Tunisia - In the footsteps of Indiana Jones in the Parc National de Dghoumès

It is still early in the morning and before we turn off to Tozeur, I navigate Gerd to a highlight of our trip: one of the few hiking trails here in southern Tunisia. 

Today we will hike.

The car park is full of rubbish and empty of people, we park Felix, have a hearty breakfast, pack our hiking rucksack and set off in search of the hiking signs. 

Fiddlesticks. 

But it will hardly be that difficult to find a canyon. We scramble up to the mosque on a hill from where we get a good panoramic view and discover a kind of canyon.

Slowly the sun rises higher and warms our cold hands. It is 9 am and we are already in the deep canyon of the national park. A small information board points out that we are visiting several film locations here that we don't really care about, but we can hardly avoid noticing them anyway. Indiana Jones, The English Patient and, what a surprise: Star Wars. 

The national park was only established in 2010 and is about 80 km² big. Its aim is to protect the ecosystem of the Tunisian Sahara. The park is home to a diverse fauna (which we unfortunately hardly encounter, are we too early?), including wild and sand cats, desert hedgehogs, golden jackals, golden eagles, partridges and various reptiles. In addition, there are some species that were reintroduced in 1995: the African ostrich, the Dorkas gazelle, the Dammah oryx and the mouflon sheep. 

The moufflon sheep in particular would have been interested in us, well, that's probably not mutual, it probably didn't want to get to know us.

So we dive into a canyon that cuts deeper and deeper into the mountains. We consider several times whether we should walk along the rim or down on the valley floor, then decide for the valley floor and don't regret it for a second: How munzig we feel in the middle of the rocky landscape. 

In places, a small rivulet emerges from the ground, lightly wetting the sandy-rocky subsoil, and seems to be enough for some plants to live. 

A few butterflies flutter through our hiking path ("When butterflies cross your path, God smiles benevolently on you!" resounds in my childhood memory) and we leap lightly like chamois from stone to stone. Gerd loudly sings the theme music from Indiana Jones as we do so. (does he really think he's Indy?) and I'm just happy. 

Hours later we arrive back at Felix's place (he's still standing all alone in the car park, poor thing!), dust ourselves off and decide to head for a campsite in Tozeur and end the day at noon. It couldn't get any more beautiful anyway.

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Merci for "travelling with us

We are thinking about taking another break from travelling in the summer and visiting our families in Germany and Switzerland. One of the ideas is to organise a Lecture about our long journey to the Persian Gulf to prepare. If you would like to, what would interest you the most? We will also tell stories here that don't find a place here on the blog. We're thinking of the Bern and Berlin area - simply because we have family there. But other places are also conceivable. Feel free to write to us.

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