Port El Kantaoui to go

I am back from my holiday in Tunisia and have finished writing my report. I enjoyed reading what other people have put onto the internet so here is my contribution...

My wife and I paid £568 each to First Choice for a 14 night All Inclusive holiday at the Abou Sofiane hotel in Port El Kantaoui, Tunisia . We paid a little bit extra to have premium seats with extra legroom on the flight which also gave us an extra 10 kg of luggage allowance each plus a free drink and ear phones on the plane. We flew out from Bristol Airport at 07.00 on Sunday 15th May 2005 after parking our car at the airport for £49, having booked in advance over the
internet.

The coach transfer from the airport to our hotel in Tunisia took around 50 minutes. You see the outsides of the other hotels that holiday makers are staying at. Your first impression is that the further north from the airport you travel, the better it looks. The buildings look more impressive and the whole environment more affluent. After driving through the busy city of Sousse you arrive at Port El Kantaoui when you start to get a good feeling about where you have come.

On arrival at the Abou Sofiane hotel you are asked to sit down in the lounge and fill in a registration form. No sooner are you putting pen to paper when a waiter appears and gives you a glass of the hotel Abou Sofiane cocktail to drink. You are given the key to your room and details of the facilites available by staff who all speak English as well as French, German and their native Arabic. This hotel has 370 rooms on 3 floors with 2 lifts for the lazy and obese. We made our way to our room on the 3rd floor, which had a balcony looking over the gardens below and had a tiled floor and plenty of storage space. Like most holiday hotels it had 2 twin beds which were comfortable and supportive that were pushed together and sheeted separately. It was then time to drop our suitcases and go straight to lunch.

The food at the hotel is glorious. The choice is amazing - and with all-inclusive you simply help
yourself to as much as you want from the self service buffet style Le Doyen restaurant. Foods were labeled in English, French and German. There was something for everyone. Tunisia has not got a frozen food supply chain like in the UK where our food travels in refridgerated lorries all around the country. This is not the pub food fayre in the UK that comes in microwaveable boxes or freezer to fryer food. This is fresh local produce that is cooked in the kitchen at the back of the restaurant. I did not hear of any upset stomachs while I was there. Food hygiene
appeared to be good and all the food counters were worked thoroughly. Nothing looked abandoned or dodgey. You sit wherever you like, first come first served. Non smoking on the left and smoking on the right. The smokers on the right did not bother the non smokers on the left or the food serving areas.

Breakfast is served from 06.30 to 10.30 and there are 4 fruit juices, 2 cheeses, salads, cereals, yogurt, fruits, hot food stuffs, bread, rolls, croissants and pancakes. For an omlette you put the ingredients on your plate and pass it to the chef on the hot plate who also does the fried eggs.

Lunch is served from 12.30 to 14.30 and there are 2 soups, meats, fish, vegetables, salads followed by 3 ice creams and various cakes and puddings. There are the usual soft drinks plus beer and wine to drink with your meal.

Dinner was served from 18.30 to 21.30 and was similar to lunch but the 2 soups were always different.

You are given two meal tickets to use in the a la carte restaurants. The Tunisian in the Abou Sofiane and the Italian in the Riviera hotel next door. Both restaurants have 2 sittings, 18.30 and 20.30

The Tunisian is nice with a guy in the corner playing a mandolin. You are shown to a table and chose from a menu. Your waiter brings you the food and drink. The food is similar to the self service restaurant but feels special and different because you are being waitered upon.

The Italian is nice, bright and airy giving a nice change to the serve yourself restaurant being served at a table.

Both restaurants reinforce the beauty of having all-inclusive rather than having to battle daily with menus in restaurants gambling on what you will get for your money.

The main bar in the reception area was called La Source and was open from 10.00 to 23.59 serving soft and alcoholic drinks. They have a range of coctails to choose from and use locally produced spirits. The red wine is very drinkable and the native Tunisian spirit called boukha, which is distilled from figs, is a refreshing change to familar spirits. There is only one beer brewed in Tunisia and it is called Celtia. It is brewed in the capital Tunis and is 4.5% ABV. It is
drinkable and a typical continental syle lager but if it was available in UK supermarkets you would not go out of your way to buy it. It is served in heavy 300ml glasses. Some holiday makers thought the beer was weak or watered down - I did not think it was either but that drinkers psychologically thought they were drinking pints - 568ml, rather than the actual 300ml which is a little over a half pint. If you are drinking halves then it will take twice as many
glasses to get drunk.

