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Somewhere north of the tiny town of Ajim, on the not-much-touristed coast of the Tunisian island of Jerba, the wheels of my rented scooter ground harder and harder to make less and less progress up a road that had finally devolved, I had to admit, into nothing more than sand.

I decided that right there was as good a place as any to stop and rethink my approach to exploring the exotic world of Arabic-speaking North Africa. And I had a lot to think about. Long before I ended up on that scooter, I had yearned for adventure in the romantic East. I had failed to find it.

During a college exchange in England, for example, I spent my vacations making the obligatory whirlwind Eurail tours. Although I loved everything I saw, I also learned one of the dispiriting truths about the modern world: that “foreign” is a lot less foreign than it used to be. I never felt more than an hour away from a Big Mac. High-school French proved almost depressingly useful in picking out key nouns in signage. And though a night in the Milan train station was an interesting story for my roommate, it lacked a certain alien frisson.

On the other hand, some of my classmates planned trips to Istanbul and even Morocco. Places with signs in languages you couldn't decode in a month. Places with white domes. Places where the people wore robes instead of pants. I was thrilled and not a little frightened by my friends' audacity – and when some sort of visa problem or other travel tangle prevented them from making their trip, that only cemented the foreignness of their destinations. That's Asia, Africa – it's … far off. You can't just get on a plane and go there.

Except that now you can. Flights to major cities in Tunisia and even recently opened Libya are no harder to arrange than a trip to Paris. A tunnel linking Spain and Morocco beneath the Strait of Gibraltar is in the works. And new quality hotels are popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain in Marrakesh and Tunis – to say nothing of resorts such as Pansea Ksar Ghilane, which features air-conditioned linen tents on the edge of the Sahara.

All of which explains why these destinations have become something of a convenient, sexy tourist magnet in recent years: Tourism in Morocco is up 13 per cent over 2006; Tunisia was on the 2008 travel hot lists on TripAdvisor, in The New York Times and in Luxury Travel & Style magazine.

Of course, it should come as no surprise these countries are hot. They're not just mysterious and exciting – they're in Africa, on the fringe of the Sahara. Hot is what they're all about. Yet if you look at a map, you may be surprised to see that they're every bit as Mediterranean as African in geography. And while you can wander an ancient medina filled with genuine rug merchants, in an era when Grandma waves from the Great Wall of China on her Christmas cards, you will probably not be the only tourist.

And that leaves something to be desired. That feeling of being truly far away, for a start. The sort of experience my university friends were chasing – back when there were still foreign places in the world and North Africa was genuinely among them. Which is the kind of thinking, of course, that got me up to my axles in the sand of Jerba, where the tourists don't go, the locals don't smile quite as broadly, and the adventure starts to feel a little more adventurous than you might have planned for.

BENZENE-FUELLED ADVENTURE

The plan, in fact, was to stay in a mainstream Tunisian resort on the northeastern shore of Jerba. When I set out from North Carolina on my own – at a time when the Arab world was not known for friendliness toward Americans – I had allowed a tourist agency to book me right in the zone touristique on a Mediterranean beach. To be exact, at a down-at-heels Club Med-style resort (it sat between two actual Club Meds) called the Melia Djerba Menzel.

Don't do it. With its multiple swimming pools, ratty palm umbrellas and legions of dour Northern European guests, the resort could have been anywhere. And to call the zone touristique a Disneyfied North Africa is an insult even to Disney. Even if you stay in a genuine Club Med, or one of the many other high-quality resorts here, you're still insulated from reality – and isn't a different reality why you go to a place like Tunisia rather than the same old destinations?

Within a day I agreed with Odysseus, who famously resisted the lassitude of the Lotus-eaters who supposedly lived on Jerba: Idling away your time is no way to live. Renting a scooter seemed like the cheapest way to see the island, and I didn't regret it.

Jerba is small enough that a day on a scooter will give you time to see just about everything. But much more important, a scooter gets you out among the people. The rental place will put you on a bike with the gauge on “E,” so your first job will be to find some gas – they call it “benzene” – and you'll stop at any of the places along the road with a simple, old-style gravity pump outside.

When I did so a woman came out, wrapped in a black tunic – traditional Berber garb. People all over the island dress in similar tunics, and I was told that a tunic's colour and decoration identifies its wearer by village and marital status. At any rate, once a smiling woman wrapped in a Berber tunic has emerged from an earthen building into the blinding African sun to fill your scooter with benzene, you are manifestly not in Kansas any more.

What's more, annoyed glares from pedestrians I passed soon woke me up to the fact that I was the only single-occupant scooter on the road. The light bulb went off and the next time I saw a pedestrian I slowed down and pulled over. He hopped on, shouted “Merci!” and off we went, having a wonderful shouted conversation in that old high school French.

