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Our experience of Libya was needessly marred by our guides, Arkno Tours, a Libyan Government-approved Tour operator. Anyone who wants to visit Libya must get a letter of invitation and a guide, as both are essential for obtaining a Libyan visa and for being allowed into the country, and must therefore deal with Arkno or one of its competitors. And thus, it was Arkno we paid for a visa, customs clearance for the car and a guide for the entire country, plus a desert guide in his own vehicle at an additional cost for the time we spent in the desert.
We were ripped off because the desert guide arrived a day late and left a day early and I was sent abusive text messages and assaulted – and all by people that we were paying money to. Craig Baguley, in Arkno’s London ‘Information Office’ knows his way around the ‘Readers Digest Guide To The Law’ as well as anyone, and issued the blood-curdling threat at the time to sue us for defamation but, despite being invited to do so if we had said anything untrue about Arkno, has not done so.
http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hubb/sahara-travel-forum/problems-with-arkno-tours-libya-27032
Some people (although not many) seemed to form the idea that the angry things we wrote about Arkno AFTER how we were treated meant we went in with a bad attitude BEFORE it happened. I have tried to ensure that nothing written about Arkno reads as though we went in with a bad attitude (which we didn’t, and wouldn’t be OK if we had) as opposed to developing one as a result of experience (which is a lot more understandable).
Even before this trip, I had worked in Jamaica and had travelled extensively in India (5 times), China, Indonesia, Nepal and similar countries, so have spent plenty of time in places where things cannot always be expected to go according to plan. But what happened with Arkno is not an ‘I went to India and I hated it because it was dirty and full of beggars’-type of complaint, and neither am I saying ‘Libya’s awful because of Arkno’. And nothing even remotely like Arkno has happened to me before or after on this or any other trip, so make of that what you will.
NB – if you do decide to give Arkno the benefit of the doubt, it’s also worth bearing in mind that one of the reasons we chose Arkno in the first place was that it has a presence in London. This seemingly lends the operation an air of respectability, but in fact affords customers no protection whatsoever when things go wrong. Their terms and conditions state that all contractual arrangements are made directly with Arkno’s office in Tripoli and not with the London ‘Information Office’. In other words, governed by Libyan and not English law. As a Law graduate, it stuck in my gullet no end that, when I checked up on this after matters went pear-shaped, the advice was that it stood; it would have been different if the Ts & Cs were silent on where the contract was made. So bear in mind that your only recourse, if anything goes wrong with Arkno and they choose to thumb their noses at you rather than apologise or sort it out, as happened with us, will be through a Libyan court. Therefore, practically impossible.
Obviously nobody (apart from a lawyer) wants to go through life suing people as the only way to solve any disputes, and 99% get sorted out without the need for that. But the awareness of that ultimate sanction in the background brings a lot of people to the bargaining table before matters get that far. Not, it would seem, Arkno. Good luck – otherwise DO NOT USE ARKNO TOURS!
Nevertheless, these issues did not raise themselves until later in our time in Libya, so without further ado let’s forget the Arkno experience and concentrate on Libya for a while.
7 April
Shitty breakfast in Tunisia and even shittier signposting to the border. The border crossing felt like a nightmare at the time but compared to what I’ve experienced since it was actually quite mild. Nonetheless, I was glad Amer – the guide sent by Arkno to meet us at the border – was there, and I was surprised to catch a whiff on his breath that smelt suspiciously like alcohol! The actual border between Libya and Tunisia was marked by a white line on the tarmac between the two countries’ border terminals. It was entertaining to watch people who had cleared Tunisian Customs and Immigration lining up on the white line and waiting for the police to wave them across in batches….all that was missing was the chequered flag and it would have been like a banger race about to start. Gadaffi, on the other hand, didn’t seem to find this funny at all, as his big picture gazed down imperiously and without a trace of a smile.
I probably broke the laws of both countries, as I shuttled back and forth on foot about 3 times, trying to obey the Tunisians who were telling me to stay put while the car paperwork was processed while explaining to Amer why I seemingly wasn’t pulling my finger out and getting started with the Libyan immigration and customs. Luckily Amer was able to act as a go-between and a minor diplomatic incident was averted. I also learned the hard way that spending the last of my Tunisian money on bottles of water before I crossed the border wasn’t a clever thing to do, as although I was correctly informed that Tunisia doesn’t have departure tax, I didn’t realise I’d have to pay 1 TD ‘stamp duty’ for processing the car paperwork on exit. I tried to barter a bottle of water or two with the customs officer for the cost of the stamp, but luckily he had a sense of humour and waived the fee.
