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Snow and troglodyte home
The snow around this troglodyte home has almost melted as the sun sets.

Snow in the Sahara and Star Wars

 

Who would believe it? It snowed on us in the Sahara!

Tunisia 13/ Feb/1979 to 20/ Feb /1979

18 February 1979

 Whist we were preparing to camp at a small village, with some strange houses. At the time I did not know that it was so strange for it to snow. Nightime temperatures frequently fall below zero. This article shows how rare it was.  Another confirms this. (Sorry, at time of writing the website does not display correctly, arrow right to another article on that website and then arrow back. That should have sorted it.) The only recorded time it snowed in the Sahara lowlands was apparently the 18th February 1979. I recall that we were in Tunisia in February, and this confirms that the 18th was the night we camped in Matmata. You can still see the remnants of the snow in the photo.

I seem to recall that this was the first time some of the team had seen snow falling. It was a proper snow storm, not just a little flurry which barely settled. We had all seen snow before on this trip, in the Alps, but not blowing in the wind, reducing visibility, perhaps even blizzard like. Only lasted for a short while but it was special.

Now I find out that Star Wars was there before us.

Other film haunts include the lunar-like desert-scape and subterranean settlement of Matmata, a village seen in the very first Star Wars film – Episode IV: A New Hope. As an otherworldly labyrinth of rock-hewn troglodyte dwellings looped around a deep-sunken courtyard Matmata is deserving of international stardom as an exotic “planet” found on earth. After checking out the Stars Wars props in the desert, movie fans can stay in Luke Skywalker’s home - now the Hotel Sidi Driss – where a Star Wars bar is crammed with film set memorabilia. 

The inhabitants of the village seemed very friendly and were happy to accommodate our staying in their village. Some in the andjacent traditional Berber troglodyte underground building. Perhaps, with hindsight, it was partly due to the western exposure from the film crew. There was no evidence of the tourism which has developed since the Star Wars link, added to the area generally becoming more accessible. 

How things have changed. Read the Dec 2015 article in the Guardian, Star Wars abandoned Tunisian locations in pictures.

Another claim to fame now, Matmata and the nearby Toujane have both been used in some of the Call of Duty computer games.

 

To see the photos of this article in HD follow this link to my photo gallery site. Click here.

 

 Map of North Africa approximate route zoomed in to Matmata. Zoom in more to see the troglodyte underground buildings. 

 

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News Flash

Repairs following hosting move

 

Spending some time this May repairing links and photos damaged in the move to the new website host. Particularly the articles transferred form the previous travelogue to this, the current Travel website. 

Change of host Sept 2023

 

Change of host Sept 2023

 

In the begining of August 2023 I transfered my ivanhurst.me.uk sites, including this one from 123-reg to IONOS. It was meant to be a simple task. However, that was to to be the case. The reason for the move was primarily the hugh increase in price that 123-reg was applying regarding email boxes. Previously, the upto 500 of the boxes were included in the various hosting packages I had. Now they were going to charge for each mailbox based on size, and as far as I could make out, this was going to cost me nearly £2,000. This was not acceptable, and I did not get satisfactory answers from support. So I turned off all the auto renews and stated to move sites and domains accross to IONOS.

Travel data problems

 

Travel data problems

This is where it starts to get a little technical.

The site is built on a content management system, CMS, using Joomla. Joomla is moving forward and version 3.10.?? is being discontinued. Future developments are for version 4.??

Similarly, PHP 7 is being replaced with PHP 8.

Part of the migration is relatively simple, I have already changed to a new template which works on the new platforms.

However, some of the helper applications, which work within Joomla are not yet ready.

Fabrik is one of those applications, if fact a significant 'Joomla Custom Website Application Builder'.

Refresh 2021

 

Site refresh Easter 2021

I decided to give the site a bit of a refresh over Easter 2021 and install a new template and some additional functions. One of the things I didn't like about the old site was the delay in text appearing which probably meant some people left before the content appeared. This has been disabled now.