Tabarka 2009: Diving vacation report============= ...
Tabarka 2009: Diving vacation report
============================
During preparation of this trip we found very little current information about spending a diving vacation in Tabarka (Tunisia). This story should fill the gap to the best of its ability. I mostly refrain from repeating “well-known” infos, i.e. those we were able to locate ourselves in September 2009 in English, German and Russian. The story is in English to maximize the audience.
Boundary conditions
-------------------
* 2 persons, both PADI Rescue Divers
* two free weeks from late September to mid October, 2009
* diving is a priority, then passive relaxation; no prio is sightseeing, sports other than diving, etc.
* expected comfort level is slightly above backpackers’ inn, at about that price
Money
------
Currency rates: 1 CHF = 1.2 Dt (Tunisian Dinar) = 1200 Tunisian milliemes = 1.55 EUR
Exchange your currency on arrival directly in the airport. Ask for some coins since your gonna give tips. Practical values are 100 milliemes, ½ Dt and 1 Dt (200-300 milliemes to ½ Dt is, to our belief, a minimal amount for a tip). Coins below 100 milliemes are less in circulation, although you get them sometimes as a change.
Study the coins right there to easily distinguish them; numbers are hardly readable. 1 Dt would be a generous tip while similarly looking 5 Dt is worth of daily meals for one person.
Language
---------
Some merchants, hotel clerks, etc. in resorts speak “all languages” (a few words each). Otherwise count on your French, it is spoken pretty widely along with Arabic. We don’t speak French, so we played a pantomime in many cases.
Visa
----
Russians and Ukrainians (like we are) theoretically need a visa. It’s issued in the airport on arrival if you are tourist and present a “voucher” from a travel agency. Plan your trip yourself without an agency? ¬No problem, present the confirmation of the flight and hotel reservations for your entire stay. Don’t know yet where exactly your stay, your hotel reservation is just for the first night? Well…
Well, that’s not good! You are not going to appropriate the travel agency fee, aren’t you? People employ a travel agency for their trips, full stop. Entering upon the path of anything else renders you outside the law. That’s democracy, that’s freedom, that’s the way they want you to spend your money (along with plasma TV etc.) You either take their way or you don’t travel at all. Or… you receive a booking confirmation per E-mail, and Microsoft Outlook allows modification of E-mails in your inbox before you print them.
In fact, our border guard was very kind. He did not even look at the dates. I just had to point onto the text “acts as a hotel voucher” in the printout of the booking confirmation. And the “visa” did not cost a penny, to our greatest surprise.
Transport
----------
Flight Geneva – Tunis, 500 CHF each person return, very convenient times (from Geneva on Friday evening, back in Geneva on Monday midday, I even worked in the office half a day on these days)
Taxi from airport to hotel
Yellow (city) taxi is a very affordable transport. Prices are the same in Tunis and Tabarka, less than 1 Dt for more than 3 km (compare to 7 CHF in Switzerland to just jump in), the meter is mostly used and you gonna pay exactly that amount (+ tip if you are generous).
Taxi broker meets you immediately in arrivals hall and is very annoying. (Who arrived at Moscow or Kiev last decade knows what I’m about). You can ignore him, but he butts in your conversation with the taxi driver and requires the fee for his “services” quite impudently. Give him a smile if you are brave enough, otherwise 200-300 milliemes do the thing, whatever else he pretends to.
Watch the driver to reset the meter. Taxi to hotel Diplomat**** costs 3 to 4 Dt depending on the route. The driver will tell you about “extra charges” incurred by “your luggage” and “airport taxes”, or other similar fairy tales. You gonna just pay the meter. Be aware though of +50% tax that applies in the night (from 21:00 to 05:00, it stays in clear English on the official sticker in every cab).
Bus from Tunis to Tabarka
Intercity bus (terminal station on Bab Saadoune, about 1 Dt by yellow taxi from hotel Diplomat****) costs 10 Dt one way per person and departures 5 times a day, see the schedule at http://www.sntri.com.tn/ The trip is 200 km and 3 hours long, in reality ½ to 1 hour longer. The comfort is quite what one expects: adjustable seats that mostly don’t work; air conditioning that is effectively replaced by open windows; the bus picks up passengers that stand in the aisle afterwards… Come on, it’s just 3 hours!