Having escaped the clutches of the Tunisians, I then ended up vanishing into the black hole of Libyan bureaucracy – or rather, would have done had Amer not been there to sort out the formalities. While I was waiting on the Libyan side, I had plenty of time to finish the credit on my Tunisian SIM card and it was good to play catchup with various friends and family.
The first thing I noticed on the road in Libya was the bloody Fiat trucks, crawling along at a speed-limited 60 kmh while I and other motorists suffered apoplexy trying to overtake them. Apparently this was due to too many speed-related accidents in the past but, as with other knee-jerk reactions, the solution was almost as bad as the problem.
Zuara was the first city, where Amer took me to change money at a jeweller’s shop. Here is where the money-changing black market happens in Libya. Then we stopped to eat. With more traffic, dirt and grime, Libya somehow felt like a bigger, coarser country than Tunisia. Zoom zoom zoom, went the passing cars while we munched away at the roadside on my introduction to mediocre, pre-processed Libyan food. Possibly here was where the first breakdown in communication happened with the guide – as the arrangement with Arkno specified, I paid for Amer’s meal and mine, but he left half of it. I don’t like seeing food wasted and make no apology for saying “very happy to buy you food, but could you only order as much as you’re going to eat in future?” but no doubt this was taken as me refusing to keep to my side of the deal. Oh well.
Moreover, unlike its neighbours, where you can get good, fresh food readily and cheaply, the only time you can really do this in Libya is in private homes or expensive restaurants. Maybe I am being a little hard on Libya in this, for there are almost no rivers in Libya and it may be that most food has to be imported rather than home-grown. This was also the first introduction to one of the other little differences between Libya and its neighbours – despite it being Arabic AND an ex-Italian colony, you CANNOT get any other type of coffee apart from Nescafe!
In Tripoli, I checked into the Arkno Tours’ hotel and spent the afternoon tinkering with the car while awaiting Amanda’s arrival at the airport. There followed the first of Arkno’s many cock-ups – the agreement we had with Arkno provided for us to feed and accommodate the guide, but not in Tripoli as Craig Baguley in Arkno’s London ‘information office’ had said the guide had people to stay with there. This was reflected in the itinerary we’d had emailed to us by Craig. Amer, on the other hand, wasn’t aware of this and seemed quite surprised when we didn’t expect him to stay at Arkno’s hotel (and for us to pick up the bill) – this problem, at least, was sorted out by Arkno.
Poor Landy tipped up at the front when we met Amanda at the airport and loaded her baggage into the back. She hadn’t brought the kitchen sink, but I am quite sure that if she’d had the space for it then I’d have had to make room in the car for the entire kitchen range of the local B&Q superstore!
8 April
Today was a Sunday, as I discovered to my cost when I tried to buy a Libyan SIM card with Amer’s assistance. I really couldn’t understand why, in retrospect, Amer didn’t simply say ‘don’t bother trying to get one today – wait till tomorrow’, rather than wasting the best part of 2 hours traipsing from closed shop to closed shop. Neither did he like Tripoli very much, which rubbed off on us unfortunately. To me a guide is someone who shows you around and explains what you’re looking at; Amer on the other hand even relied on our Lonely Planet Tripoli walking tour map to get us around the admittedly lacklustre Tripoli medina. This was to set the tone for the rest of his time with us, for Amer seemed for most of the trip to be along for the ride rather than proactively guiding us.
Over a year later, when I had returned to work at Ealing, Nigel my (new) manager was telling me how he had grown up in Libya much nearer to the time the Italians had left. It was far more Italianate then, apparently, and it may be simply that the Tripoli medina we saw was the result of well over 40 years of de-Italianification.
