only croissants available for breakfast.  We get one each for the boys, and then lean on our snack bag for our breakfasts (we have a HUGE container of student mix and some musli bars).

We do check on the departure certificates at the help desk and are told we don't need them.  After that there's nothing really to do but to kill time.  For that we're basically stuck with whatever games we have downloaded to our phones (minecraft and chess), looking at our travel binder, aaaaaand that's about it.  I think I mentioned that our solar charger didn't work, but it was educational (as we learned the power bank wont charge and discharge at the same time).  The whole time it was up it only brought the eldest Huntsman's phone from 19% to 62% (In testing back home it could charge a phone in 2 hours, even though you're not really supposed to do that.  Instructions say:  Charge a power bank and THEN charge your phone.  But we hadn't read those yet at that time). 

We also see an island that looks like a turtle:

The sighting of which has us run to the rails and exclaim "Oh wise and ancient turtle of the sea.  Eons ago you helped our ancestors...."

Unfortunately our performance check didn't roll high enough for the turtle island to answer our calls...

On the flightdeck of a carrier we used to get winds like this and it was a lot of fun.  You'd find someone who was REALLY leaning back into it and walk behind them when they weren't paying attention.  This would disrupt the air JUST ENOUGH to make them take a step back to regain their balance.  It was a bit of a shock for them and funny to watch.

With winds like this now, I show the kids the trick and they love it

THE LIBYANS!!!

At some point during the day three kids happen to be kickin it on the same deck as us.  One says (without accent) "I think it's raining".  To which I say "it sure is!" and everyone is shocked.  This will be as far as it goes for a while but the rest of the Huntsman weren't present for the exchange.  When they return I inform them that there are english speakers and the youngest starts a game of tag.

I do ask how they speak English so well,  and am informed that they live in Canada.  I ask why they're headed to Tunisia and they tell us that they're actually headed home to Libya.  The youngest was JUST asking me to teach him Arabic (I only know like 5 words...) so I ask the child if he speaks Arabic as well.  "Of course! I'm Libyan!"

And that just had me tickled pink.  This new kiddo isn't interested in teaching, but they are interested in playing so that's what they do.  For hours and hours and hours.

The parents come up on deck at one point, but we don't initiate conversation and neither do they (The mom is wearing a hijab, the dad shorts sleeves and jeans.  I do kind of look for an opening to say something to the dad but nothing really presents itself).  The kids play, the announcement comes that it's time to check out of the cabins, and we go our separate ways.

Mrs. Hungary will later report that the mom thanked her as we were parting ways.

and this is what I love: 

Mr. Graber in 7th grade Geography told me that the Libyans were scary, so "scary" to me they remained.

The Toyota Wars told me that we helped the opposition to Libya and destroyed 1/10th of their army, so they must not like us.

Their portrayal in Back to the Future certainly didn't help...

But somewhere down the line someone is going to say something similar to the younger Huntsman and they wont have it as easy. The younger Huntsmen met a Libyan once and they weren't scary at all (and we got along just fine).

So solid land was originally spotted around 12:00.  By 1300 we had land on three sides of the boat, but it's "now" now and we're in the cabin now starting to get things packed up.  Once done we're just kind of standing in the cramped quarters not really wanting to haul all our stuff with us around the boat.  A man comes by and bangs once on the door.  He says something in languages we don't understand so we take that to be our eviction notice.  We open the door and see other people doing the same.

Time to muster on the 5th deck.

The door to the vehicles is locked but we're all gathered near the help desk and duty free shop (closed now, but we do notice a sign that lists three or four liquors and we make a decision to hit this up on the way home).

it felt like we were in this spot for HOURS....  it was awful.  The hallway leading to the locked door to the vehicles is PACKED and more people seem intent on packing in there.  We question several times whether the line is moving or if more people are just packing in and it's always the latter...

by 1445 (which is actually 1345 local) the door finally opens and we're allowed access to the truck.

As you can see, the lady in front of me has access to her vehicle as well and opted to plomp all her belongings on the hood of mine.  We all stare in bewildered amazement at the complete lack of respect (which she notices and gives that "a-hut.  oopsie" facial expression and shrug before removing her crap).

It's hot.  and I am not looking forward to the bumper car event that will be departing this ship....  To distract myself, I jump out and head to the wall to snap a few photos.