Mini buses departure from Bab Saadoune too, but the fare is higher (our assumption) and the gain in comfort / speed is very questionable (our observation).
The tickets are sold in the main hall in the station building, different window for each destination. There is an information desk (!) which anyway speaks only French but understands pantomime and “Tabarka”.
Nobody cares of the seat number printed on the ticket (we just guessed it is a seat number, in fact it could be whatever because the text is Arabic). Thus get into the bus early and choose a seat where you can keep an eye on the baggage compartment; ourselves, we had no bad experienced, but the bus driver warned us against stolen luggage (maybe just to earn a tip, who knows).
Taxi in Tabarka
The bus arrives at the center of Tabarka. Note the place but keep in mind: departures are likely two blocks away towards the hill (Nord-West), as well as the ticket. Then take a cab to your hotel or diving center for the first time, it costs little (max. 2 Dt to anywhere) and saves your nerves from squeezing through the downtown.
Accommodation
---------------
There are no backpackers’ inns in Tunis and Tabarka, or we did not find any. In fact, we located on the Internet just about a dozen hotels in Tunis and exactly 8 in Tabarka, which is very far from reality; small and inexpensive hotels (i.e. exactly those where you’d like to stay) are not represented at all.
We guessed there are more hotels indeed. Moreover, we did not want to decide for a hotel where we gonna spend 2 weeks without seeing it first. Therefore we did not book any specific hotel in Tabarka. We wanted to come and see, and probably ask in the dive center for their recommendations. This scenario played out very well.
One exception was the night in Tunis. The flight arrives at 22:00; next bus is early in the morning, so we had to stay somewhere. I did not want to race around night Tunis picking a hotel, so I booked hotel Diplomat**** (due to an affordable price and still favourable feedbacks) on the Internet. Here lies the only organizational mistake I made in this trip: I should have booked at once our return night, too. I was not sure though if we like the hotel, so I booked the minimum. It cost us 40% more afterwards, 52 CHF for 1 night in a double room when booked via www.ebookers.ch versus 100 Dt for the same room when booked at the reception (list price 135 Dt, so they expected me to be satisfied anyway).
A remark to hotels, and generally services, in Tunisia (applies to Egypt too). People say these hotels never deserve their number of stars. I would describe it different. No matter how good the hotel is, there are always very obvious shortcomings that catch the eye at once. Your favourable feedback depends then on your ability to ignore those and still see the overall picture. I’m talking about things like precious abaculus in the bathroom crashed with a hummer to cement a wire they forgot to lay; or the water which is perfectly hot most times excepting exactly when you are taking a shower; and so on. These “features” seem to me inevitable, so I lower expectations when in that world, and stay happy.
Hotel Diplomat****, Tunis
Summary: Quite a nice hotel, although it’s four stars are tarnished here and there. Big room and bathroom, air conditioning, safe, WiFi (we did not test), flat TV (very poor reception), pretty modern scenery (often shabby anyway), 24x7 front desk, adequate breakfast. No complaints indeed.
Location: 4 Dt by yellow taxi from the airport, and about 1 Dt from Bab Saadoun bus station. Located in quite poor areas, so no flowering gardens around. The noise from the street echoes in the well of high buildings.
Price / Value: We booked a double room for 1 night for a sensational price of just 52 CHF, while the list price is 135 Dt. The value for 52 CHF is certainly unsurpassed! The value for 135 Dt… well, it’s just too expensive for us, no matter if it’s worth of the money or not (perhaps not).
Hint: although the surrounding area does not dispose to walking, especially in the night, one can eat full and in our case without consequences for 2.2 Dt. Leave the hotel via the side entrance next to Pizza Restaurant, turn right and walk about 1 block to the crossing equipped with traffic lights. Turn left, go another 20 m and find at your left side a grilled chicken shop. For 2200 milliemes you get a chicken leg, wheat bred (baguette, very common), olives and kind of vegetable salad. One can eat there (well…) or take away.
