Tunisia is a country of contrasts
It was dank and damp outside, it was a nasty Ukrainian February. It was dark outside the window for a long time, the TV was buzzing about nothing, and bright and warm on this dull evening was only the multi-colored and lively eye of the laptop, perched, like me, on my favorite corner sofa, drowned in the semi-darkness of the apartment.
I wanted a holiday, I felt uncomfortable in my soul . . and suddenly . . everything is suddenly in my internet . . - a colorful window with an invitation to visit all countries of the world with a simple name. Since this all started. Why don't I go to Africa when - now, no - in the summer, no - not now and not in the summer - in May, everything is decided!
May the travel agencies forgive me, but I will tell the world how you can relax with a feeling of deep satisfaction, as they used to say in the old stagnant times, risking absolutely nothing, but relying only on yourself, which saves not only nerves, but also money.
So, Tunisia! Why? I don't know if I wanted to! I wanted a lot more on this chilly evening, but dear reader will probably understand all my desires if he reads this opus to the end.
Not far from the capital of Tunisia, there is a small fairy-tale town - La Marsa, in my opinion, time stopped there a very long time ago, and therefore the locals calmly sit in coastal coffee shops and, maintaining their dignity, leisurely (if time stands still) discuss their life, happy and measured as unshakable as the sunrise.
This is the north of Tunisia, the flourishing edge of the country, 40 percent covered by the sands of the Sahara.
In the distance there are well-known resorts, but here it is calm and not crowded, here hotels - clubs lurk among the greenery of the shores and the white snow of the sand of endless beaches.
It was here that the quiet hotel-club "Dar... " lurked, where I decided to go from dusty Dnepropetrovsk.
The computer painted my dreams in all the colors of the rainbow, but I was looking for prose - and found - a vacation for two with full board, booze and everything, everything, everything will cost me a ridiculous 61 US dollars a day. I did not believe it - $ 30 per person per day !!! ! In Yalta with that kind of money you can only go to the station...
Trembling like an aspen leaf, I entered the cherished numbers of my plastic card into the friendly blinking windows, and a minute later I received confirmation by e-mail that 18 days (and not 8.9 or 12 - as convenient for a travel agent) in May, for $ 1.200, my wife and I will spend everything ready on the shores of the Mediterranean, under palm trees, in a hotel built in the form of an Andalusian-style bungalow complex! Fiction!
I prudently printed out the confirmation, which included the reservation number, and hid it in my daddy, which I was going to take with me. The first step to Africa has been taken! It turned out that at least every hour I can check the availability of my order on the network, the commission in case of my cancellation of the trip is a ridiculous $ 11 for the entire period of the reservation, moreover, at my request, I received confirmation from the hotel that they were looking forward to me .
Well, you have to go! Charter, as well as domestic airlines, fell out of the list of possible options by themselves. Between Austria and Turkey (there were no other companies flying in this direction in the Dnieper), serious passions flared up for their passenger. Turkish Airlines won!
Right before leaving, for some reason I climbed to see my order and the hotel, and what do you think I saw there....do not be nervous…. room rates increased 4-10 times depending on the period. First tip - plan your vacation in January, and book a hotel in February, then even in July you will be splashing in the sea 5 times cheaper than the tourists around you.
Turkish Airlines loves its passengers! A short flight to Istanbul was accompanied by a very rich lunch, a large number of drinks of different strengths and a sincere attitude. I had an Istanbul-Tunis plane tomorrow at 10 am, and therefore the airline brought us to a 4-star hotel in the Old City, a stone's throw from the Sultanahmet Mosque, where they arranged us in comfortable and richly decorated rooms, including even the Internet and other useful little things.
Breakfast before the trip at the hotel restaurant and transfer to the airport were also included in these pleasant signs of attention from caring Turks.
It was seven o'clock in the evening, we arranged for ourselves an amazing tour of old Istanbul, we drank this air of freedom and joy, looked with all our eyes from the bridge over the Golden Horn Bay at the boats and ships, teeming here like a fish in a city park, when guests throw into the water bread. Then we ate fragrant lavash in a Turkish cafe, where everyone understands Russian, we were treated with such sincere hospitality that it began to seem that kind uncle Osman would never have forgiven us if we had not arrived that evening. Of course, he took our 30 lira for dinner, but it was even inconvenient for us, because we paid only for lunch, and what will you pay for the joy in your eyes, friendliness and expectation of a new meeting. East!
