Tunisia and Star Wars - Ong Jemel

If you know a little bit more than the average person about Star Wars you would know that Tunisia is the stand in for the desert Planet of Tatooine (which by the way is a town in Tunisia, spelt Tataouine quite close to where Luke's house is in Episode IV) so it's unsurprisingly that they make a bit of a deal about it for the tourists.

That is how we found ourselves in Ong Jemel which is at the edge of the Sahara desert. Now Ong Jemel is the name of the place in Tunisia but you might know it as Mos Espa Space port. Now this isn't actual real old berber buildings as other filming locations (like Luke's house and some other parts of Mos Espa) this one is an actual set, built on a salt plain about a 20 min from Tozeur - we actually came in over the desert in a 4WD but drove out over a paved road (although covered in sand).

This was built for the much maligned Episode one - It literally stands in the middle of nowhere, traditional Berber look to the mud houses, and wooden 'technological looking towers.

Like most things in Tunisia we were the other tourists here, that is our 4WD in the foreground and out guide - Imed in the hat. Of course there are locals who have set up stalls selling souvenirs so it's a little like a town.

There a about 40 or 50 of these 'houses' sort of like a city backlot.

Walk into them and you realise that none of it is real - it's testament to the dry climate that 20 odd years later this is all still here.

This thing is the 'technology' of long long ago - very similar to the props designed in the 1970's in Luke's childhood home (which is on the other side of Tunisia and we visited a few days after this)

I also love the 'blast door' look of on these 'houses', I'm sure in the movie these open as if my magic, but of course they are pretty filmsy wood.

So there we go, at one time Liam Neelson, Natalie Portman and others walked through these same sets that we now walked in. I'm not a massive Star Wars fan, but I have to say it was pretty cool.