Hotels in Tabarka are located either in “tourist zone” or in the town. Those presented on the Internet are mostly (excepting Zen Hotel) in tourist zone couple kilometres away along the shore. Those you can afford are probably in the town. By the way, hotel locations are depicted totally wrong in both Internet Map sources we’ve searched in.
Tourist zone: pretty isolated, clean beaches with good sand, clean sea, mid class to expensive hotels, palms, eucalyptus, meals in your hotel only.
Town: cheap to mid hotels and meals, souvenirs, markets (fruits, vegetables), extremely dirty everywhere including municipal beach (not usable at all), pretty laud, annoying muezzins.
We’ve chosen to stay in the town not only because of hotel prices but also because of cheap restaurants; compare 70 Dt a day (50 Dt costs a double room in our hotel plus 20 Dt meals) vs. 190 Dt “all inclusive” in a 4 star hotel in tourist zone. Our budget was pretty stretched with intensive diving, so we searched free entertainment unlike golf, tennis, 4 wheel motorcycles and others. The town offers some primitive fun like exploring the sites, starring at the people or just hanging around; it was OK.
Hotel du France***, Tabarka
Summary: very nice hotel worth of each it’s star. Relatively big room and bathroom with a bath, air conditioning (not tested), TV (two channels in Arabic and 6 in French), sweet furniture, beautiful harbour, sea and fortress view, currency exchange at the reception.
The only great disappointment was the breakfast: wheat bread (baguette), jam (several teaspoons on a saucer), 1 chunk of butter, 1.5 glass of hot milk in a pot and several sips of good coffee. That’s it, every day the same. It suffices for the start though. After our first dive we usually purchased and ate a big melon and/or other fruits, and we had our launch/dinner in the late afternoon after the second dive.
The room was cleaned daily and even bed linen was changed every day (!! joking apart, I’ve never seen anything alike before). It’s a real exaggeration to my mind, especially because the new clean linen was sometimes dirtier then ours where we slept already for one night
Location: in the very downtown, some minutes by feet from the harbour, with lots of markets and restaurants around. The corner under the hotel windows is probably the very heart of the city. Aboriginals watch football, drink coffee and tea, smoke, play cards and talk from late morning to late night. Across the street they stand in a queue for doner kebab (called here chawarma). Heavy traffic, although in a snail´s pace. LAUD, could be a problem for sensible persons. We closed the windows tight in the evening and opened them again late after midnight – for just a short time because of muezzins.
Price / Value: very good, if you get on with all that specifics. We did.
Hints: doner kebab across the street is a very convenient standing dish to eat full for just 1.8 Dt. Far not bad, followed by a glass of hot very sweat mint tea in the hotel restaurant.
Leave the hotel, turn to the right. A bank with an ATM is here – quite valuable since the hotel does not accept cards. At the next crossing are numerous fruit and vegetable markets (prices are fixed and written, no need for exhausting bargain). Just before the second crossing (where the statue of a sitting man is) is a supermarket at your left side, we purchased mineral water and halva there.
Continue another block until a wasteland at your left side. Bus to Tunis departures here, the ticket office is a few meters away at your right side. A step behind you at your left side is a not-too-bad restaurant which serves a plate of shrimps for 5 Dt or fresh salad (zucchini-like cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, olives, tuna fish) for 1.5 Dt.
Diving
------
Those coming for the “biggest in Mediterranean corral reef” get disappointed. The reef is 100 m deep and recreational diving centers in Tabarka never go there. (No clue if anyone else does, it was not our focus anyway). Another big frustration: although centers do recognise PADI qualifications, they all teach CMAS. Fact is there is no single PADI authorised center in Tabarka.
After we recovered from these two blows everything else went good. We took time and compared prices and made our impression of all four (of 6 existing) dive centers we could locate. The winner was:
Mehari diving center
Located in Hotel Mehari in the middle of tourist zone, it makes most professional impression of them all. This center is the only one with no barbeque on the price list! This fact reveals their core business best. Diving in Tabarka is solely boat diving, and two boats the center uses look like diving boats indeed (unlike others looking like pirates).
