Today’s blog covers the past two days of our Tunisian trip as the Internet at our hotel in Matmata dropped out Thursday night. The Astronomy magazine group is now headquartered at a fine hotel in Tozeur, in western Tunisia, for the next couple of nights and the connection to the outside world seems much better.
The kitchen of the troglodyte house near Matmata, Tunisia, was well-stocked for the preparation of many things. Our hostess graciously served her visitors freshly baked bread and mint tea, March 24, 2011. David J. Eicher photo
The group of 22, accompanied by Melita Thorpe of MWT Associates, planetary scientist Chris McKay, and your editor had a busy past two days. On Thursday, we set off from Tataouine, leaving the area of the meteorite strewn field where we were all successful in finding pieces of the famous Tataouine meteorite. Our first stop was truly amazing; approaching Matmata, working our way to the west and north, we stopped at a so-called troglodyte house where a woman lived with her family and showed us through the structure as her guests. Troglodyte translates to “cave dweller,” and these houses — the one we saw dates to the 18th century — are built into the surrounding rock and sand. We explored the rooms of the house, the woman served us freshly baked bread and mint tea, and we saw the simple way of life of these Berber descendants. We observed a number of interesting relics in and around the house, such as a cut-down Wehrmacht gasoline can marked “1942” and left over from World War II German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s invasion of the area.
Staying in Matmata, Thursday night we enjoyed a terrific lecture by Marcie Smith, mission director of the Kepler Space Telescope, the fantastic new instrument that is finding exoplanet candidates like there’s no tomorrow. Although the official tally of known planets outside our solar system is now 538, Kepler has already found more than 1,200 unconfirmed planet candidates that astronomers need to sort through, all in a single 100-squre-degree field of view between Cygnus and Lyra. Marcie, who also happens to be married to planetary scientist Chris McKay, gave us a terrific explanation of the mission’s details and all that we can expect down the road.
Editor David J. Eicher gets a camel ride along with the rest of the group near Douz, Tunisia, March 25, 2011. David J. Eicher photo
Today, we awoke and proceeded deeper into the Sahara Desert that is more familiar to us when we think of the term — a region covered with fine yellow-white sand. We stopped at the oasis of Douz and all had a 45-minute camel ride, going out to some mud-brick ruins in the desert that date perhaps to the time of Jesus of Nazareth. We then made a long journey westward across the huge salt lake of Chott El Jerid, stopping briefly to look at the briny water and to break off a few samples of halite from the sandy bottom.
Now we are resting in Tozeur, an oasis and a city about 50 miles from the Algerian border that is thick with palm trees and famous as one of the great regions for growing dates. Here, as with Tataouine, Matmata, and other sites we have seen, scenes from some of the Star Wars films were shot, as well as Raiders of the Lost Ark and The English Patient.
Tomorrow we set off for a variety of escapades in and around Tozeur, which I will detail in the next blog.
And be sure to check out all my photos from the trip at Astronomy.com's Trips and Tours page.
Related blogs
On the Road: Tunisia, in search of ancient meteorites, Day 4
On the Road: Tunisia, in search of ancient meteorites, Day 3
On the Road: Tunisia, in search of ancient meteorites, Days 1 and 2