MONASTIR CRAZY
Tonsillitis, tempests and a tour firm flop all featured on a weird week in North Africa for Nigel Thompson
The first inkling that this might not be a normal family holiday was when we were told the pilot had paid for the plane’s fuel.
We’d been horribly late departing for Tunisia from Gatwick (3am instead of
8pm) and it was only as the in-flight meal was being served that we found out why.
That, said the cabin crew, was because the tour operator did not have the money to pay the Tunisian charter airline to fill the tanks, so the captain had put it on his credit card.
Cue some anxious, wide-eyed looks from the passengers. Though that may just have been their reaction to the truly appalling food, which was allegedly pasta in cream sauce but was more like boiled string in vomit-flavoured wallpaper paste. I wished the pilot had added burger and fries to his petrol
TOP TERRACE
The apartment was tired but roomy
bill. At one point during the flight our daughter Alex – aged seven on this trip back in October 1997 – said she felt a bit off colour. We put it down to the lateness and holiday excitement. Remember this, it’s important.
A bleary-eyed dawn arrival at Monastir had us in our self-catering apartment by the marina in time for breakfast, after a warm welcome from the reception team.
The place was rather tired, as were we, but there was bags of space and great views of the boats from the large rooftop terrace.
There were some swanky vessels – including a ‘pirate’ galleon for boat trips – but one yacht was magnificent, boasting a “garage” at the rear with a Land Rover inside.
We’d got a couple of nights in the apartment, then a Sahara excursion to see the Star Wars ‘Skywalker home’ filming location at Matmata, Chott el Djerid salt flats, Tozeur oasis and the Roman El Jem amphitheatre.
We’d have one night in a Bedouin tented camp, with camel rides, and one in a hotel. Exciting stuff for me, my wife Debbie, Alex and son Charlie, then eight.
Before the excursion we explored Monastir. We scouted the bars and restaurants at the marina (not bad, good value), looked at the beach (bit of litter, but fine) and visited the medina and the Ribat, a small fort which was a location for Monty Python’s Life Of Brian movie.
Here, 75 per cent of the Thompsons thought repeating the film’s classic line ‘’He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy’’ was not funny, so 25 per cent of the Thompsons abandoned the planned recital of the Biggus Dickus sketch. Woger would have to wait to be weleased.
Here we also discovered that the Tunisians really love kids. We’d got used to adults patting them on the head, but it was at a new level as a young couple asked to “borrow” them for a family photo on the Ribat tower. That evening we had local Celtia beers in a marina bar and moved on to a nearby restaurant that served spaghetti bolognaise (Charlie would eat little else!).
The temperature was in the mid 20s, so next day we hit the beach by the apartment. Sandcastles were built, swarms of jellyfish avoided, shoulders slightly burned and 25 per cent of the Thompsons drank 100 per cent of the Celtia rations and got in
I spent the rest of the day picking prickly pear needles out of my hand
trouble.
Again that evening we found a spag bol emporium, but one that also served the Tunisian brik – a triangular pastry containing onions, spices and an egg with a runny yolk. They are famously
messy to eat and the adults did nothing to disprove that.
We were woken early next morning by a phone call from reception, with urgent news. Were we to be fined for the egg yolk stains on the restaurant tablecloth? No. Our travel firm, SunTours, had gone bust.
We would not be going to the Sahara, it was more a question of how and when we would be going home, and could we stay in the accommodation?
The reception staff were organised and told us we would be keeping the apartment and a repatriation flight was being set up by the UK Civil Aviation Authority.
Sit tight and enjoy the rest of the week as best you can, was the message. And yet, this news was a blessing in disguise.
Why so? After a day at the beach (we’d been told not to stray too far in case we had to go at short notice), Alex started to feel a bit unwell again, so was given Calpol and tucked up early.
In the morning she was really ill with a severe temperature and former ward sister Debbie said she was in urgent need of a doctor.
Reception were brilliant, calling a paediatrician who arrived promptly, showed his medical card citing his training in Paris, swiftly diagnosed acute tonsillitis and dosed her up. While not requiring hospitalisation, Alex needed a range of drugs and to stay as cool as possible.
Debbie and I realised that, had SunTours still been trading, she would likely have fallen ill in a tent in the desert, with no immediate medical attention available.
The doctor had prescribed medication (to be administered in a very non-British way that dads absolutely cannot do to daughters, but ex-nurses can cope) and handed over a prescription for more, so Charlie and I set off for a pharmacy. On the way back, walking through the medina market, we decided to buy some fruit. An odd-looking one puzzled me and I went to pick it up. The stallholder started shouting and gesticulating.
“Don’t worry mate, I’m not nicking it,” I laughed. I wasn’t laughing about 10 seconds later – he’d been trying to warn me it was a prickly pear and I now had about a thousand needles embedded painfully in my hand (only a slight exaggeration, I was picking them out for the rest of the day).
We hung around the apartment as the drugs kicked in, Alex slowly perked up and the spectacular projectile vomiting subsided.
However, Mother Nature ensured we still had ample in-house entertainment.
First up was The Invasion of the Ants. They suddenly erupted from a hole in a wall in a seething black tide.
We fought back with towel swatting, stamping and poured boiling water down the outside wall where they were massing for another assault. Victory was ours, but only after calling for reinforcements from reception (they had an armoury of ant powder).
Enemy repelled, Alex recovering, Charlie reading (probably a spag bol recipe), Debbie and I settled down for a Celtia on the roof terrace.
Looking out to sea, we spotted a large dark cloud on the horizon and idly wondered if it was heading our way. Thirty minutes later it was, so we stacked the seats and went inside.
What happened next was just incredible. Like the arrival of the aliens in Independence Day – a roiling mass of purple-blue-black cloud with arcing bolts of lightning and military grade thunder.
In the marina there was panic as owners of boats and bars scrambled to secure decks and terraces. Too late for some, as the tempest arrived with an end-of-days fury. Chairs flew into the air, awnings ripped and boats slammed into each other. The shutters on our windows blew open and we feared they would shatter the glass. It was pretty hairy. Finally tempest fugit, we checked our seats were not in the marina and went to look at the damage – dented boats, restaurant tables all over the place, but seemingly no one hurt. If the storm was biblical, then it was appropriate that night that we had The Plague of Cockroaches. An urban myth says they would be the only thing left living on the planet after nuclear war, so they can certainly survive a major storm. When we got back after dinner (it may have involved spag bol) there were about a dozen of them scurrying about.
I accept that “about a dozen” is not really a plague, but it’s about 12 more than we were comfortable sharing our accommodation with. An hour later we realised that not only could cockroaches survive being nuked, they could easily evade the best we could throw at them. An anxious night was spent listening for six-legged ninjas scuttling by beds.
The morning began with news from reception – a repatriation flight was due that evening.
No offence to the Tunisians, but we wanted to get home. We’d made the best of a weird week – the help when Alex was ill and with the collapse of the tour firm had been faultless, and what’s an apocalyptic storm, a jellyfish horde, a fearsome fruit and a billion insects between friends? However, we had a plane to catch. Well, hello Peach Air!
It was a clapped-out old Tristar jet that rolled up to take us back to Gatwick, but we did not care as it rattled its way across the Med.
Though we did decline the pasta in-flight meal...