Prices: single dive 26 Dt (weights and tank included), 10 dives 210 Dt, rent of full equipment 18 Dt per dive, any single part of equipment 6 Dt. There was bad commerce last season, so they might have slightly reduced the prices. Euro is accepted but no cards. The Web-site is not current; it still says “PADI” and slightly higher prices.
We came very luckily two weeks before the center closed for winter. We made 2 dives a day (at 9:00 and at 14:00) interrupted just by a three-day storm, 20 dives in total. My wife rented full equipment while I needed just a regulator. The condition of the equipment is adequate, those loose 3 mm neoprene suits you know. I felt perfect in my 5 mm neoprene with short sleeves and legs.
The instructor Rachid is extremely friendly and very, VERY quiet for an aboriginal. We are used to relaxed Swiss conversation pace, but with Rachid I felt sometimes like it stretches my patience. He was precise far above our expectations: if we agree on a time then he came quite exactly. Pretty professionally, he made my wife enter all those numerous caves, go to 40 m and confess to like diving at the end.
He teaches correct diving: we never exceeded 50 bars in tanks, made safety stops, and there was a reserve air tank during our deep dive to Black Corral. Nothing like nightmares we’ve read in one feedback on the Internet. Well, 8 years elapsed since then so they had time to improve.
The vegetation and animals in Mediterranean (Tabarka) is an average between the abundance of Red Sea (Dahab, Egypt) and the desert of Walensee (Switzerland). Again, you won’t see the reef. The corrals are sparse and tiny. Almost no shoals, just single fishes. Shrimps hide deep in caves. We did not see any octopuses although they should live there (well, they hide too). No jelly fish that is rather an advantage. The Black Corral site is quite special; it features perfect visibility, large fishes up to 1 m, and someway different vegetation. Otherwise the visibility depends on the wind/wave direction since there is no current to distil the turbidity off.
Snorkling is little fun. First, the visibility was not good enough. Second, unlike Dahab you won’t see a dead crab! just 5-7 kinds of tiny fishes and plastic waste. Try this entertainment before you go diving for the first time, it’s no attraction afterwards.
Tabarka
--------
The village with surroundings looks like it experiences a decline. Waste is everywhere, as well as abandoned construction sites. The aboriginals are mostly sitting idle. Well, the season was almost over... The weather was nice anyway. Couple of cloudy days, couple of night thunderstorms, sea is about +22C.
Municipal beach is extremely dirty. Other coastal territories around are picturesque with all those stones and cedars, and very polluted too. We usually walked about 3 km to the tourist zone for snorkling and clean sand. At the end of our stay we discovered a pretty promising long and narrow sandy bay where the pier begins (go towards the fortress and leave the road to the right once you pass port installations at your right side).
Morals
------
In both Tunis and Tabarka we often met aboriginals wearing short sleeves and/or short trousers. Remarkable part of Tabarka aboriginals drink and often hang around completely drunk. They are not aggressive though.
You’ll be served even more cordially if you come to the same restaurant or purchase from the same merchant for the second time. We were lucky to not suffer from pilferers, although one trickster tried to lessen us of all cash (unsuccessfully due to an eagle eye of my wife; and due to my habit to never bear any significant amount of cash).
Bottom line
-----------
Although the story may sound repelling to some degree, we truly enjoyed our stay! Diving was good and very cheap. The sun and the sea are wonderful at all times, we had them a lot. And plastic waste is not worse than in suburbs of Cairo indeed.
Hotel Diplomat**** Tunis
Hotel Diplomat**** Tunis
Hotel Diplomat**** Tunis
Hotel Diplomat**** Tunis
Hotel du France*** Tabarka
Hotel du France*** Tabarka
Hotel du France*** Tabarka
Hotel du France*** Tabarka
Hotel du France*** Tabarka - Fortress and municipal beach view
Hotel du France*** Tabarka - Harbour *center) and tourist zone (right) view
On the diving boat
============================
During preparation of this trip we found very little current information about spending a diving vacation in Tabarka (Tunisia). This story should fill the gap to the best of its ability. I mostly refrain from repeating “well-known” infos, i.e. those we were able to locate ourselves in September 2009 in English, German and Russian. The story is in English to maximize the audience.
