Motorhome Costs – Tunisia

The cost of our ferry was increased a lot by booking a cabin both ways, this was so Charlie didn’t have to go into kennels. I’ve included a cost per day minus the ferry and insurance and these were quite a considerable cost for the trip and if we had stayed longer the cheaper fuel, food etc would have brought the cost per day down even further.

There are a few motorways in Tunisia, but we mainly stuck to the other roads as they were more interesting and we weren’t in a hurry to get anywhere. That said, they are very cheap and you can eat up the miles on smooth wide roads. Also just after the toll booths as you join the motorway there are free public loos that you can use to empty your cassette.

Fuel prices are fixed across all petrol stations. When we were there it was 1.090TD for diesel, 1.300TD for diesel 50 and 1.470TD for petrol. This meant that diesel was around €0.55 per litre, so be sure to arrive with little in your tank and leave with it full. There are UK/European style petrol stations in every main town and often more than one. Dotted everywhere along the side of the road (increasing in frequency as you reach the Libyan border) are small stacks of plastic containers filled with fuel. These are brought over from Libya as fuel is much cheaper there. We saw many locals filling up as these ad-hoc stations, but we never did as the fuel from the reputable stations was so cheap for us.

LPG is available in a few of the bigger towns, usually in a station on the outskirts, often an Agil or Total station – keep your eyes peeled. You’ll need the French style adapter to fill up. However, don’t wait until you have almost run out – we tried to fill up on our last day as LPG prices were fixed at 0.659TD (€0.36 per litre) but station had run out and the delivery truck hadn’t arrived.

Wild camping is allowed in Tunisia, however on our second night we were woken by a policeman who advised us to move next to his station (it was midnight and that incident put the heebeegeebees up us). When we were in the country it was the second anniversary of the revolution and Islamic extremists had recently set fire to a mausoleum close to where the policeman had asked us to move from – so out timing wasn’t great. We spoke to others who had slept in the same car park a week or two before with no problems.

After that we felt uneasy wild camping, so we stayed at Marinas, hotel car parks, youth hostels and campsites – all of which had varying costs and levels of facilities – see our list to places to overnight. We finally got up the courage to wild camp on a the west coast of the island of Jerba and experienced no problems, so managed a couple more nights before we left.

We stocked up on food, wine and beer before we left (around €100) and again when we got back (about €90) which isn’t included in the above. There are small shops, butchers and markets in every town and village but choice is often limited.  There is a limit on the amount of wine and beer you can import, but we weren’t checked at the port, and our stash was quite well hidden. We saw empty beer cans all over the place, but could not track down where the locals were buying it from, so once our supply had gone we drank out a couple of times or went without.

To keep in touch we spent €42.72 on a 3G dongle from Orange, which gave us 7.5GB of data (unlimited between 10pm and 8am) for a month and then €12 on a further month of data. See our article on internet access in Tunisia.