Ichkeul National Park

Visiting a site like Ichkeul National Park, where it's not clear what if anything you can visit, is a lot harder to plan by public transport than by car. Especially when you've just arrived in the country, aren't yet confident with louages and can't speak French. A staff member at our Tunis hostel recommended we request a permit at the Ministry of Tourism (he had unsuccessfully tried to visit within the last year or two), but other sources said a different department was required.

We decided to go ahead without getting a permit, as we weren't too keen on wasting time in government offices. At the last minute, we changed plans from taking a bus or louage to Mateur to taking a louage to Menzel Bourguiba. After all, the latter city was almost on the edge of the lake - our back-up option to tick off a visit.

After getting a louage from Tunis that left almost immediately, we arrived in Menzel Bourguiba before 10am. The first taxi driver said that he couldn't take us there, we had to get a taxi from Mateur, but the second taxi driver had no issues. We headed off with him, although thanks to our poor French (and he didn't speak any English) weren't quite sure of the price or if he would return for us.

The entrance pin next to P11 is not the real entry gate (although this gateway has a UNESCO sign), the real one is a few …

Visited December 2023

O! I see I was lucky enough to see some birds. And lucky enough to get inside the park when it was officially closed because of the reason that I was not able to understand although the man at the gate did his best to explain it to me in French when I was leaving the park… yes, when I was leaving the park after spending inside of the park many hours…

How to get to the park from Tunis? It seems to be a bit complicated, but it is not. From the northern bus station in Tunis (close to Bab Saadoun) take a louage (minibus share taxi) to Mateur (12 km from the entrance to the park) or to Manzel Bourguiba (14 km from the entrance to the park); from each of the cities you can take a taxi to the park (around 15 TD; the road from Mateur is in a very bad condition) or catch another louage that goes between these two cities and ask the driver to stop in Zarour; from Zarour you can walk to the gate of the park (6 km) but don’t forget that from the entrance to the lake and the ‘ecological museum’ (permanently closed) it is still more than 4 km. It is much better to take a taxi, it is faster, it is more comfortable, and you can benefit from the fact that the driver is a local guy and can convince the man at …

Ichkeul National Park is currently (May 2022) "closed" for unknown reasons – maybe they haven’t yet bothered to open up after Covid, or it’s because of domestic politics. It means that the official entrance with the ecomuseum is closed and access with a guide is only possible on prior request. But it is a large lake with all shorelands included in the core zone, so therefore never really inaccessible. Others visited it a few weeks ago by driving past the entrance and taking a walk from there.

I myself had come up with an even easier solution: I had seen on the map that road P11 to Bizerte runs partly along the lake. And I had to drive that P11 anyway on my move between the WHS of Dougga and my overnight stay Bizerte! In the town of Tinjah, you come closest to the shore. But a little earlier you have a good view from the road of the lake and the mountain, both called Ichkeul. It looked glittering at sunset.

Unfortunately, you don't get as close as I had thought: Tinjah is a reasonably large town, and its buildings block the view of the lake. At a bridge over a canal that connects Lake Ichkeul with that of Bizerte, I could have turned left – there the waterfront seems a bit more accessible. But because it was getting late and I wanted to be in Bizerte before dark, I just drove on.

The site was already …

Ichkeul is easy to reach from Tunis. Take the motorway to El Alia and then drive below Lake Bizerte on a 4 lane street almost till the park entrance. The entrance is marked on google maps as “l’entrée de park national de l’ichkeul”. From there it’s about 15mins on a semi paved road to reach the parking lot. There was a lot of construction work going on at the time of my visit (Mai 2018).

The park itself will not take your breath away. There is a nice road to walk around a small peninsula with a tiny and free eco museum on the top of the hill and a wooden bird observatory closer to the lake. I saw some ducks far away but not much else. Even if you are lucky enough to see some birds, for all Europeans this would be rather boring. Despite the flamingoes, the birds there are exactly those you can probably spot in your nearest lake all summer long. The landscape itself is also nothing special, but still nice enough to enjoy a little hiking and nature.

To my surprise, there were many other visitors, including a bus full of scholars and other locals.

Well, the place was visited by me in 1999 but I guess that most of the information is actual. The easiest way to get there is by car (I haven't even checked the possibility of local transportation there), from Tunis take road P7 to Mateur and then P11 to Tinia, after a while turn left on a non-sealed but stable road you can reach the gate of the park (there is an entrance fee for the car). Just around 2 km from the place there is an eco-museum (at the time of my visit it was free of charge) with local exhibitions. From that point you can take an easy by-the-lake walk on a local road (unsealed) round the lake. All that area together with a nearby Jabal (Mointain) Ichkeul and the marchlands with bulls (on a way to the park) are inscribed as World Heritage Site. More info:

www.eoearth.org/article/Ichkeul_National_Park,_Tunisia