Matmata

Matmata, home to the underground troglodyte dwellings of Tunisia and so many Star Wars memories is quite the place. We drove there in the middle of the night, not wanting to pay the exorbitant rates of the hotels in Tataouine. We stayed in the Hotel Sidi Driss, the former set of Luke Skywalker’s uncle’s and aunt’s house in episode IV. The hotel is completely underground in pit dwellings. We slept in two rooms – one for girls and one for guys – beneath the ground. The rooms were actually caves dug into the earth and whitewashed.

The men’s cave room.

A very ill Jeff.

The view outside of our cave room.

In the middle of a Star Wars set. Decay has set in after several decades of neglect. It is expensive to try to keep sets designed to last for a few weeks of shooting in one piece after so many years. Especially in the harsh environment of the Tunisian south.

Mike sure looks good in his makeshift blanket-towel.

Looking down into one of the pits of the hotel. The rooms are built into the pit wall faces. In the winter the rooms stay warm and in the summer they stay cool from the insulation effects of the earth. One must hope that it doesn’t rain very often, however, or else the whole structure will sluff in on itself!

At breakfast. Our government minders are in the background. It seems that the Tunisian government either thought a bunch of Americans in a bus were either a security threat to the nation or someone in the south was a threat to us. In each police jurisdiction, another set of G-men would trade out with the previous set to follow us around. Later on, this came in handy.