by Francis LaLumiere
May 16 1997 - This is the first in a short series of articles
retelling the highlights of our World Championship Grand Prize, a visit to
Tunisia, North Africa - to see, hear and taste in every possible way the
locations used to shoot Star Wars twenty years ago . . .
Let's start with getting acquainted with our Star Wars CCG fellow
travellers. There were eight of us: Captain of the expedition and guide
extraordinaire David West Reynolds and his wife Ann, World Champion
Raphael Asselin and his friend Amelie St-Onge, myself (Francis Lalumiere)
and my dear friend France-Andree Lafreniere. We were joined in London by
Star Wars Insider Editor Jon Bradley Snyder and his friend Julie
Palsmeier.
Our team of explorers just got back from Tatooine, and slipping back
into our real lives - and our real world - was quite a shock (makes time
lag taste like candy). Even though we were gone for a total of 10 days,
the first two and last two days were spent entirely in planes, so we'll
consider May 3rd to be the very first day of the Tatooine expedition . . .
Tatooine Memories
- Day 1
From the Trip Diary of Francis
LaLumiere
--- May 03,
1997---
There were no Star Wars locations to
visit on this first day, but we did get a good look at the
Tunisian landscape. Desert as far as the eye can see can be quite
awe inspiring. We got to visit the ruins of several ancient cities
torn to pieces by rain storms several decades ago: Mides, Tamerza
and a couple of others. These beautiful and mysterious sites
indicated without doubt that we were indeed on another planet.
Given the fact that I regularly turned into a French
interpreter for David, he started calling me C-3PO. We would get a
few good laughs out of this one - and several other Star Wars
quotes and inside jokes - during our journey. And had I not worn
sunblock (power 30!) at all times, the Sahara sun would even have
bestowed a golden finish upon myself, making me look more and more
like our favorite protocol droid.
It is on this first day that David also introduced us to the
wonders of the GPS (Global Positioning System), a small device
that uses satellites as anchor points in order to pinpoint your
exact location anywhere on the surface of the Earth. This
technological wonder would prove quite helpful in the days to
come!
Francis Lalumiere - Gold
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