When first arrived in Tunisia I asked my Tunisian friend about touristic places in Tunisia. Tabarka, a coastal town located in north-western Tunisia, about 170 km away from Tunis, came on top of the list of recommended places to go. While this is really depend on what you’re looking for, I found that Tabarka was a perfect place for someone who was looking for a laid back, relaxing environment. The trip from Tunis to Tabarka and back was also really worth it by itself.

So one day in last September, we – me and 3 friends from office, all foreigners and none of us spoke either French or Arabic – headed off to Tabarka on Saturday morning in a rental Ford Fiesta (rental cars in Tunisia has special number plate; while regular cars have black background, rental cars can be identified with light blue background. Somehow policemen, especially in rural area, put more attention to the rental cars and stopped us several times along the way. If you are driving a rental car in Tunisia, be sure to have rental contract and car insurance paper with driving license and ID always ready in case police stops you). It would have been nice if we had GPS, but anyway a detailed road map and a compass we brought had prevented us from getting lost (though we once had a blocked way due to the severe road condition in secondary road that the map gave impression it was shorter path so we had to return to the main road)

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From Tunis we drove to the west to Beja and then Jendouba and from Jendouba we drove north to Tabarka via Ain Draham. Just before Ain Draham we made a brief detour to the west to reach Algerian border, then we continued to Ain Draham. Ain Draham is a village on the hill with noticeable cooler climate and was built by the French in a Swiss style. It sits in mountainous area with roads having twists and turns, up and down along the green cork pine trees. Some part of the road even had warning signboards related with snow (locals told us that during winter snow would cover the road from Ain Draham to Tabarka, sometimes at 1 m deep, and made it impassable). At this point I felt like I was not in Africa, the environment was so much different with the one just 50 km to the south. Have I mentioned to you that the trip itself was really worth it ?

After going further north finally we reached Tabarka. We went to the first hotel we came across in Tabarka. I think we should have booked hotel from Tunis before departure to get better hotel and rate, my previous post has link to travel agent website which will give you an idea about hotels and rate in Tunisia. So after checking in, we spent the rest of the day on the beach (which was too cold to swim at that time of the year). We had a nice dinner in the restaurant and then went to beach side café. There were a lot of street vendors selling handicrafts, so a lot of choices for souvenirs hunting.

The following morning we went again to the beach. This time I really felt the calm, relaxing, laid back environment. No rush in the streets, no annoying horn honk. I felt I could spend the day just sitting on the jetty watching the sea while having fresh wind blowing in my face. Time was frozen. For a moment at least.
We packed up and left Tabarka in the afternoon. This time we choose different path to Tunis. Instead of going back to south to Jendouba via Ain Draham, from Tabarka we went to the east to Mateur than to south east to Tunis so in the end our trip would be like a circular one. Again we had beautiful view along the way. The road went on the top of the hill then went downhill then uphill again and so on. So beautiful that I forgot to take any picture.. There were few cars we met along the way. It’s Sunday afternoon and people might prefer to just stay at home.

As folk says that a picture is worth thousand words, here I put some pictures from this trip. My aplogize that I forgot to take ones in Ain Draham, well in this case it’s only some words, not thousand..:)

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