So in April I went to Tunisia mostly to visit Original Star Wars Locations (no prequel spots). It was absolutely life changing and I would recommend it to anyone. I have been dying to show you all some of the pics and tell you about it.

Id like to first say that the Luke Farmboy I brought is mine from when I was a boy. I have had him for 38 years or so. It was really cool to take him there and have him be where we always pretended to be. It was actually emotional to look at him on the sites. I mean I helped him actually go to Anchorhead (no Power converters for sale, sorry Luke). The other figs are beaters I brought to fill in, but I should say that C3PO is my GFs (her fav character) who came with and loved seeing all the places she knows very little about).

Getting to the sites in a rented car was great to see the country. The whole country felt like a being on a planet far far away. The people there were all very nice and the weather was hot, must be crazy hot in summer. I rode a camel in the Sahara desert, I wore shorts for the first time in 10 years, and I feel very lucky to be who I am. Most the people we met didnt know the movie let alone seen it. When locals saw my toys they thought I was a crazy eccentric North American. I dont think too many people in Tunisia have their childhood toys, let alone toy collections. I could go on and on but Id be happy to answer any questions about the trip.

PLEASE check out the trip pics on my photobucket page.
https://s16.photobucket.com/user/eldubs/library/All%20Star%20Wars/SW%20Tunisia?sort=2&page=1
Too many pics to post each so heres just a couple for the sort of interested or lazy.
Bens Hermitage:


Anchorhead:

Cantina and Stormtrooper Check point, Mos Eisley:


Lars homestead Interior:

Lars Homestead ext:

Jawa Rock:

That is awesome. These appear the same as they were in the film. Are they maintained as a tourist area or something or just no one uses them anymore?

That's fantastic Lee.

I'll have to check out your pictures later tonight, when I have some more time. I'm off to feed the vultures (aka kids).

Well trappedtexan...
I dont think most of these sites have anyone official looking after it. Two exceptions.
Bens is just a hut on the side of the sea, no sign or anything. Seems abandoned. Maybe a place for fisherman to dock boats?

Anchorhead is a Mosque, again no Star Wars sign. You should be a little respectful there. People use the building still.

Both the Cantina and Stormtrooper wall are just in a town, no ones knows what your talking about if you ask and again no signs. The cantina is falling apart, its seemed abandoned. The wall is used as a wall still. Sort of a fence to someones property. I met a guy who was fixing a moped in a garage across from the wall, he had no idea about Star Wars

Lars home ext. has a foundation of people who met online who try to maintain it but its hard in the bed of a salt lake. When i was there it was actually flooded. Theres a sign there but nothing on the highway to tell you where to turn off to find it.

Lars int. is a hotel and is kind of the most touristy of all the places. It cost $.50 to see it, but it has set pieces left over from the prequel. It looks alot like the orig. movie. Who ever owns it does little to maintain the set and i was sad about that. You can stay in the hotel, which are basically small holes in the ground. I wouldnt recommend it even just to say i slept in lukes house. Lars dinner table is there which is cool. I dont think the SW table cloth was in the movies. He has some pictures up of random SW stuff, mostly from magazines all over the place. Its literally a hole in the ground like in the movie. Theres a small museum in behind it where they show you what the home would have looked like as a traditional Tunisian home. Each room was cool like air conditioning but they were holes in the ground so. There were a lot of these holes around but i dont think people live in them anymore.

The canyon where the Jawa rock is ect is just a canyon. Again no signs saying Star Wars this way with an arrow. They also filmed some of Raiders of the lost arc there. Also a mosque near by, and i got the impression it was a place for teens to go party or to go for a romantic yet rocky walk.

I had to look up all the places online and use GPS and other maps to find them. Not too hard but would never had found them by asking around. Some people who work with tourist know the sites on some basic level but regular people have no idea the movie exists.
Im adding a few more pics to my photo bucket but again please check it out.

very cool it's a shame no one really cares about that area like we do.

wow sounds amazing , I cant believe it still looks like that ... what great pictures thanks for sharing

Thank you for sharing your pictures Lee
Did you collect a souvenir- jar of sand?

Thanks for sharing and I'd love to go one day.

Thanks for checking it out everyone.
AJ - I got a rock from the Jawa rock same color. I will put it in my fish aquarium. I grabbed some cool shells from around Bens place.

