Isle of Djerba/Jerba, Tunisia

We flew on Tunis Air (a one hour flight) to Djerba, a flat Mediterranean island off the southern coast of Tunisia. It is joined to the mainland by a 6 km causeway built on a Roman foundation. Djerba has more than 145,000 inhabitants (primarily of Berber origin).

The island is covered with palm trees and flowers – actually, it is a huge oasis with more than 1,000,000 date palms and 700,000 olives trees. Some of the olive trees are over 3,000 years old!

In Homer’s Odyssey, Djerba was the home of the “Lotus Eaters.” Ulysses almost lost his men when the beautiful maidens of the island fed them lotus flowers. I had never read the Odyssey but had heard of Djerba. The islanders like to claim that Ulysses was their first tourist.

Other than Ulysses, people usually go to Djerba for two main reasons:

- To relax at a beach resort, more than half a million tourists visit (mostly Europeans in the summer). With more than 300 days of sun and warm blue waters, why not; and

- To see the historic El Ghriba Synagogue, several kilometers southwest of Houmt Souk. The Synagogue dates back about 2000 years, making it the oldest synagogue in Africa. It purportedly was built by Jews who immigrated after the destruction of the first Temple in Jerusalem.

Houmt Souk is Djerba’s main town and is blindingly white centered around the Souk area, overflowing with handicrafts. Traditional clothing, many jewelers, leather goods, pottery and sponges. Everything shuts down in the middle of the day – too darn hot!

We stayed at Sofitel Palm Beach, a few miles out of town. There are hundreds of hotels in Djerba to choose from and each complex is surrounded by restaurants, small grocery stores and, of course, shops selling rugs. (I was most definitely finished with that.) The first day, we purchased bottled water from a shop and were carrying it into the Sofitel when the front desk stopped us and said, “you can’t buy your water outside of hotel”…have you ever heard such nonsense? (If their water prices wouldn’t have been outrageous, we wouldn’t have had to buy outside the hotel!) Lucky for them, they backed down or we were all set to pack and move. Some of the ridiculous incidents that create a little extra aggravation while traveling….

on the beach

You could take a taxi or bus into town or walk along the sea and that’s how we spent our last few days in Tunisia.

There are so many reasons why you should visiting Tunisia:

- It’s safe and easy to get to

- Tunisia is an extremely relaxed and tolerant state with very friendly people

- The food is good

- It is geared up for tourism but still feels “native”

And, most important…the phenomonal sites. View image ex-Marine and I have traveled through Greece, Italy and Turkey…walking and learning about many different ancient ruins…but Tunisia was incredible with all the diversity packed into one small country. Don’t let the fact that it’s between Algeria and Libya frighten you away…please see it for yourself…Tunisia is beyond spectacular….Thanks, Explore, for a wonderful experience!

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