The Island of Doctor Fete

Heading east from the Sahara, we made our way via the ever-efficient Tunisian bus services to Gabes, where we wandered aimlessly searching for an outdoor café touted by the guidebook – to discover that their menu consisted mainly of Fanta and “we’re out of that.” After lunch nearby, we popped into a coffee shop. The owner (see photo) was thrilled to host Americans, and proudly played a video for us – one he had downloaded to his cell phone of a former President of the US. After the screening we exchanged hearty backslaps and uproarious laughter. The video featured a flying shoe. Isn’t great that even while out of office, W helps us get a warm welcome from international brothers? I love what that guy does for me.

Still chuckling from the Bush video, we hopped a southbound bus to the island of Jerba, making our way to Houmt Souk, the largest city on the island, which consists mainly of ancient whitewashed buildings accessible only by tiny cobblestone streets. Our hotel was a converted fondouk, another one of those former lodges for itinerant merchants. Fortunately, they had upgraded long ago to running water in every room, but kept vintage touches to remind us how tough the camel drivers had it back in the day.

Three nights in Houmt Souk allowed time to get friendly with a tailor (embarrassingly cheap), a barber (love that straight razor), and bicycle rental (wow, talk about strong headwinds on a one-gear bike). During one lunch we encountered ~30 Tunisian students on a field trip, so of course we hosted an impromptu math class – the photo is an overhead shot of the kids in mid-lesson. Hopping up and down when you know the answer is charming in any language.

Club Med La Fidele was waiting, and since we had gone almost two weeks without a decent croissant, we were very motivated.

This location has a beautiful beach, definitely the best we’ve seen in Tunisia – not only because the Club’s employees do a good job of regularly screening the sand to remove washed-up trash, nomadic dates, etc. but also because of the cute palm trees and shady palapas that provide refuge from the ever-present Tunisian sun.

The beach makes for lots of volleyball. Like at most clubs, our pal Marty is one of the best players, but I don’t have a photo of Marty playing because most of the time when Marty’s playing volleyball, Andrea and I are napping. You’ll have to settle for this photo of two teams changing sides to get some idea of the volleyball ambiance.

La Fidele is one of Club Med’s oldest villages-- it opened in 1954. Accordingly, the village retains the “old” party atmosphere of the ancient days – which means they have foam parties, lots of spirited beverages, dance-dance-dance, crazy games in and around the pool, and of course people staying up until 3 or 4 in the morning with the disco pounding so loud that even the sand near our room bounces up and down. We carefully store our earplugs in the safe every morning.

Fun special features are included, like Margaux (our aerobics instructor) and six other girls from the show, dressed in can-can girl/cowboy fusion outfits, dancing on the bar and pouring cocktails down the throats of single men. See Marty demonstrating what this fun special feature looks like.

Of course Marty didn’t enjoy any of this craziness, but he didn’t want to hurt Margaux’s feelings or those of any of the other single Eurobabes in the village. Suffice to say that for an old married couple like Andrea and I, napping in this village is the only way we can keep up with the crazy singles. Ahhhh, youth. Hey, hold on a second...he's older than us!

Since so many of the wild animals are nocturnal, there are very few people at tennis lessons each morning. This affords a great opportunity to get focused attention from the instructors to improve our games. Most notably we’ve made progress with serves and backhands, not to mention fine tuning our sliding ability, gliding smoothly across the surface of the clay courts just prior to getting a nearly out-of-reach ball – yeah, right.

To ensure guests avoid over-confidence in their tennis skills, the staff hosts tournaments once per week. Even with crazy handicaps they still crush us like bugs. See in the photo our chief of the Club Med village playing against us in a lifejacket and still nearly beating us (!); man these guys are good.

Of course we don't want the sailing staff to think we love the tennis team any more than them, so we've been spending some time on the sea. The club has 21 catamarans and the sailing stallions provide wonderful lessons, provided you speak French and buy them a Ricard at the end of the lesson. Of course, the obvious advantage of a catamaran for people with our level of sailing expertise is the chance to catch a black eye – but despite repeated attempts none of us are injured.

Most of our intellectual horsepower goes into fine-tuning our planning and execution of practical jokes on the Club Med staff. One of our favorite techniques is to identify a staff member with a high self-admiration index; let’s call that person “Mr. X.” At an opportune moment we shout, “OK, let’s go – everybody wants a big team photo with Mr. X… Mr. X please take position; front and center.”

I’m sure you can guess what happens next… the beauty of this approach is that the higher the self-admiration score, the more likely X is to believe that everybody wants a photo with him. We pull out the camera, the team (fully briefed in advance, of course) gets positioned for the photo, and Andrea or I surprise X by pouring a very large and very coooold bucket of ice water on him. After repeated experimentation, we find that a ratio of about 30% ice to 70% water works best.

It’s amazing how much joy is created from this simple technique. In the 2^nd ice-dumping photo, Mr. X thought it would be super-cool to demonstrate his break-dancing moves in our team photo just before we showed him how much we love him; some staff members can make this all too easy.

Our rooms are bungalows on the sand. Sand is everywhere in this village. Sand, sand, sand; breezes blow through the bungalows since much of the walls are lattice. Along with those Tunisian breezes come a little bit of sand as well as giant cockroaches who casually stroll across our bedroom tiles like they own the place. This was a problem until we agreed on a schedule with them; once this was done we stopped bumping elbows and spent the rest of our time with them living in relative harmony.

Evenings and mornings are absolutely spectacular – it’s the beginning of the Club Med season for this village, so the resort is at about 30% occupancy. All of this means lots of tension-free fun and no waiting for anything. Want to sail a catamaran? Pick one of the 20+ that are waiting for you rigged up on the beach. Want a sailing lesson? Take a private tutorial with one of the staff. Etc., etc…

Of course the standard Club Med delights also abound; massive buffets, body sculpting (this time in a Venice Beach style open-air gymnasium), espresso-addicted guests, open water swimming, cabarets/shows every night, gobs of aerobics/fitness classes, dance lessons, trying to speak French with mixed results, crushing lesser mortals in sporting events, being awarded medals in front of 400 of our fellow guests, beach parties, open air disco afternoons, crazy pool games, etc.

Thanks to Marty for all the photos in the post. We even received a special “love” award from the tennis instructors since we showed up for lessons everyday – or perhaps that award was just an effort to direct our icy love towards others....

Sadly, all of the sports and crazy fun had to eventually come to an end – we left Club Med yesterday; taking an eight-hour louage ride (translation: shared taxi with loud arabic music and no leg room) north to the capital. I’m posting this entry from our $25/night hotel room in Tunis where dumping ice water on the staff is not encouraged. We extended our stay at La Fidele from 10 nights to 12, and then to 13, but shucks, we’ve been in this country now for almost four weeks... and we’ve got a plane to catch!