Five minutes away from the zone touristique and my flight from Disneyfication was complete. I was, finally, in Tunisia, the mysterious, adventurous, Arab northern rim of Africa.

WILD, BUT NOT TOO WILD

That also means the desert. Once you're away from the tourists, you stop focusing on the Mediterranean and begin looking toward the sand, which is kind of why you came. Jerba has plenty of date, olive and palm trees, but it's mostly flat and arid. Crossroads towns are dominated by whitewashed earthen mosques, which you are welcome to look at from outside but by no means invited to visit.

Markets also pop up in town after town. The best is in Houmt Souk, the island's only large centre and an Arab scene straight off a postcard: a maze of whitewashed walls and pale blue doors and shutters, as well as the requisite spaghetti tangle of passages in the central market and a traditional qaysarriya, or roofed bazaar. Here's where you can buy your pottery or carpet, your leather goods or jewellery. It's small enough that you almost can't get lost – a nice thing when you're adventuring.

The rest of Jerba is more of those tiny towns, always reached by a road that's always at least considering turning back into sand – like the road north of Ajim, which actually did, and which lent a nice, neat boundary to the limit of my adventuring. Too crazy I didn't care to get, so I wrestled the scooter back onto more solid ground without incident and returned to the rental agency.

And that may perfectly represent not just the island of Jerba but the whole of Tunisia, an almost perfect combination of adventure and safety. The sands of Jerba were desert enough for me, but had I wanted more, a quick bus trip to Douz would have put me at the gateway to the Sahara for camel rides, hikes or oasis visits.

Houmt Souk was nice, but for more adventure I visited the mile-long Medina in the capital city of Tunis, a teeming market where there's no reason to believe you can't get snatched up, thrown into a basket and end up in a lengthy Indiana Jones subplot. Though only if that's your goal. Since my goal was only to believe that could happen, I was perfectly thrilled when it did not.

More likely around Tunis you'll visit the ruins of Carthage, the Zitouna Mosque and the fabulous Bardo museum (housed in an old palace whose Moorish architecture will never let you forget that you're in North Africa, not Europe) – none of which you're likely to find hanging around less-adventurous destinations.

Because of my reliance on the zone touristique I never got to stay in one of Jerba's famous fondouks – old caravanserais, where caravans would stop for the night, that have been turned into small, cheap hotels. Just the same, in Tunis my hotel (the Maison Dorée, if you like cheap and kind of freaky) featured a dim interior and a dreamy, smoky bar, lacking only a loitering Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre for the full noir effect.

Then again, those guys probably weren't there because they belong, after all, in Casablanca. So maybe my next stop is Morocco. I'm sure there's plenty of mystery and adventure there. If you know where to steer your scooter.

Scott Huler is a writer and broadcaster based in Raleigh, N.C. His latest book is No Man's Lands: One Man's Odyssey through the Odyssey.

Pack your bags

GETTING THERE

Flights from Toronto and Vancouver to Tunis can be booked on Air France (www.airfrance.com) via Montreal and Paris; Alitalia (www.alitalia.com) flies to Tunis from Toronto via Rome. To get to Midoun or Houmt Souk in Jerba, hop on a plane on Tunisair (www.tunisair.com) and take a taxi into town for a few dinars. For transportation from Tunis to Duoz, the gateway to the Sahara, grab an intercity SNTRI bus from the station south of town (not 15 minutes' walk from the medina).

TUNIS

Villa Didon Carthage 216 71 73 34 33; www.villadidon.com. If you're looking for a plush retreat, you will likely be directed to the city's newest luxury

hotel – with rooms in a stunning modernist building starting around $370.

Dar Said Sidi Bou Said 216 71 72 96 66; www.darsaid.com.tn. If I had money to burn, I'd head to this restored 19th-century home in the ritziest suburb of Tunis. Rooms start around $350 during high season.

Maison Dorée 3 rue el Koufa; 216 71 240 632. Those who go for character and cheapness may want to try this hotel in downtown Tunis. It's located perfectly for an evening stroll and rooms run around $50.

JERBA

Melia Djerba Menzel 4116 Midoun; 216 75 750 300; jerba.menzel@planet.tn. If you do want to sleep in the zone touristique, this hotel starts at $100.

Erriadh 10 Rue Mohamed Ferjani, Houmt Souk; 216 75 650 756. Rooms at this fondouk (converted hotels where caravans once stopped for the night) start at $30.

THE SAHARA

Hotel 20 Mars 23 rue 20 Mars, Douz; 216 75 470 269; barka5@excite.com. If you're going to the Sahara, you may well go through Douz, “Gateway to the Sahara.” If so, this hotel offers rooms starting around $20 and dancing and singing most evenings.

Pansea Ksar Gilane 4 rue El Andalous, Jerba; 216 75 759 330; www.pansea.com. For the grand Sahara experience, this hotel offers air-conditioned linen tents in the desert at around $170 a night.