Djerba to Tataouine & Chenini

This is the half of the south that is not sand. If a review says a Djerba desert tour was “mostly rocks”, this is the tour that review is about — and nothing was mis-sold. The Dahar is desert. It is a stone plateau cut by valleys, and the things built on it are the reason to come.

Tataouine

A market town on the plateau’s edge, and the one that lent its name to a planet. The market is the first long stop on most itineraries — an hour, roughly, and haggling is the expected register rather than an optional flourish. It is a working town rather than a sight, which is the appeal.

Around it stand the ksour: fortified communal granaries, their storage cells — the ghorfas — stacked three and four storeys around a courtyard. Ksar Ouled Soltane is the most complete of them. Ksar Hadada, north of the town, is the one confirmed as a Star Wars set, standing in for the Mos Espa slave quarters in The Phantom Menace; the hand-painted board at its gate still credits George Lucas and dates the shoot to July 1997.

Chenini

The centrepiece of the day and the reason to wear proper shoes. Chenini is a Berber village built in tiers up a ridge, with granary cells cut into the rock above the houses and a white mosque on the crest. Around forty Amazigh families still live in it.

The guided walk runs thirty to forty minutes, and it is genuinely steep — loose in places, uneven throughout, and in full sun. It is the only demanding part of an otherwise gentle day, and it is where the tour earns its rating.

Which tour to book

The Tataouine, Chenini and Berber day tour is the pick: $57, 4.6 out of 5 from 289 guests, pickup anywhere in Djerba or Zarzis at 7am, and — unusually — entry to Ksar Hadada is included rather than left to you at the gate. Lunch and half a litre of water per person are in the price too.

The full-day guided Tataouine and Chenini tour covers the same ground for the same $57 with a tourism-office licensed driver and guide, plus a local guide at Chenini who takes you through the oil mill and the mosque. It stays on asphalt the whole way, which makes it the better booking for anyone who does not want a day of track.

If you want the ksour with the film angle foregrounded, the Star Wars and sunset day adds Guermassa, the salt lake and a dune sunset for the same price, and the private tour at $255 per group of two includes three site entries and adds Matmata.

What this day does not have

Dunes. There is no sand on this itinerary and no hot spring, and adding either means four hours more driving. If the picture in your head is a camel on a dune crest, you want the Ksar Ghilane route instead.

What you get in exchange is an earlier finish, a later start, a shorter day, less money, and the older and more surprising half of the region. Most people who do both say the stone was the one they did not expect to prefer.