Tunisia - The Hotel and My First Adventure

The hotel I stayed at was about halfway between the cities of Monastir and Sousse in a tourist zone called Skanes. Although not quite up to the standards that I am used to (this is Africa after all!), it was quite a nice hotel with an excellent beach on the beautiful Mediterranean Sea. The hotel food was horrible however, and Tunisia has only one kind of beer which was just plain nasty tasting. Mixed drinks were available, but the price was ridiculous. Would you pay $8 for a screwdriver?! I ended up buying water and juice at a market nearby and stuck with that.

The Royal Miramar Thalasso Hotel

My hotel room

Gorgeous beach - the weather was mostly nice (about 25 degrees), although sometimes the wind would get quite strong in the afternoons and it would get a little chilly

The hotel as viewed from above - guess what I was doing when I took this picture?

I was parasailing of course! Goofy picture, but the best I could manage to take of myself while in the air

Love the cool Mickey Mouse sail!

My first day was basically spent relaxing on the beach, swimming in the Med and going parasailing. One of the guys who runs the parasailing business recruited me to convince a couple of girls from London that it was not a scary experience. I was successful at talking them into it, and then I was asked to go in the boat so that I could take their picture. Sounded reasonable to me so I took their camera and walked over to the boat. While climbing in and trying not to get their camera wet, I managed to slip and bang my elbow on the boat, resulting in a massive bruise. How typical of klutzy me! After all that, I am not even sure I managed to get a picture of them! The sea was so rough that I was bouncing all over the place and although I took several shots, I don't know if the girls were actually in any of them. The boat driver didn't speak a word of English, so despite the fact that I wanted to get out (I wasn't enjoying the bumpy ride), he took a couple more people parasailing before I got the message across that I wanted to go back to shore.