There is also a beach bar called the coco-loco which is open for the same times as the pool bar and offers exactly the same - with the exception of no alcoholic spirits, only beer.

The service in all the bars is prompt, efficent, friendly and polite. All the staff switch seamlessly
from speaking English to French and German. All the staff wear a uniform with a photo ID name badge. There is a big range of uniforms for different job grades with the managers wearing grey suits. Staff discipline is strict, you will hear managers barking at their staff - you will wonder why they are making a fuss but standards are high and managers ensure there is not a slippage of quality. Every Monday at 14.15 around the pool is the managers cocktail party. All the managers are there, they each are introduced over the PA and then have to serve cocktails and food off a tray by walking around the pool to all the sunbathers. They are reduced to humble waiters before finally having to line up like school children to do the hotel dance to the pee pee song with the Animation team. Can you imagine this at your workplace back in the UK?

The swimming pool goes from 0.48m to 1.74m deep and at a guess appears to be about 25m long and 12m wide.

There are some lovely gardens within the hotel which are home to a lot of cats who are fed and looked after by the hotel. This feline presence gives the hotel a nice homely feel.

There is a range of facilities at the hotel for the guests to use including an indoor pool, gym, sauna, mini golf, volley ball, archery, tennis, a games room with arcade machines and a hairdresser.

The cashier is open from 09.00 to 12.59 and 17.00 to 20.59 and he will exchange your money into Tunisian Dinars. The government sets the exchange rate on a daily basis and it is the same rate wherever you go in the whole country, so there is no point in going anywhere else. We had an exchange rate of 2.306TD to the pound. The only place that you can change your Tunisian Dinars back into Sterling is at the airport. Try not to change any more currency than you need
because the airport exchange desk will charge you 30% commission and Tunisia is a closed economy, you cannot take any Dinars out of the country as it will be confiscated at Passport Control. The hotel cashier can also give you use to a safety deposit box in your room, which cost us 35TD plus a 20TD refundable deposit. You can also have the use of hotel beach towels rather than use your own by buying a card for 5TD for the whole of your stay.


There are also 3 little shops within the hotel to keep the women happy.

The Animation team is responsible for all the entertainment and organised activities. The
entertainment is just OK - these guys try hard and are at it all day, saying everything in 3 languages. There are a number of different set dances that they like the holidaymakers to adopt and the style is very happy clappy. They play lots of silly games around the pool and every night at 21.30 they put on a show in the aircraft hanger. The night show is for 2 hotels, the Abou Sofiane and it's sister hotel next door, the Riviera. You sit on platic garden chairs and before the entertainment starts it has the atmosphere of a car auction. You get your drinks in plastic glasses from the Riviera pool bar. The music starts and it is lots of mime and dance. The Animation team are all good dancers and take on many identities and costumes. There is a lot of humour, mostly expressed through mime due to the 3 languages constraint. The entertainment will amuse you, it is not brilliant and most people take the view that they will wander in if they are not engrossed gossiping in the main bar. It stimulates discussion later amongst the guests in the bar. Do not bother going out of the hotel at night looking for entertainment as almost all the
entertainment is within the hotels.

The hotel is clean and appears to be in good structural and decorative order. Walking around the hotel grounds you notice a lot of security guards patrolling around and you are sure that only the hotel guests are inside the hotel complex. This adds to the feeling of comfort, relaxation and security in a foreign land that is much appreciated by female guests.

Outside of the hotel there were taxis. yellow in colour and cheap, the Marina in Port El Kantaoui for 3TD and Sousse for 6TD. There is a tourist noddy train that runs from the hotels into Port El Kantaoui and onto Sousse that is a novelty. The service buses used by the local people are in fact articulated bendi-buses but as with the louages - community taxis, like 8 seater MPV's operating on fixed routes - the destinations are only displayed in Arabic script, not French. This is odd, as all other signs, road or business are in Arabic script and French. The centre of Port El Kantaoui is just a 20 minute walk from the hotel whether you walk along the beach or along the
road. If you walk along the road then the Marina is hidden through an arch, you would not know that the sea and the Marina are beyond the arch, which is confusing to newcomers including me!