I do need to message our hotel that we've arrived but there's no service yet.  This has the effect of reminding us that we're going to need sim cards so Mrs. Huntswoman removes a safety pin from our first-aid kit just in case.

and eventually the game of bumper cars starts.  A fiat Panda makes a 20-point Austin Powers style turn and hits the ramp first.  The driving only gets worse from there...

Yes. Yes, this is a fertile land, and we will thrive. We will rule over all this land, and we will call it... "Tunisia."

Customs goes as follows:

1) "Blue Fische".  Basically a card with your info as well as your vehicle info on it.  Name, address, lic plate number, etc.  All pretty easy.  You can get one from the office (like I didn't) across the way, or from one of the many plain clothed people walking around trying to help.

2) Vehicle inspection.  Everyone out of the vehicle for this one.  Pretty typical stuff.  You're probably wondering about alcohol.  It's legal here.  Inspection guy stamps without asking us to remove too much of anything.  Mrs. Huntswoman uses this opportunity to try to use the ATM (off to the right).

3) Shed at the head of the line for a stamp then another shed off to the right. 

The whole process takes about 45 minutes and the plain clothes guy who pointed me in the correct direction for all the portions of this process is given 5-euro for his help (he's happy).  Mrs. Huntswoman and the Huntslings took care of the truck while I did the stamps and the teamwork definitely made things easier.

We are officially in Tunisia!

The first things the Huntslings notice is "the roads are nicer than Hungary's!"  I'm waiting to give my decision on that one.

The first thing I notice is that the driving isn't as bad as I was expecting.  It's definitely "local" to some degree, but it's actually pretty tame.  Tamer than Morocco was when I first got there...

This is where our GPS took us when we entered our Hotel's address in.  It was listed as "Apartment De Ville" on booking.com but this doesn't seem right.  I send an SMS to the number I have and from across the street I see a well dressed man headed our way.

I should mention that I chose this place because it was the absolute CLOSEST thing to the ferry and because it was just about the only option that would sleep 4 people.

Anyhoo, this IS the place and the inside is actually pretty darn nice:

Of course, this is Africa so everything is smoked in but that's not the end of the world.  What's important is that it's hot and we have AC (ooh!  The Eagle 5 sticker I ordered online is starting to smear where my arm sweat was during the customs/disembarking process).  The place is 2-bedroom with a full living room, full bath, and full kitchen.

We also bring all our belongings (aside from the farm jack) up to our room.  Parking is street-side and I'm still worried about theft.  We keep one Huntskid on the street to guard truck, one Huntskid in the apartment to open the door, and the two adults ferry in-between.

Here's our view from the balcony

We also can't help but notice that this apartment has everything we need to complete our bingo cards

But we don't check anything off.  That'd be cheating.

Once settled we each grab a frozen water out of the fridge and head to the street.  Since we're connected to wifi we can get directions to a Careforre nearby to get groceries.  We're hoping to snag a sim card and some dinner along the way.

The Careforre was easy enough, and we got what we needed.  No beer though.  The "Orange" sim card shop was enroute so we snagged a sim each there too.  Mrs. Huntswoman was doing that and it was taking a bit of time so I ran our groceries back to the room to make efficient use of the time.  We get two gigs each, and even though we kept offering it to the eldest, he claimed he didn't need a sim so we figured we'd let it be a learning experience.

Sims in, I type "beer" into google maps.  It turns out the place to buy such things is a street-front doorway with a counter.  There's a line and things move fast.  The guy paying is getting his beer while the guy behind places the next order.  I watch and decide to just hold up 5 fingers and say "beer".

It works, I pay, and the counterperson laughs at my effort.

These beers though are TINY!  They're like 250ml (8.5oz) and I'm going to guess that I could finish all 5 in one gulp (I'm not far off). 

Dinner is more difficult.  There are lots of restaurants open but Mrs. Huntswoman does not want any sort of pizza or other street food.  Problem is none of the sit-down joints have any vegetarian offerings and we're walking from place to place in the heat.  And did I mention she gets scary when she's hungry?

yeah.

Eventually the stress gets to be enough that we sit at a street food joint and order what we swore we wouldn't.

