The El Jem Amphitheatre has been on ones bucket list since first researching Tunisia. There are two ways of travelling to said place from Sousse; you can either catch the train which is in no way accessible to an electric wheelchair (and a little unreliable so I have been told) or by road. Now, if you have been reading ones blog for a number of years, you will have become accustom to my fascination with trains hence it may surprise you that I went with the latter mode of transport. Granted that one could have easily caught the train in the manual wheelchair, however I wished to prove that anyone in an electric wheelchair can visit El Jem with a little assistance.
As I mentioned previously, Lotus Royal Move are providing us with accessible transportation to and from the airport. During our email exchanges, I enquired whether it would be possible for them to transport us to El Jem for the day (which it was) and if it would be OK to source a portable ramp as the Amphitheatre contains a large amount of steps! The culmination of all this ended with a day trip to El Jem with said accessible van, driver and a portable ramp.
The portable ramp method of accessing the Amphitheatre could have gone one of two ways as I don’t believe that it had been attempted previously, especially with an electric wheelchair but it WORKED like a dream (quite proud of oneself now!)…
Of course, it is impossible to access the upper levels of the structure without a proper lift, however one could still access a large proportion of the site…
The added bonus of having a portable ramp to hand (carried by our kind driver!) was that one could dive into any restaurant with Superbunny to avoid the looming downpour!
Tomorrow afternoon, we plan to catch a conventional taxi (leaving Superbunny in the hotel room) to Monastir which is home to the oldest Ribat built by the Arabs and also the former filmset of Monty Python’s, Life of Brian!