Thanks for taking and sharing all those pics, Lee. It's great to see what's survived out there over the years.
And great you got some action figure shots too

Thanks!
Like I sort of said before, it was cool to see the figures there because it where I always imagined them to be. It was a little surreal.

Great photos!!!!! Thanks for sharing. Love the photos of figs at the locations. I took a selfie with Ben at Ben's house also!

Yes Tunisians don't quite get the SW craze, it was never big there and I doubt they even had the figures on sale there. I felt like a goose taking photos of my figures at the various spots.

You have been there also? Feel free to share the photos. Surprised that they don't know much about Star Wars since it was filmed there. Seems they would want to capitalize on that as a tourist type attraction.

Hey Brian. My wife is Tunisian so we go there a few times a year. I've only been to the SW locations twice though - on Djerba and way down south to see the Lars Homestead and some other nearby locations.

They really don't do much to capitalise on the movies, except maybe for a few people who organise some tours. Tunisia is pretty disorganised with these kind of things, shame really. There are no signs saying they are SW filming sites (for example the cantina was super hard to find). The locations from the prequels down south are pretty run down. Loads of tourists though. The Lars Homestead looks great but only because of the Euro lads who went down there and fixed it up. The cantina looks terrible and is full of rubbish. The other locations on Djerba look good though because they are being used for other things.

We're actually off there again next week for a week.

Rather than upload photos, check out some of the photos in these blog articles I wrote if you have time. Really is a stunning place. Shame about the recent terrorist attacks but as far as I know the SW locations have not been affected.

http://vintagestarwarscollectors.com/the-lars-homestead-in-tunisia/

http://vintagestarwarscollectors.com/our-visit-to-star-wars-filming-locations-in-djerba-tunisia/

Just had a look at the blog posts Christian. You took some superb photos!
Enjoy your trip next week and let us know if you post up any more pics.

Thanks for sharing Bobby. I make an attempt to read your blog on occasion when you post in one of the forums about an interview and have linked to the JoeY interview down in the outer realm section. I obviously need to make a greater attempt as I discovered one of our very own devs for the site had an interview on there. (for those that may have missed it like me Jay -Psybertech was interviewed on here at: http://vintagestarwarscollectors.com/collector-snapshot-12-jay-williams/ )

Glad to see you on our board sharing and please feel free to post up links here in the vintage chat sections to your blog from time to time. I know I completely missed Jay's interview somehow so who knows what else I missed.

Bobbybobs I should thank you it was party your pics and blog that inspired me to go. So thank you. I took my figs cuz i wanted to be like you. Really Thanks.

Many people speak French and some German there but English is rare. When I went to see lars homestead we had a guy drive us, he spoke German, mine is terrible. As im running around like a school kid taking tons of photos he starts asking what im doing and the look on his face as he tried to grasp the concept I wanted to come to this spot because of a toy from a movie i got when i was 3.
A. it was obvious he had NO toys from his childhood in his home. I wondered if he had a picture of himself as a baby even.
B. it was the first time i felt like a rich eccentric North American flashing money around, or more accurately toys.

The trip was great for putting into perspective how amazing NA can be to live in and also terrible.

Hey thanks guys! Glad you enjoyed the articles.

I should share more interviews here. I'll definitely start sharing the full length ones again. I haven't posted for a while on TIG and am mainly on RS and to a lesser extent SWFUK. And with FB these days it's hard to keep up. An embarrassment of riches I guess. I do love TIG though and some of my best mates in the hobby are regulars here.

Christian

aussiejames wrote:

Did you collect a souvenir- jar of sand?

Better not be a Jar-Jar of sand


Great pics Lee (and Christian), must be so cool to be there!

DarthBerizing wrote:

aussiejames wrote:

Did you collect a souvenir- jar of sand?

Better not be a Jar-Jar of sand

Thanks DB. (eye roll) You remember I do comedy right? soooooooo bad. I would expect that kind of thing from Chickenshack... but you sir?

Sometimes the jokes just right themselves!

Really enjoyed seeing the pics you guys took, thanks for sharing.

Wish I could go as well with the familly. Though I spent a few holidays there a few years ago, the region has now become unstable, not really dangerous but I don't feel at ease.

This is really cool! And it's awesome how you brought some souvenirs back home with you.