All right, what did we do today? I have no idea, but I am sure it was fantastic. How could it be anything else? Unless it was amazing or perhaps super fantastic. Time to scroll through my photos and refresh my memory. Please hold.

Ok, I’m back.  It was super fantastic! We took 4x4s again up into the Atlas Mountains. (Honestly, I think the bus could have made it through 98% of the roads, but variety is good. Also our bus has very dark tinted windows which are great for blocking the sun, but not so great for enjoying the view.)  Our goal was to see the mountain oasis. What is the plural of oasis? My phone doesn’t like anything I tried. Oasises, oasi? Actually, I don’t like any of those options either. I digress.

First stop: Chebika, a charming mountain village nestled in the lush green mountain oasis. Well, the village was charming until it was destroyed by floods in 1969. Now it is abandoned, but not like a Western Ghost Town. There are too many tourists and rock sellers for that. It is just unoccupied. We had an excellent and exquisite and exhilarating little hike through the rocky mountains to get a view of the palm trees and waterfall. Now, I am not going to mention how many times I fell behind the group because I was busy taking selfies and took the completely wrong (i,e. non-existent) path and then had to double back and ask the rock sellers how do I get over there. Nope, not going to mention that at all. What I will tell you is that I kept buying rocks, a geode, some fossils. I stuck with the under 5 Dinar rocks, but my suitcase is going to be heavy with rocks and ceramics. I don’t know why they have so many heavy souvenirs in this country!

I have no words to describe the feeling of walking through a mountain pass and seeing palm trees and waterfall (it left me speechless), so I guess I should move on. Move on to the popsicles! Do you know how refreshing a lemon popsicle is after a sweaty hike through the mountains? Very!

Still three days behind on writing this, so gotta move on.

Next stop is where I was supposed to be able to see Algeria 2km in the distance. Alas, once again, I was too busy taking selfies to listen to my guide, so I didn’t realize I missed Algeria until later. I don’t even know which direction it was! Oops.  What might you ask was I enthralled with taking pictures of? A canyon! Like a mini Tunisian Grand Canyon. And, you know what? Not a guard rail to be seen! One wrong step, and you’d be a goner. So not safe! I love it! Guard rails ruin pictures of nature. We were a bit rushed here, so I didn’t get as many photos as I would have liked, but they were quality photos nevertheless. There were some palm trees nearby, so this also qualifies as a mountain oasis.

The 3rd mountain oasis was a cute little waterfall inside a wider canyon, but this one we were able to go down some stairs and walk in the bottom of the canyon. There were giant sandbags in the stream so that we could cross it without getting wet. Do you know what the biggest miracle here was? I left without buying a single rock! Did you hear that noise? That was my suitcase breathing a sigh of relief. 

All too soon it was time to go back to town for lunch and a walk around town.  This town, Tozeur, is famous for its yellow bricks. There are only three families that still make them, and everyone who lives here is required to have at least 30% of the facade of their house as yellow brick. Personally, I hate the red bricks on the front of my house. I think I would like the bricks a lot more if they were yellow bricks from Tozeur instead, especially if they were sticking out in a fancy pattern like they do over here. They aren’t in a boring brick wall pattern. I don’t know if there are different sized bricks or if they just have a special way to make them stick out to make the wall 3D instead of just flat. Also, some are horizontal, and some are vertical. It’s quite pretty. I didn’t see any brick stores, so I don’t know what the going rate for a brick is around here. Can you imagine how heavy my suitcase would be if I brought home bricks along with all of my rocks?

That just about wraps up day 6 in Tunisia. Bye for now.

Love,

thetwinsontour

PS. It’s been a few days since we reminded you to like our pages on Facebook (thetwinsontour), Instagram (the_twins_on_tour), and TikTok (thetwinsontour). I forgot to post any videos there yet, but you should be prepared for when I do! If you liked it previously, you will have to like it again. They kick you off if you don’t open TikTok for over a year, so I just got my name back.