Hmm Internet access is pretty sparse here, and when you find it, it's very slow and is delivered through a tiny 14" CRT. After my last post, I took the train from Tunis to Sousse, stayed overnight there. Sousse had a nice beach, and while the sun was hot, the wind was cold. The most interesting thing the LP indicated as nearby was the Roman colleseum at El Jem, the next city on the railway south. The train is the ideal means of transport here: clean, fast, on-time, cheap and pretty empty. But that makes this a bit too easy, doesn't it? Instead, I tried to get to El Jem by louage, which is a shared taxi. In Morocco, they have the same thing only it's called a "taxi collective." You arrive at the depot, which is just really just a parking lot, where half a dozen guys each stand around shouting the name of each of the available destinations. The guy shouting your intended destination leads you to the appropriate 20 year old Mercades sedan. You jump in and wait for more people who want to share the ride with you to arrive. When enough people cram into the vehicle (this can take awhile for unpopular destinations) the driver turns on the engine, indicating it's almost time to go. You pay the driver your share of the fare upon arrival. But that's Morocco. Here, they actually have a louage station with a gate, roof and waiting area. And paid-in-advance tickets printed by computer! And you travel in new Mazda or Toyota minivans! So I woke up really early, grabbed a stall sandwich for breakfast, and took a taxi to the louage station. I waited an hour in a minivan for El Jem watching happy Tunisians drive out of the station for other destinations, and not one other person interested in El Jem arrived. This was a waste of time -- obviously only tourists want to go to the colloseum and they just drive there in their giant tour busses! Decided at that point to get back on the train. That's what I did and arrived in El Jem at about 10AM. The colloseum was pretty cool and it kept me interested for a couple hours until it was time to move on. I grabbed lunch and went to the El Jem louage station to try again. This time it was no problem getting a ride to the next town, Sfax. I was the seventh and last person in the minibus and so we promptly left. By the way, the fare is about 3D per hundred kilometers. Highway driving in Tunisia is pretty typical. There's not too much traffic, but we spend half the time driving in the passing lane, staring down an oncoming vehicle. No problem. An hour later, Sfax, seemed pretty generic, urban and crappy, plus I was enjoying my book, so I didn't even leave the louage station and instead got in another minibus to the island Jerba. The drive was along the coast so you could almost always see the blue strip of the Med. sea to the left of the highway. This part of the country is very flat. It's a half desert half green landscape. After three hours driving, the road comes to an end at the water. You cross the water to Jerba by ferry. There are two docks and four boats running concurrently so it didn't take long for our minibus to advance to the front of the queue of traffic. Finally, in the island's main town, I found the Auberge de Jeunesse and payed by 6D for the night.