After Jerba, I headed west via a series of louages to Matmata, famous for its underground homes built into the earth to escape the heat. One especially famous underground complex is the one that played Luke Skywalker's uncle's Tataouine homestead in the movie Star Wars (La Guerre des Etoiles, locally). Today it has become the Sidi Driss hotel. Upon arriving in the hot and deserted Matmata that afternooon I headed straight for it. The hotel is a series of large open pits in the ground, each maybe 5m deep. The pits are connected by tunnels and the guest rooms, restaurant and bar are dug into the pit walls. I checked in and ate lunch off the pit where the Star Wars scene was filmed. The pit area was baked in sun, but the cave-like rooms were really nice and cool! The hotel itself was neat but the movie artifacts were unimpressive. All that was left of the Star Wars set was a decaying rubber lining around some doorways and a space-ish looking gearbox on the pit wall. This was all fine, until the hoards of tourists arrived. The parking lot became clogged with their tour busses and 4x4s. Wave after wave arrived and filled the pits with glamour sunglasses, digital video cameras, bathroom lineups and Italian, Spanish and English. This was all unbearable and it was still early enough in the day to get out, so I walked back to the louage station and left town. I had to backtrack to Gabes to find a louage that would take me onward to Douz. Douz is the desert trekking center of Tunisia. On the way, no less than two authentic Berber desert nomads gave me the pre-sale pitch for an excursion. Even funnier were their warnings about the non-Berber would-be guides who would surely approach me in Douz. They were not to be trusted! Should something go wrong out in the wilderness, they wouldn't know what to do (what with their unknown heritage)! Since I won't know how to distinguish Berber from non-Berber, it would be safer just to book with them. The dunes at Douz were pretty cool, but I wasn't planning on making a desert expedition. More novel to me was the vast palm tree forest (palmerie) beside the dunes. There's a campground among the 1/2 million trees, but I think its mostly an agricultural operation. I walked through the palmerie for a few kms towards the zone touristique. On the way, I chatted with a local student in the stands of the deserted fair grounds on the edge of the dunes. The douz dunes are much smaller than the Moroccan ones I visited two years ago. Here they looked like a big wavy ocean of sand with a few palm trees, whereas the Merzouga dunes where huge mountains of sand. However, neither is considered part of the "true sahara." In fact they both are just isolated pockets of sand, separate from the Grand Ergs of the Sahara. But these dunes are much closer to civilization and tourists, and in pictures you can't tell the difference. It was getting dark on the zone touristique strip, so I wandered into the Sahara Douz hotel. (This is like locating an "Airport Hilton" 100kms from the airport, or an "Oceanview Holiday Inn" 100kms inland) I was pretty proud to negotiate the rate of this three star with pool and buffet down to 56D. Ate dinner, watched some arabic game show in the common area, and went to bed. BTW. With so many louage trips today, I made 3 louage BFFs! Definition: someone you meet in the shared taxi and chat with casually for a bit who suddenly asks for your home address and mobile number so you be best friends forever and help them immigrate to Canada.