THE REAL STAR WARS - TUNISIA
TUNISIA
is home to endless camels, market-traders - and Star Wars relics.
The north African country was the place where George Lucas first filmed the desert planet of Tatooine in 1976 as he made Star Wars. Many of the original sets were actually genuine homes where people lived, and still live today.
The locals dig huge holes in the ground where they set up home as it's cooler there than in the blistering surface heat. And it was here where Luke first said hi to Aunt Beru, where they sat down for breakfast to discuss the harvest and further on where Han told Greedo what he could do with his bounty.
I was fortunate enough to visit this mysterious country, and here is an account of what I found there.
There's no easy way to find the Star Wars universe, even if you go to Tunisia - Tatooine on Earth. The places where Star Wars was filmed are deep in the south, but all the tourism revolves around the more hospitable north, in places such as Tunis or Hamammet.
However there are ways to get there, and my way was a two-day excursion down to Matmata, and into the Sahara Desert. At Matmata we were shown the hills where hundreds of people still live, in caves carved out of the hillside.
Looking out it was humbling to think that in the 21st century there are people who live this way, not because they have no option, but because they choose to.
Driving along we could see holes in the landscape where these people lived, and we visited one such old lady who invited us, and several other coachloads in, to look around. Her home was surprisingly spacious, there was a bedroom with photographs of her family, and other rooms full of sheep skins or clothes.
Not all was quite as it seemed though as one room had a cassette player and as we left she shakily stuck out her paw to collect one dinah from everyone.
After driving for a few more minutes we came to a small town which our guide told us was where much of the original and new Star Wars movies had been filmed.
After 20 years it was hard to imagine too much of it as Tatooine but I took some photos, just in case it dawned on me later what I had been looking at.
All that changed at our lunchstop. As we sat down our guide asked if there were any Star Wars fans around. Myself and a few others sheepishly put our hands up and were told the hotel down the road was where many scenes were filmed.
Hotel Sidi Driss, Matmata -
aka the Lars' Homestead
Having gulped down lunch I raced down to find the hotel, its entrance almost hidden away from view. Down a small flight of stairs, I asked a worker if this was the place and he simply pointed and nodded.
As I walked out
into a courtyard area it became clear where I was, this was the place Aunt Beru first
yelled to Luke not to forget something or other. In one corner was the room where they had
their chat about whether Luke should join the academy or not, and from above you could
almost picture Mark Hamill looking down on the scene below.
It really was an amazing feeling, standing on the exact same spot where one of the biggest films ever was made, a spot millions if not billions of people have seen.