Boundary conditions
-------------------
* 2 persons, both PADI Rescue Divers
* two free weeks from late September to mid October, 2009
* diving is a priority, then passive relaxation; no prio is sightseeing, sports other than diving, etc.
* expected comfort level is slightly above backpackers’ inn, at about that price
Money
------
Currency rates: 1 CHF = 1.2 Dt (Tunisian Dinar) = 1200 Tunisian milliemes = 1.55 EUR
Exchange your currency on arrival directly in the airport. Ask for some coins since your gonna give tips. Practical values are 100 milliemes, ½ Dt and 1 Dt (200-300 milliemes to ½ Dt is, to our belief, a minimal amount for a tip). Coins below 100 milliemes are less in circulation, although you get them sometimes as a change.
Study the coins right there to easily distinguish them; numbers are hardly readable. 1 Dt would be a generous tip while similarly looking 5 Dt is worth of daily meals for one person.
Language
---------
Some merchants, hotel clerks, etc. in resorts speak “all languages” (a few words each). Otherwise count on your French, it is spoken pretty widely along with Arabic. We don’t speak French, so we played a pantomime in many cases.
Visa
----
Russians and Ukrainians (like we are) theoretically need a visa. It’s issued in the airport on arrival if you are tourist and present a “voucher” from a travel agency. Plan your trip yourself without an agency? ¬No problem, present the confirmation of the flight and hotel reservations for your entire stay. Don’t know yet where exactly your stay, your hotel reservation is just for the first night? Well…
Well, that’s not good! You are not going to appropriate the travel agency fee, aren’t you? People employ a travel agency for their trips, full stop. Entering upon the path of anything else renders you outside the law. That’s democracy, that’s freedom, that’s the way they want you to spend your money (along with plasma TV etc.) You either take their way or you don’t travel at all. Or… you receive a booking confirmation per E-mail, and Microsoft Outlook allows modification of E-mails in your inbox before you print them.
In fact, our border guard was very kind. He did not even look at the dates. I just had to point onto the text “acts as a hotel voucher” in the printout of the booking confirmation. And the “visa” did not cost a penny, to our greatest surprise.
Transport
----------
Flight Geneva – Tunis, 500 CHF each person return, very convenient times (from Geneva on Friday evening, back in Geneva on Monday midday, I even worked in the office half a day on these days)
Taxi from airport to hotel
Yellow (city) taxi is a very affordable transport. Prices are the same in Tunis and Tabarka, less than 1 Dt for more than 3 km (compare to 7 CHF in Switzerland to just jump in), the meter is mostly used and you gonna pay exactly that amount (+ tip if you are generous).
Taxi broker meets you immediately in arrivals hall and is very annoying. (Who arrived at Moscow or Kiev last decade knows what I’m about). You can ignore him, but he butts in your conversation with the taxi driver and requires the fee for his “services” quite impudently. Give him a smile if you are brave enough, otherwise 200-300 milliemes do the thing, whatever else he pretends to.
Watch the driver to reset the meter. Taxi to hotel Diplomat**** costs 3 to 4 Dt depending on the route. The driver will tell you about “extra charges” incurred by “your luggage” and “airport taxes”, or other similar fairy tales. You gonna just pay the meter. Be aware though of +50% tax that applies in the night (from 21:00 to 05:00, it stays in clear English on the official sticker in every cab).
Bus from Tunis to Tabarka
Intercity bus (terminal station on Bab Saadoune, about 1 Dt by yellow taxi from hotel Diplomat****) costs 10 Dt one way per person and departures 5 times a day, see the schedule at http://www.sntri.com.tn/ The trip is 200 km and 3 hours long, in reality ½ to 1 hour longer. The comfort is quite what one expects: adjustable seats that mostly don’t work; air conditioning that is effectively replaced by open windows; the bus picks up passengers that stand in the aisle afterwards… Come on, it’s just 3 hours!