The pizza is as bad as it looks.  We ordered a "Maxi" sized margherita pizza and a "mini" sized tex, but neither is big enough.  I did duck across the street while we waited to grab a shwarma sandwich just in case this happens (I may have done this before) but it's no better and the kids wont eat it.  In the end none of the food came out as described/expected, no one got enough to eat, and we're all tired of dodgin' traffic.

If I had anything positive to say it's that the people on the street (although they walk much like they drive) are VERY friendly.  More than one person heard us speaking English when looking for a restaurant and legit offered to help.  Like "oh yeah, I'll show you" and then they go out of their way before saying "if that one doesn't work I think there's one more over...." type thing.  It catches us off guard.

Anyhoo, back to traffic dodging and then the hotel for the night.  Along the way we stop at an ATM and pull out 600TND (about $200) to have on hand.

Back in the room the youngest finds futbol on tv, I decide to disable the truck by removing the leads from the ignition coil ballast, the toilet gets clogged with TP and we have to get creative with the toilet brush, and then the adults sit back and sip gin and tonics until "lights out".

Good times.

The joys of native street food options, it was always hit or miss depending on where we anchored.  I will say we knew nothing about Turkey (1989 pre internet) & expected the worst, which we were happily incorrect.

Tunis, where EVERYTHING comes covered in canned tuna fish.

JFW75 said:

Tunis, where EVERYTHING comes covered in canned tuna fish.

Oh man, luckily I tried my first tuna pizza about a decade and a half ago and didn't mind it (and even dabble from time to time), but I promise that nothing that was listed as ingredients on the menu actually appeared on our pizzas.  Plus some things (like olives) were added without our knowledge...

Jerry said:

The joys of native street food options, it was always hit or miss depending on where we anchored.  I will say we knew nothing about Turkey (1989 pre internet) & expected the worst, which we were happily incorrect.

Oh man, I miss those days.  Even post internet things were still a shock (since we didn't all have devices that were connected).  I remember landing in Singapore in 2002 and was so disappointed when I ran to the first payphone I saw on the street and got arabic numerals...  I really thought there would be a different numbering system on them and I wanted a photo!

I will say though that the fact that we couldn't find pizza in Italy and then could find nothing BUT pizza in Tunis was not lost on us

There we were.  Finally breaking out the camp gear.... in our hotel.

So I wake up at 4am and I should have mentioned that we forgot to pack a wall charger for the phones.  We discussed buying one from the sim card shop yesterday but thought "nah.  that would make entirely too much sense!" and figured we'd be camping etc too much to really use one.  So right now I've got the kids phone plugged into the power bank and it's at 44%.  My phone is at 22% and this is a bit of a headache since these are our GPS and cameras...

Sarah wakes up at 4:45 and lets me know that an accident on the street in the middle of the night woke her up. She checked on the truck and it was ok (first thing I did when I woke up was check on the truck to see if it was still there.  it was).

We didn't see a means to make morning coffee in the room so we break out our camp gear and cook some up on the stove.  I heard once that the marketing line for the drip coffee maker was "coffee boiled is coffee spoiled" but nothing takes me back in time the way camp cooked coffee does.  In an instant I'm back in the mountains, camping with my parents.  Their percolator on the fire.

We're also using Sarah's water filter bottle to filter our drinks.

Mine is the "Water 2 Go" bottle and I do like it.  I've really put it through its paces when it comes to water filtration and I've never got so much as an upset stomach.  The problem is it's a "pull through" filter (so your sucking power is what gets the water through).

Mrs. Huntswomans there is a bottle she picked up at a backpackers shop here in Europe and if I'm honest I think I like it a bit better.  It's a 2-piece unit with an outer sleeve.  The inner sleeve is where the filter is.  So you fill the outer shell and then push the inner part onto it and that pushes the water through the filrer and into the reservoir inside.  This means she can then pop the cap and pour the water out (say... into a coffee pot, for instance).  While she hasn't dipped it in the same dirty water I have, I bet it's filtration power is on par with mine.  The only problem is, it does drip a bit from between the two sleeves.

Anyhoo, that's how we're getting water for our coffee these days:

We're also taking a probiotic on her doc's recommendation.  I strongly attribute this to the amount of pooping that's going to be happening, and may not think it's entirely necessary, but I'm also not the type to ask a doctor their opinion and then completely ignore it either.

Since the kids are out, we're taking this opportunity to review the map.  We get a chuckle when we find that the Star Wars sites are actually published on the darn thing