Cycling The Road Less Travelled

After returning back to Tozeur, we officially switched modes from “travelling in Tunisia” to “leaving Tunisia”. Getting ready to leave a country, any country, is never particularly fun but, for whatever reason, our exodus from Tunisia was particularly hellish. Here are just some of the highlights:

• One very uncomfortable, crowded, overnight train from Tozeur to Tunis which we partially spent trying to avoid an obnoxious, arrogant, “close talker”.
• A crooked baggage clerk who was clearly pocketing the exorbitant amount he was charging us for bringing the bikes on the train.
• Two days spent cooped up in a hotel room in Tunis, “projectile vomiting” into a garbage can.
• A 20 hour ferry ride from hell. Extremely rough seas resulting in even more profuse sweating and violent vomiting. Thinking the fresh air would do us some good, we grabbed all our things and went to sleep on the deck only to be woken up an hour later by hail…Yes, I said hail.
• Landing in Marseilles and having to wait a few hours for the downpour to subside before we could get on our bikes (confirming my suspicions that we really are gluttons for punishment) and cycling the last 30km to our intended destination, Aix en Provence.

We finally rolled in at around 5:00 pm, exhausted, still nauseous but glad the ordeal was finally over. We quickly found a hotel room, had a great shower (second only to the shower in the Ethiopian brothel) and spent the rest of the evening on a “pain au chocolat high”, frolicking giddily through the streets of beautiful Aix and peering through the window of every pastry shop we found. Sniff, Vive La France! Vive La France!!!