The resort of Port El Kantaoui is civilised, clean and purpose built in 1979 - no local people live here. It has a French style to it, which is not that surprising as Tunisia was a French colony until independance in 1956. This is not Costa Del Blackpool or a typical European town, there are no global chains - you feel as though you have gone away. It is not Ibiza either, there are some cafes and restaurants but no nightclubs or amusement arcades. All the buildings look impressive and are low rise - this is not Birmingham by the Sea. Around the fountains the traders give a
little bit of hassle by encouraging you to come into their shop by offering best price, Asda price, cheap as chips etc. They are into the Arabic culture of haggling on price and can appear pushy. Inside the Marina it is different, more relaxed with fixed price shops where you can browse with ease.

The beach on the right of the hotel runs all the way to the marina. You will see traders walking along the shoreline offering goods for sale. If you are sat on a the beach they will not bother you, they will turn your way and simply smile. If you actually want to look at what they have, you must walk over to the shoreline to meet them. It is good that you are not hassled like a lot of tourists are in many other countries. The beach on the left of the hotel runs forever, with the hotels along the shoreline finishing and the beach being almost deserted on the day I walked in that direction. After about an hour I stopped and sat on the sand, admiring the beach and looked out to sea. I then walked past some houses onto the main road of the village which is called Chott Meriem . It is very different to the tourist resort of Port El Kantaoui and looks like a typical Arab village with all it's local life. You now feel that you have walked into normal Tunisia and it was only when I got home that I found out on the internet that in October 2004 a boat of 75 illegal migrants - 70 Moroccans and five Tunisians - broke into pieces off the town of Chott Meriem. There were at least 28 confirmed dead in this tragedy. I walked back towards my hotel along the main single carriageway road, past some small shops used by local people and from the end of the village it was just farmland. Then the road opens out into a dual carriageway and the dust stops. It is like walking into another world as this is the start of the resort of Port El Kantaoui with it's many hotels.

One day I went on a two hour quad bike ride on a Yamaha 125cc Grizzly . There are plenty of outfits offering quad bikes on the main road turning right outside the hotel. This was the first one we came to but I think they all charge about the same. This cost me 30TD and I went with a friend I made at our hotel. A leader led us over scrubland and into the countryside far away
from the resort. This is basic farming land with the odd house here and there. It does look a bit bleak and barren but the feeling is great to be out in the sticks. These quad bikes are easy to use, are remarkable tools and a joy to ride. We paused for a brief break at a cafe that was little more than a tent and a beer crate! What a lovely contrast, riding around in the dirt, not knowing where you are, no roads, no signs, just follow the leader. It was a buzz and one I would like to do again.

On our second day at 11.30 Anthony Hill, our First Choice rep, gave us a welcome meeting. This was simply not just a chance for him to pitch the excursions to us but was an excellent presentation all about Tunisia, our hotel and the local resorts. You could tell that Anthony really liked living and working in Tunisia and that it is now his home. He told us pretty much all anyone would really want to know and none of his talk was boring.

The government has tight control on tourism and every day life. The excursion prices are set by the government so there is no point in shopping around for a better offer. Before we left home we found out that Tunisa local time was the same as British Summer Time but on arrival at Monastir Airport we found that the clocks were one hour ahead of BST. Anthony explained that this had been done at short notice by President Ben Ali, he had done it before and then changed his mind three days later, maybe he was bored and fancied a change.

The excursions available were - you can only pay in Tunisian Dinars...

2 Day Desert Safari 155TD
3 Day Desert Safari 220TD
Tunis, Carthage & Sidi Bou Said 60TD
Dougga 60TD
Kiarouan, El Jem & Mahdia 50TD
Nabeul Market 24TD
Boat Cruise 32TD
Catamaran 27TD
Bedouin Feast 37TD
Ostriches & Friguia Zoo 38TD
El Jem (half day) 34TD
Pirates and Gladiators 53TD
Welcome tour of local resorts 19TD
Camel Caravan 27TD
Hammamet 27TD
Cabaret Night 30TD

We decided to go on the Kairouan, El Jem and Mahdia trip for 50TD each. We were picked up at 07.35 by an English speaking guide on an air conditioned coach. We picked up some other tourists at hotels in Sousse and Monastir getting the same impression as when we arrived that the better hotels were the ones further away from the airport.

