Tozeur & the Lure of the Oasis
(transfer time from Tozeur Airport 5 minutes)

| This is a Hedfi Consulting Partners MUST SEE Destination! |

Fed by hundreds of gushing underground streams, this oasis is a magical spot endowed with refreshing orchards and dashed with the green of palm trees laden with large golden dates. Here you will feel a million miles away from life as you know it, in a paradise setting, where through man's patience, life was born in the heart of the desert. Situated on the edge of the Sahara, Tunisia's hospitable oases provide a thoroughly fulfilling experience.

Tozeur's palm forest is Tunisia's largest oasis, covering over 2,500 acres. It is the raison d'être of this pleasant market town with fancy brickwork the color of powdered ginger. The old quarter's sandy lanes lead to buildings dating back to the 14th century, and a small museum explains the history of the oasis. Outside the medina are a wealth of handicraft shops, cafés and restaurants. A walk through the beautiful Paradise Gardens, laid out in 1935, is a must. Here, it is extraordinary to see flowers like hollyhocks, daisies, roses and violets growing alongside bougainvillea, henna plants and pomegranates. Hotels in Tozeur are located in the "touristic zone" of Tozeur and the bustle of the town are only a short taxi, or caleche (horse-driven carriages) ride away.

What to see

Tozeur and Nefta are the two main towns in the region of the Jerid (a name which means "palm tree country"). The towns have a rich history marked by the wealth brought about by caravan commerce, wool and silk weaving, and date production. In the old quarters of these towns, the narrow alleyways, the high walls and the arched passageways make up an enchanting maze of light and darkness, whilst the town's architecture, some of which is original, uses bricks made of clay and sand to produce 3-D designs typical of the area.

In the shade of the vast forests of palm trees which make up the town's oasis, fruit trees and flowers have been planted in paradisiacal fashion, making Tozeur's palm grove, in particular, a slice of paradise. Here and there, gleaming-white mausoleums can be seen protruding from the tree tops, especially in the great marabou town of Nefta, which has about 100 of them. In the souks the unique handicraft will evoke the region's reliance on palm trees: the trunk is used to build doors and frameworks, the leaves are woven into baskets and mats and branches are carved into most varied items.

• In the main town of Tozeur, the Dar Cherait museum is an absolute must. It is home to an extraordinary collection of costumes and traditional objects and its Ali Baba Park will whisk you away to the fairytale world of The Thousand and One Nights.
• In the Paradise Zoo, you can admire some of the desert's natural inhabitants – fennecs, gazelles, sidewinder snakes, lizards, moufflons. and numerous other Saharan species.

Where to go

Oases and mountains seem an unlikely combination, but in Tunisia three villages have grown up in the shade of date palms perched on arid, ochre-colored mountainside. The resilience of the palm trees and the resourcefulness of the Saharan people in making the most of a simple spring are borne out in three villages in particular.

• Chebika, the refreshing water rushes over an imposing waterfall to form a 'wadi' surrounded by palm trees at the bottom of a gorge;
• Tamerza looks barricaded by its mountain range, as if suspended on the side of a vast canyon with commanding views over the vast plains as far as the Chott and the sand hills. The old village now abandoned, stretches the length of the palm grove and is surrounded by stunning waterfalls.
• Mides is the western-most and arguably the most impressive of these oases and overlooks a breathtakingly high canyon.

Tozeur Oasis Golf Course

Tozeur just recently opened its new Oasis Golf Course. It sits along the palm forest and overlooks the Saharan Desert. This dreamy location is conveniently near the resort zone.

History

The oasis of now known as Tozeur started when a group of nomads from Sudan trekked all the way to this gorgeous oasis. The family was called "Chebbi" and decided to station in Tozeur. Not too much longer another group of nomads arrived in Tozeur. They came all the way from Yemen and today we know the family as "Hedfi." Irrigation of the oasis rivers was long contested between the families and led to partitioning of the streams for each family.

The Berbers, punics and romans each succeeded one another in this beautiful fertile oasis sitting on the Chott El Jerid and bordering the Sahara.

Tozorous, as the Romans called it, became Tozeur in the 7th century. You can see traces of the Romans in the Bled El Hadhar mosque, as it once was a Roman Basilica.

It was with the arrival of the Hafsides in the 14th century that the city began to grow and people began to comglomerate around the old city. In 1952, El Hadef introduced a new structure to the city, again transforming it. The souk was built around the new neighborhood, Ouled El Hadef. Yet forever Tozeur would be called "forest" by its habitants since it was born from the palm forest and was developed around it. This small oasis town evolved into an economic and social center for the entire Tunisian south.

Entering the 19th century, Tozeur has made its mark as an important center of transsaharan commerce, as it is almost exclusively based around agriculture, well known for its production of deglet nour dates.

In the 1940-50s, many of the town north of Tozeur, including Metlaoui, were developed for mining of several minerals.

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Saharan Desert

Amid southern Tunisia's magnificent rugged scenery lie fertile oasis towns and villages: fascinating places to soak up desert warmth when it's cooler by the coast.

The Tunisian Sahara is far more varied and beautiful than you might imagine and most of it is accessible by road: good roads which easily negotiate dry wadis, dramatic roughly-chiselled heights or wide, undulating landscapes dotted with tenacious scrub. Here, goats and camels graze and, in rocky crevices, small gazelles and long-eared desert foxes hide. Often, tufts of yellow grass create a haze of subtle colour, while by the roadside spiky agaves and pale blue desert flowers bloom.

The Chott el Jerid is something else: wastes of impacted salt left from some long-ago sea. Even with the odd long-distance lorry thundering by on the highway, the Chott seems a place forsaken – until you come to a roadside shack selling soft drinks and crystalline "desert roses". Then, there is the dune desert with sand as fine as flour, great sweeps and troughs of it, the wind ruffling the surface into a kaleidoscope of patterns – picture-book Sahara where camels are the only transport.

In between all of this are the oasis towns and villages where you can stay in top-class comfort yet have an entrée to the spectacle of the wilderness and its ancient Berber settlements. Since time immemorial desert peoples have managed to tame the Sahara, tapping into underground streams to work the miracle of irrigation. In the oases, vast tracts of date palms flourish, beneath them oranges, olives and apricots, while at the lowest level cabbages, lettuces, tomatoes and onions thrive. Where there is water, there is life. And in Tozeur, Tamerza and Ksar Ghilane, there is also the good life.

The road to Tamerza

It's an hour's drive from Tozeur to Tamerza: a fascinating route, at first straight as a runway, passing windbreaks made from dried palm fronds, irrigation systems like Shinto temple gates and green gashes of smaller oases. After the Chott, the road winds up through stunning terrain towards the Chebika oasis, its pretty waterfall, café stop and shops. Finally you come to the remote mountain oasis town of Tamerza. An easy but memorable drive, affording some of the best scenery in the country. Tamerza's spectacular location – seen in the Star Wars film, Episode 1 The Phantom Menace – and that of the nearby small village of Midès, presiding over its canyon and cascades, are truly unforgettable.