Tunisia Trip -- Part Forty

We spent the night at a hotel in the port of Sousse, a city of half a million people on the Gulf of Hammamet. In the morning we set off for Kairouan, the site of the Great Mosque. On our way we stopped briefly to stretch our legs.

Tunisia was the first Arab state to create a ministry of the environment, a mark of the nation's determination to westernize. These cartoon versions of the desert foxes were adopted as its public symbols.


My wife pointed out several storks nesting on nearby utility poles. I gave her my camera and she wandered around taking pictures. Here's one of them.


And here's where a sidewalk was constructed over an ants nest.


Back on the bus we proceeded to Kairouan. Our first stop there was to view the Aghlabide Basins. These were part of the water system constructed in the ninth century to serve the needs of the Aghlabide palace nearby [The Aghlabids were a dybasty of emirs who ruled much of North Africa in the Ninth Century]. Water was brought in on a twenty-two mile aqueduct and these basins served as settling pools -- an impressively sophisticated setup considering they are more than a thousand years old.


Kairouan street sights.