I noticed a lot of posters of President Ben Ali everywhere. Advertising hoardings with the President waving and smiling at you wherever you go. President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali won re-election for a fourth five-year term on October 24 by 94.5 percent of the vote. Imagine posters of President Tony Blair smiling at you in the UK, not just at election time but all the time.

I was also surprised at the number of Police check points on the roads stopping drivers at random. Human rights defenders, like dissidents generally, are subject to heavy police surveillance, sporadic travel bans, dismissals from work, interruptions in phone service, and police harassment of spouses and family members. Tunisia’s press remains largely controlled by
the authorities. None of the print and broadcast media offer critical coverage of government policies, apart from a few low-circulation independent magazines that face occasional confiscation of their issues or problems at the printers. The government’s rhetoric promotes electronic communication as a vehicle of modernization, yet it blocks certain political or human rights websites. Human rights in Tunisia are limited and are quite a shock to what we enjoy in the UK. We do have an open society in the UK but we can wonder if our much trumpeted democracy is only a fragile veneer. We have just the one vote every four or five years to elect representatives whilst the real power is held by a small number of businessmen who employ the population and pay the wages. Yes, we have a free press and internet access but look at the
influence that the big boys hold. Tunisians cannot criticize their very powerful government for fear of harrassment but what can the average man in the street back home in the UK actually achieve?

Our first stop at Kairouan was at the Aghlabite water tanks. The 9th century was the golden age of Kairouan. In 800, Ibrahim bin Aghlab, an Arab from Algeria, seized the city and thereby half of North Africa. The Aghlabite dynasty constructed an extensive irrigation system that brought water from the mountains to encircle the city in a green belt of parks and gardens. Aghlabite princes built the Great Mosque in its present form and, along the coast, erected and endowed the ribats —fortresses that were also a kind of monastery and were garrisoned by men as dedicated to prayer as to battle. These water tanks are no longer used for domestic water but as a tourist attraction and by some locals for swimming as the nearest beach is a long, long way, away.

Our second stop at Kairouan was a walk into the Great Mosque where our guide explained it's long history and use. Kairouan is the 4th holiest city of Islam (after Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem). Our guide assured us that for Muslims 7 visits to the Great Mosque in Kairouan is equal in Islam to 1 visit to Mecca where every Muslim aims to make a pilgrimage to in their
lifetime. This becomes a much cheaper alternative for Muslims in North Africa. Legend tells of a warrior's horse that stumbled on a golden goblet buried in the sands. This goblet was recognized as one that had mysteriously disappeared from Mecca some years before. When the goblet was dug from the desert sand, a spring miraculously appeared and the waters of this spring were said to issue from the same source that supplies the sacred Zamzam well in Mecca. The power of these three miracles - the mysteriously lost and then found Meccan goblet, the miraculous gushing forth of the spring, and the source of that spring - exercised a magnetic effect upon the early North African Islamic people and thereby established the site of Kairouan as a pilgrimage destination for ages to come. The Great Mosque, also known as the Sidi Oqba mosque, had its
simple beginnings in 670 AD, during the time of Uqba ibn Nafi, the original founder of Kairouan. As the city expanded during the following three hundred years, the original mosque was torn down and rebuilt in 703, again in 774, and then significantly enlarged by rulers of the Aghlabid dynasty in 836 and 863. By the end of the 9th century the mosque had attained the size and proportions that it exhibits today, though numerous renovations and ornamentations were conducted during the 13th and 14th centuries by the Hafsid dynasty rulers and during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries (when the region was controlled by the Turks) by the Mouradite and Husseinite rulers.

Our fourth visit in Kairouan was into the Barbier Mausoleum, in which is the tomb of Abou Dhama, nicknamed Sidi Sahab - "Carrier of three hairs" of the prophets sublime beard. He was a contemporary companion of Mohammed. This tomb attracts a lot of visitors wishing to pray because of the religous significance.

