Kerkouane And A Preserved Phoenician Town

Today the tour seemed to ramp up with a longer day. We departed at 8am for the Cape Bon area which is the garden Peninsula south of the city of Tunis. It is between seasons here so the area was very dry looking. There were miles of olive trees but no evidence of the garden vegetables except the fields had evidence of having been farmed recently. Before getting to our final destination we stopped to photograph a 2500 year old olive tree. It is the second oldest tree in Europe.

We reached our destination after 2.5 hours on the bus which was the Phoenician town ruins. The site was inhabited in the centuries BC and was destroyed around 320 BC but rebuilt. The Romans destroyed it around 220 BC and it was never rebuilt after that. The centuries buried the site which was right on the Mediterranean as you might expect. It was never reestablished. The result that the grounds were not contaminated by other civilizations building on topic. The site probably held up to 2000 people. Only a small portion is exposed. The area showed signs of an advanced culture revealing luxurious houses with mosaic floors. Many artifacts were displayed in the museum. The overall impression was a well preserved well reconstructed site. The foundations were clearly shown. There was evidence of the houses having a second story.

A short bus ride took us to our lunch shop, a fish restaurant in a small fishing village. The main course was a whole fish served after the fish soup. The soup was good (some opted for a salad). The main plate had the fish looking at me! Some opted for chicken. I gutted and removed the spine. It had a very mild and pleasant tasting. Other than the bones, it was good and an interesting experience. As we headed home we stopped at a place where there were thousands of flamingos. The bus ride home involved a stop at a pottery shop. We came to expect this type of stop on ship tours but not on this one. Again a Tunisian tour company has arranged the tour for SD Tours. Tomorrow will be a very long day – the bus leaves at 6:30 for our next destination. We head south to the Sahara desert and a full schedule until after sunset.