To be honest, the transfer to the airport scared us a little - if the suitcases hadn’t stayed overnight at the airport and we didn’t have boarding passes, we would have been late for sure - but everything went well and after 3 hours our Boeing 737-800 softly plopped down on the concrete lawn in front of the airport Carthage in Tunisia.
The voucher had its magic effect on the Tunisian border guards, in a couple of minutes we were stamped with Arabic script in the passport and the return ticket of the immigration card, filled out on the plane, and that's it - hello Africa!
I tried to poke my head in the window of the Tunisian customs service - there was simply no one there, and in broken English, to the officer who approached me, I explained that I was taking $ 2.000 in cash, a laptop and a video camera, to which I heard on the same broken line - welcome to Tunisia! Hooray!
Near the currency exchange point - where for $ 600 I received 690 dinars, we were picked up by a broken taxi driver and for 25 dinars (later we found out that it costs 15), we were delivered with a breeze to the doorstep of the Dar Navar hotel.
What can I say - we are stunned and crushed, as the notorious Koroviev squealed at Satan's ball.
Our best friend met us at the reception, another friend dragged our luggage into the room while we filled out the cards, our third unknown friend brought us cool orange juice so that tension and fear of the unknown would be smoothed out of our tense faces.
An Andalusian-style room with fresh roses on the bed, a good-natured black "mother Cholly" as a maid, a huge 50x25 pool where you can take TRP standards, three restaurants, 2 cafes, round-the-clock food and a libation still cannot be erased from my hardened soul . And the animators, these real residents of our blue and white village on the Mediterranean coast, who were also just waiting for when these 2 Russian-speaking tourists finally appear to chat with them, play, sing and dance together until you drop.
By our arrival, three Russian-speaking people had formed at the hotel - me, my wife and the animator Soso, who once studied in Moscow. Tip two - if you want to relax completely - relax where no one except you speaks Russian, and do not be afraid - and you will be understood, and you will understand everything. Even if you don’t speak like an ordinary Arab in 4 languages, then the language of the drawing and the calculator will solve your problems. With us, everything was much more fun - by the end of the holiday at the hotel there was no animator left (there are twenty of them there), who would not ask me in Russian how I was doing during the day or shout “Ukraine, good afternoon! ” It was very funny!
At four in the morning we went for a walk around the country. Ahead of us was the Sahara and the unknown. A full bus of Frenchmen, ten Germans and two Russian-speaking Ukrainians made up our friendly crew, which the guide gathered in two hotels on our coast. The guide spoke very enthusiastically, in three languages, in English - for us, and in the end - something, like the heroes of J. Verne, we understood.
For $150 we drove all over the country. We wandered around the gladiatorial arena in the huge colosseum in the city of El Jem. We milled millet in a two-stone mill in a Berber dwelling carved right into the rock, we traveled around the Sahara on camels and jeeps, and on foot we reached waterfalls and lakes, in the heart of the Sahara. The dawn at the bottom of the dried-up salt lake was indescribable, the mosques and carpets of Kairouan were blinding, the guide with a pack of water for exhausted tourists touched, and a huge metal fly in the form of an architect's fun made you believe in the tales of the East.
Two days after the Sahara, we came to our senses, feeling sincere gratitude to the travel agency that took us around Tunisia - we were fed like small children 3 times a day (only water was for separate money) in luxury hotels, we were taken on donkeys, horses, camels, we were not rushed, and we were loved. In the Sahara, we stayed at the Tuareg Hotel with a huge pool in which we sat like hippos, sticking up only our ears.
And even during the return trip, in order not to torment us completely, the company at the fork in front of the capital of Tunisia transferred us from the general bus to a separate minibus so that we would not participate in the delivery of the rest of the tourists, but would go straight to dinner !! ! Our admiration knew no bounds!
After recuperating, in the evenings we took daily walks from the hotel to the nearby lake, where flamingos live, sometimes replacing them with trips to nearby Sid bou Said. Steep white and blue streets touched and calmed, we settled down in Tunisia, we began to like this amazing country.
What a pity that 18 days flew by so quickly. Tip three - you need to go on vacation for 24 days.
A month has passed. . . my wife is still in shock, she can not accept....she wants to go to Africa again…. Well, what can be..... yes, I don’t mind... .