Mini buses departure from Bab Saadoune too, but the fare is higher (our assumption) and the gain in comfort / speed is very questionable (our observation).
The tickets are sold in the main hall in the station building, different window for each destination. There is an information desk (!) which anyway speaks only French but understands pantomime and “Tabarka”.
Nobody cares of the seat number printed on the ticket (we just guessed it is a seat number, in fact it could be whatever because the text is Arabic). Thus get into the bus early and choose a seat where you can keep an eye on the baggage compartment; ourselves, we had no bad experienced, but the bus driver warned us against stolen luggage (maybe just to earn a tip, who knows).
Taxi in Tabarka
The bus arrives at the center of Tabarka. Note the place but keep in mind: departures are likely two blocks away towards the hill (Nord-West), as well as the ticket. Then take a cab to your hotel or diving center for the first time, it costs little (max. 2 Dt to anywhere) and saves your nerves from squeezing through the downtown.
Accommodation
---------------
There are no backpackers’ inns in Tunis and Tabarka, or we did not find any. In fact, we located on the Internet just about a dozen hotels in Tunis and exactly 8 in Tabarka, which is very far from reality; small and inexpensive hotels (i.e. exactly those where you’d like to stay) are not represented at all.
We guessed there are more hotels indeed. Moreover, we did not want to decide for a hotel where we gonna spend 2 weeks without seeing it first. Therefore we did not book any specific hotel in Tabarka. We wanted to come and see, and probably ask in the dive center for their recommendations. This scenario played out very well.
One exception was the night in Tunis. The flight arrives at 22:00; next bus is early in the morning, so we had to stay somewhere. I did not want to race around night Tunis picking a hotel, so I booked hotel Diplomat**** (due to an affordable price and still favourable feedbacks) on the Internet. Here lies the only organizational mistake I made in this trip: I should have booked at once our return night, too. I was not sure though if we like the hotel, so I booked the minimum. It cost us 40% more afterwards, 52 CHF for 1 night in a double room when booked via www.ebookers.ch versus 100 Dt for the same room when booked at the reception (list price 135 Dt, so they expected me to be satisfied anyway).
A remark to hotels, and generally services, in Tunisia (applies to Egypt too). People say these hotels never deserve their number of stars. I would describe it different. No matter how good the hotel is, there are always very obvious shortcomings that catch the eye at once. Your favourable feedback depends then on your ability to ignore those and still see the overall picture. I’m talking about things like precious abaculus in the bathroom crashed with a hummer to cement a wire they forgot to lay; or the water which is perfectly hot most times excepting exactly when you are taking a shower; and so on. These “features” seem to me inevitable, so I lower expectations when in that world, and stay happy.
Hotel Diplomat****, Tunis
Summary: Quite a nice hotel, although it’s four stars are tarnished here and there. Big room and bathroom, air conditioning, safe, WiFi (we did not test), flat TV (very poor reception), pretty modern scenery (often shabby anyway), 24x7 front desk, adequate breakfast. No complaints indeed.
Location: 4 Dt by yellow taxi from the airport, and about 1 Dt from Bab Saadoun bus station. Located in quite poor areas, so no flowering gardens around. The noise from the street echoes in the well of high buildings.
Price / Value: We booked a double room for 1 night for a sensational price of just 52 CHF, while the list price is 135 Dt. The value for 52 CHF is certainly unsurpassed! The value for 135 Dt… well, it’s just too expensive for us, no matter if it’s worth of the money or not (perhaps not).
Hint: although the surrounding area does not dispose to walking, especially in the night, one can eat full and in our case without consequences for 2.2 Dt. Leave the hotel via the side entrance next to Pizza Restaurant, turn right and walk about 1 block to the crossing equipped with traffic lights. Turn left, go another 20 m and find at your left side a grilled chicken shop. For 2200 milliemes you get a chicken leg, wheat bred (baguette, very common), olives and kind of vegetable salad. One can eat there (well…) or take away.
