Where was Haitham when we needed him?

Two days ago we docked in Tunis, Tunisia in the Northern part of Africa. We visited the ancient city of Carthage and Sidi Bou Said on a guided tour and decided to venture into the Medina (historical center of Tunis) by ourselves -- what a mistake! Royal Caribbean had designated shuttles that could transport you to a main drop off point in the Medina and we felt they should be a safe way to reach our destination. There was a ´guide´in the bus who seemed quite knowledgeable at first. Then, he became a bit controlling telling us that he would get us back to the ship on time but we would first stop in some place for tea --what? All we wanted was to be dropped off in the Medina -- this was not part of the shuttle service.
The ´guide´ stopped the bus in a place where no other bus was parked and asked us all to get off. Several of us asked repeatedly where the pick up point was and he insisted we follow him and he would show us. Next thing we know we are standing outside of an Arabic Mosque where he proceeded to make pretty inappropriate religious comments about the different Muslim groups (he was Muslim himself). No American laughed. Somehow we end up in a carpet shop where they ´trapped´about 40 of us in a room for a carpet demonstration. They offered free drinks and despite the fact that you can sense the discomfort among this group of tourist (us included) a few people agreed to some mint tea and sodas (people do some strange things when they are tourists). It´s hard to capture the feeling of danger that was brewing in the room, but imagine being dropped off in the middle of a maze of eager (for a lack of a better word) merchants where you don´t speak the language under a time crunch because you have to get back on the ship and no one is telling you where the buses are.
My dad decided he wasn´t having any more of this crap and interrupted the ´carpet demonstration´ saying he hadn´t paid for this show and he just wanted to know where the bus stop was. The Tunisian giving the demonstration said we were ´free´to go but our ´guide´had disappeard so as to not tell us how to get back. Once we got up, the rest of the room followed us out through a maze of stairs and rooms. We found ourselves in a room surrounded by about 10 Tunisian men who would not tell us how to leave this ´store´and the exit was nowhere to be found. It was a crazy situation...40 tourists forming a circle around a room, 10 Tunisian men forming an outer circle around us and suddenly no one spoke English (how convenient!). When the ´guide´found himself confronted by several agitated people, he finally agreed to walk us to the bus stop.
He led us through a maze of shops, stopped at the end of a street, and pointed down a suspicious looking alley suggesting we take that to the end, turn left, and another left. We had two choices: 1. continue following this crazy dude who was forcing us into places where they would lock us up until we shopped or 2. take our chances in finding the bus. We took the second option and dipped it with about 5 other people. We finally found the bus back and left Tunis for good.
TIA:THIS IS AFRICA.

P.S. We later found out the shuttle buses were not supposed to have any ´guide´on board beyond the driver...great...this dude wasn´t even part of the bus company.