Day 1

On the first day we took delivery of our rental Renault 16 (we managed to get everywhere without a four-wheel-drive, thought it was close a few times), and started on our way from our hotel in the tourist area of Zarzis, just off the coast of Jerba Island. We should have made our first stop in Medenine, where quite a few scenes at the slave quarters were recorded, but unfortunately we didn't know that at the time. We also missed Ksar Ouled Soltane for the same reason, and who knows which Episode II sets. Looks like we're going to have to go back some time...

After Medenine (we came so near!), we took the main road to Matmata (the 104), but this road was so bad the bottom of our car got scraped a few times from all the stones that were lying on the road, and at places, the car shook so much the gear went spontaneously into neutral. So it might have been better to have taken the longer (but probably quicker) road via Gabes. But all the same, in the afternoon we arrived at Matmata (Matmata Ancient, not to be confused with Matmata Nouveau, which is a little more to the north), our first Star Wars stop.

Matmata's Sidi Driss hotel is one of the most famous Star Wars locations, functioning as the Lars Homestead interior. Since Gus and Pamela visited the hotel, Episode 2 was filmed there, and a sign has been put up to show visitors to the right part of the hotel. This time, most of the set dressing has been kept, and articles about the filming of Star Wars are displayed over the hotel's bar (even though the owner of the place still hasn't seen the movie, according to a recent article). Unfortunately the moisture vaporator in the center has disappeared, but plenty of other details were still there:

Down in the hotel, itself the illusion of being in Lars' homestead is quite strong, but when you go up to where Luke answered aunt Beru, it is clear that it is just an illusion: the hotel is located in the town (as this view from up-top shows), so there is no vast desert to be seen. The exterior shots were shot half a day's travel away, in a location near Nefta which we would visit the next day. In A New Hope, this discrepancy can be seen (see these two consequtive frames from the movie) by a slight continuity problem as the bushes that grow outside the hotel, and those that were planted at the exterior location in the desert do not match.

Leaving Matmata, we went on. Through Gabes and Kebili and the 60km road through the Chott el Jerid salt desert, where you can really look around you and see nothing but flat desert cut in two by the road. Only when you near the end of the Chott (at the side of Tozeur), you can start seeing a mountain range to your right. It is in this mountain range that the next location is found.

Several locations are found near the Sidi Bouhlel. We were able to get a good look around at the parking place on which the Jawa sandcrawler had been filmed so many years earlier. We were also able to go up alongside the ravine in the direction of the famous Mos Eisley overlook. It was unfortunately getting late, so we didn't have much time. The sun was setting over the wonderfull landscape. Looking back past the Sidi, you have a far view over the Chott. Below, running up to the famous overlook is the ravine in which several other scenes were shot. We could see the small road along which Luke speeds when he is first spotted by the sand people, but we didn't have any more time to go down there: the sun was setting fast, and we wanted to reach civilisation again before it really got dark. We knew however that we would pass this location again on our way back the next day, so we hoped we'd have enough time then to come back and see some more of the canyon itself.

With that, it was time to drive to our hotel in Tozeur and take a refreshing dip in the hotel's pool. And then it was off to bed early, since we had agreed to meet our guide the next morning at 7am, so we could go into the desert for the prequel sets before it really got warm.