Hotels in Tabarka are located either in “tourist zone” or in the town. Those presented on the Internet are mostly (excepting Zen Hotel) in tourist zone couple kilometres away along the shore. Those you can afford are probably in the town. By the way, hotel locations are depicted totally wrong in both Internet Map sources we’ve searched in.
Tourist zone: pretty isolated, clean beaches with good sand, clean sea, mid class to expensive hotels, palms, eucalyptus, meals in your hotel only.
Town: cheap to mid hotels and meals, souvenirs, markets (fruits, vegetables), extremely dirty everywhere including municipal beach (not usable at all), pretty laud, annoying muezzins.
We’ve chosen to stay in the town not only because of hotel prices but also because of cheap restaurants; compare 70 Dt a day (50 Dt costs a double room in our hotel plus 20 Dt meals) vs. 190 Dt “all inclusive” in a 4 star hotel in tourist zone. Our budget was pretty stretched with intensive diving, so we searched free entertainment unlike golf, tennis, 4 wheel motorcycles and others. The town offers some primitive fun like exploring the sites, starring at the people or just hanging around; it was OK.
Hotel du France***, Tabarka
Summary: very nice hotel worth of each it’s star. Relatively big room and bathroom with a bath, air conditioning (not tested), TV (two channels in Arabic and 6 in French), sweet furniture, beautiful harbour, sea and fortress view, currency exchange at the reception.
The only great disappointment was the breakfast: wheat bread (baguette), jam (several teaspoons on a saucer), 1 chunk of butter, 1.5 glass of hot milk in a pot and several sips of good coffee. That’s it, every day the same. It suffices for the start though. After our first dive we usually purchased and ate a big melon and/or other fruits, and we had our launch/dinner in the late afternoon after the second dive.
The room was cleaned daily and even bed linen was changed every day (!! joking apart, I’ve never seen anything alike before). It’s a real exaggeration to my mind, especially because the new clean linen was sometimes dirtier then ours where we slept already for one night
Location: in the very downtown, some minutes by feet from the harbour, with lots of markets and restaurants around. The corner under the hotel windows is probably the very heart of the city. Aboriginals watch football, drink coffee and tea, smoke, play cards and talk from late morning to late night. Across the street they stand in a queue for doner kebab (called here chawarma). Heavy traffic, although in a snail´s pace. LAUD, could be a problem for sensible persons. We closed the windows tight in the evening and opened them again late after midnight – for just a short time because of muezzins.
Price / Value: very good, if you get on with all that specifics. We did.
Hints: doner kebab across the street is a very convenient standing dish to eat full for just 1.8 Dt. Far not bad, followed by a glass of hot very sweat mint tea in the hotel restaurant.
Leave the hotel, turn to the right. A bank with an ATM is here – quite valuable since the hotel does not accept cards. At the next crossing are numerous fruit and vegetable markets (prices are fixed and written, no need for exhausting bargain). Just before the second crossing (where the statue of a sitting man is) is a supermarket at your left side, we purchased mineral water and halva there.
Continue another block until a wasteland at your left side. Bus to Tunis departures here, the ticket office is a few meters away at your right side. A step behind you at your left side is a not-too-bad restaurant which serves a plate of shrimps for 5 Dt or fresh salad (zucchini-like cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, olives, tuna fish) for 1.5 Dt.
Diving
------
Those coming for the “biggest in Mediterranean corral reef” get disappointed. The reef is 100 m deep and recreational diving centers in Tabarka never go there. (No clue if anyone else does, it was not our focus anyway). Another big frustration: although centers do recognise PADI qualifications, they all teach CMAS. Fact is there is no single PADI authorised center in Tabarka.
After we recovered from these two blows everything else went good. We took time and compared prices and made our impression of all four (of 6 existing) dive centers we could locate. The winner was:
Mehari diving center
Located in Hotel Mehari in the middle of tourist zone, it makes most professional impression of them all. This center is the only one with no barbeque on the price list! This fact reveals their core business best. Diving in Tabarka is solely boat diving, and two boats the center uses look like diving boats indeed (unlike others looking like pirates).
