Tah tah, Tunisia

Mahdia, Tunisia
July, 2014

We spent a month in Monastir and now we have spent just over a week in Mahdia, which is 30nm south.  We have been tied up to a Libyan trawler in the fishing port.  There is no marina here and that suits us well.  It costs 10 dinars per day, which equals about 4 euros.  Everybody is very friendly especially our neighbors.  Captain Mohammed has showered us with gifts including sweet and savory snacks, a delicious Libyan watermelon, a couple of jerry cans of diesel, and a heavy duty tuna rig, with instructions, that is guaranteed to catch a fish on the way to Malta.  Our gifts in return have been a deck of playing cards with maple leaves on them, a Canadian flag, a jar of my hot sauce, and some of Maggie's baking.  The owner of the boat, also named Mohammed, assures us that we would have a delightful time in the event that we visited Libya.  We will consider doing just that next spring to get to Turkey.

Mahdia is a typical Tunisian coastal resort town, but in ancient times it played an important role as a fortified trading port beginning with the Phoenicians.  The town is situated on a peninsula which was then completely encircled by a wall that stood until the Spanish razed it in their campaign to oust the Arabs from Spain several hundred years ago.  The town is also well known for the weavers of silk and cotton cloth that toil for a pittance in small shops in the medina using methods that are as ancient as the town. We splurged on a few beautiful examples of their work.  The weavers' big payday comes when they are commissioned to make an outrageously elaborate bridal costume, which will cost upwards of three thousand euros and take a couple of months to make.  I am not sure what the average annual per capita income is in Tunisia, but I suspect it is below the cost of the bridal gown.  This I say because a young man working on a boat in Monastir told me he would like to find work in Europe because it was very expensive to get married in Tunisia.

It looks like our time here is coming to an end. The forecast for sailing to Malta looks good for a departure tomorrow. We might make a brief stop in Lampedusa on the way just to be able to swim while at anchor, something that we have both missed very much during our port days.  Tunisia has been a great destination and we look forward to returning next spring when we move eastward.

Branko