Our fifth visit in Kairouan was to a restaurant as lunch was included in the price of this excursion. This restaurant was obviously contracted by the tour operators and we were not the only coach pulling up for lunch. The atmosphere was basic and workmanlike, like a transport cafe back in the Uk. A 3 course lunch was served, there was no choice but it was very eatable. Conversation with the other tourists at the tables was simply "What do you think this is we are
eating - do you know?". We later gathered from our guide that the meat was Turkey. You cannot complain and it simply added to the adventure of foreign travel - a culinary lucky dip.

That was it for Kairouan whose main industry is carpet manufacture and our coach then took us to El Jem.

Along the way our guide explained the way of life for the local people, their problems and why their homes appear half built. Money is tight so people buy a plot of land and then build as they can afford it, room by room. That is why you see flat roofs with steel poking upwards.

On arrival outside the Amphitheatre at El Jem you initially think so what? Is this just a boring old ruin? It does not look that impressive compared to the modern stadiums we have today. However, when you have walked all around from the coach park and gone inside through the gate you get a totally different impression . It seems at lot bigger inside than outside. It also appears to be a lot taller and then you can imagine how in the 3rd century AD it held 30,000 spectators. It is possibly the third or fourth biggest in the Empire after the Colosseum (or Coliseum) in Rome and that at Capua. Its 427m outside circumference is 100m shorter than the Colosseum. This is why it was chosen as the location for the film Gladiator. It is amazing how they built to this standard so long ago. You are free to roam about the whole site, climbing loads of stairs, playing hide and seek with your partner whilst enjoying the views from the tops over the flat terrain on all sides. You can see why this is an UNESCO World Heritage site.

We then travelled onto Mahdia which is one of the few towns on the central Tunisian coast that has managed to escape being turned into a tourist trap. It's a beautifully relaxed place, founded in 916 AD and set on a small peninsula some 200km (125mi) southeast of Tunis.

The town's main attraction is its old medina, already established by the time the famous historian Ibn Khaldoun visited in the 14th century and called Mahdia the jewel of the Barbary Coast.

Life is very different in this traditional seaside town. You get a slower pace of life with men sat in cafes gossiping over soft drinks. There are no signs of any nightlife like in binge-drinking Britain.

We did another coach trip for 24TD to Nabeul. This is on a Friday as this is Market Day. We picked up at some other hotels and then went to Hammamet where we stopped at a fixed price pottery shop for 20 minutes. This was good because you could see a guy making pottery, there was no pressure whatsoever to buy and you then had a guide price for pottery items at the market later. Our English speaking guide gave us a lovely commentary along the way before we parked up for 90 minutes in the coach park which is at the end of the long street where the market is held. It is a very busy market popular with locals and tourists. Most prices are negotiable, if something does not have a price attached then you will have to haggle, do not be hassled into paying too much as there will be busloads more tourists next Friday for the traders to latch onto. Some items and stalls are priced so you will be unable to haggle but their prices appear fair.

Obvious warnings are for pick pockets in such a busy and crowded area, we did not become a victim to this. My wife was walking in front and said that if I wanted to look at something to tap her on the shoulder. She was about half a coach length in front of me when she went into a stall and stopped. I caught her up and asked her what she wanted. She thought that I had put both my hands around her hips and guided her into this stall to look at something of interest to me. I
explained how far back I had been when she stopped and we were both at a loss to the mystery person who had guided her in. Was it someone who wanted to get passed and she was in their way? Was it the stall holder looking for a customer? Was it a chubby chaser gauging her size and weight?

After the market we went back to Hammamet and stayed by the medina for 60 minutes. This was ample time to buy a basic snack in a cafe at the side of the medina that overlooks the beach. Being used to All-Inclusive it is still a shock as to just how much you could spend on little snacks throughout the day. My impression of Hammamet from driving through on the coach and walking around the medina and it's beachfront was that it is an established busy resort. It is quite commercial and very well developed and was the first mass tourist resort in Tunisia. It looks down-market compared to Port El Kantaoui but does have history and local colour.