Prices: single dive 26 Dt (weights and tank included), 10 dives 210 Dt, rent of full equipment 18 Dt per dive, any single part of equipment 6 Dt. There was bad commerce last season, so they might have slightly reduced the prices. Euro is accepted but no cards. The Web-site is not current; it still says “PADI” and slightly higher prices.
We came very luckily two weeks before the center closed for winter. We made 2 dives a day (at 9:00 and at 14:00) interrupted just by a three-day storm, 20 dives in total. My wife rented full equipment while I needed just a regulator. The condition of the equipment is adequate, those loose 3 mm neoprene suits you know. I felt perfect in my 5 mm neoprene with short sleeves and legs.
The instructor Rachid is extremely friendly and very, VERY quiet for an aboriginal. We are used to relaxed Swiss conversation pace, but with Rachid I felt sometimes like it stretches my patience. He was precise far above our expectations: if we agree on a time then he came quite exactly. Pretty professionally, he made my wife enter all those numerous caves, go to 40 m and confess to like diving at the end.
He teaches correct diving: we never exceeded 50 bars in tanks, made safety stops, and there was a reserve air tank during our deep dive to Black Corral. Nothing like nightmares we’ve read in one feedback on the Internet. Well, 8 years elapsed since then so they had time to improve.
The vegetation and animals in Mediterranean (Tabarka) is an average between the abundance of Red Sea (Dahab, Egypt) and the desert of Walensee (Switzerland). Again, you won’t see the reef. The corrals are sparse and tiny. Almost no shoals, just single fishes. Shrimps hide deep in caves. We did not see any octopuses although they should live there (well, they hide too). No jelly fish that is rather an advantage. The Black Corral site is quite special; it features perfect visibility, large fishes up to 1 m, and someway different vegetation. Otherwise the visibility depends on the wind/wave direction since there is no current to distil the turbidity off.
Snorkling is little fun. First, the visibility was not good enough. Second, unlike Dahab you won’t see a dead crab! just 5-7 kinds of tiny fishes and plastic waste. Try this entertainment before you go diving for the first time, it’s no attraction afterwards.
Tabarka
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The village with surroundings looks like it experiences a decline. Waste is everywhere, as well as abandoned construction sites. The aboriginals are mostly sitting idle. Well, the season was almost over... The weather was nice anyway. Couple of cloudy days, couple of night thunderstorms, sea is about +22C.
Municipal beach is extremely dirty. Other coastal territories around are picturesque with all those stones and cedars, and very polluted too. We usually walked about 3 km to the tourist zone for snorkling and clean sand. At the end of our stay we discovered a pretty promising long and narrow sandy bay where the pier begins (go towards the fortress and leave the road to the right once you pass port installations at your right side).
Morals
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In both Tunis and Tabarka we often met aboriginals wearing short sleeves and/or short trousers. Remarkable part of Tabarka aboriginals drink and often hang around completely drunk. They are not aggressive though.
You’ll be served even more cordially if you come to the same restaurant or purchase from the same merchant for the second time. We were lucky to not suffer from pilferers, although one trickster tried to lessen us of all cash (unsuccessfully due to an eagle eye of my wife; and due to my habit to never bear any significant amount of cash).
Bottom line
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Although the story may sound repelling to some degree, we truly enjoyed our stay! Diving was good and very cheap. The sun and the sea are wonderful at all times, we had them a lot. And plastic waste is not worse than in suburbs of Cairo indeed.
Hotel Diplomat**** Tunis
Hotel Diplomat**** Tunis
Hotel Diplomat**** Tunis
Hotel Diplomat**** Tunis
Hotel du France*** Tabarka
Hotel du France*** Tabarka
Hotel du France*** Tabarka
Hotel du France*** Tabarka
Hotel du France*** Tabarka - Fortress and municipal beach view
Hotel du France*** Tabarka - Harbour *center) and tourist zone (right) view
On the diving boat