Pretty much the highlight of Tripoli was the amazing museum, with some of the best Roman mosaics and artefacts I’ve seen. Conspicuous by their absence were any great numbers of Gadaffi pictures. Part of my motivation for coming to Libya was that I was expecting to see a kind of North African version of North Korea, but maybe Hossein in Iran’s hypothesis on this is right – namely that the popularity of a country’s leaders is inversely proportional to the number of their portraits on display.
Interesting how often people would raise their eyebrows and ask if it was safe when we said we had been to Libya. But just like Thatcher or Gorbachev’s images overseas being different to at home, Libya’s historical mischiefs overseas did not equate to lack of personal safety in Libya. We were no more at risk in Libya than any other country, and in actual fact were probably quite a bit safer. At least, from other Libyans, if not from our own guides.
Upon leaving Tripoli, the next Arkno cock-up. One of Craig B’s emails to me had stated that Amer would have his own camping equipment. But again, Amer seemed to be the last to know about this and again, Arkno had to sort this out at short notice and gave Amer an absolutely rubbish-looking tent and sleeping bag.
And so, on to Sabratha, the first set of ruins to see in Libya. Having see Dougga in Tunisia, I was a little ruined out whereas Amanda was completely green and suitably wowed. It was admittedly impressive, especially seeing how close the buildings were to the sea and yet had withstood 2000 years of storms. The mosaics in particular were breathtaking.
First set of Libyan pictures, from Tripoli west along the coast to Sabratha
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| Libya – Tripoli to Sabratha |
After Sabratha, vers la sud. For a number of miles, the terrain was incredibly flat, marking the seaboard. But looming in the distance, we could see the start of the hills, gradually looming on the horizon as we approached.
As the plateau abruptly gave rise to the climb up into the hills towards Yefren, I noticed the temperature gauge beginning to rise on the car. This was the first time it had happened on the trip, but was to be far from the last.
Situated high on a series of rocky bluffs, overlooking the flat coastal plain and surrounded by attractive wooded areas, Yefren enjoys an absolutely spectacular location. The first (and only) hotel we stopped at had what was one of the most amazing views I have ever seen from a hotel in my life, looking north over the plateau we had just come from.
Unfortunately, the rest of the hotel wasn’t matched by the view and it wanted too much money – 60 LD, plus another 45 for Amer’s room. To make it even worse, the only other alternative – a youth hostel – told us they were full despite there being no signs of any people.
If there weren’t any alternatives, I suppose we’d have had to bite the bullet and fork out for the view hotel. But as luck would have it, Amer’s hometown of Zintan was nearby, so he had us to stay instead at his half-constructed new house there. It had a roof and walls and a working bathroom so even though there were no carpets, furniture or decorations on the wall, us staying there in sleeping bags and on mattresses was no problem at all.
Amer’s wife was also good enough to cook for us some delicious Libyan fitaat – lentils, mutton, and buckwheat pancakes cooked together in a sauce. Although it should also be pointed out we never actually met her – this was all sent by car from Amer’s current house. It was certainly good of him to do this, and beyond the call of duty, and so we said at the time that we would pay. Amer said “we’ll negotiate” and after that the issue was never discussed again.
Then the next surprise – alcohol, or ‘special water’ as Amer called it . Although it’s banned in Libya, it was obviously possible to get moonshine which, in Libya, is made by brewing palm leaves. We – or rather I – was to learn very quickly that this ‘special water’ was very variable in quality. Sometimes you get a hangover, other times you wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Tonight’s introduction to Libyan special water was more of a baptism of fire, as I discovered the next morning.
The next day, nursing my hangover, Amer showed us a little abandoned Berber village named Al-Ghala as you can see from the pictures. After this, another Berber granary, rather similar to the ksour I had seen in Tunisia only a week or so before, called Qasr Al-Haj. This is a fortified granary, consisting of a main courtyard with walls surrounded by 114 cave-like rooms – exactly the same number as there are suras [chapters in the Koran].
With its name picked out in Arabic on an overlooking rock face, Nalut was the next stop. The Qasr (castle) was perched on a rocky bluff overlooking the mountains, and it was also surrounded by the uninhabited remains of the old town, together with a couple of huge old olive oil presses with massive circular platforms and stones.
Ghadames was well worth stopping at, a UNESCO World Heritage-listed site with abundant palm groves and a wonderfully preserved labyrinthine old town. The old town was inhabited up to the mid-1980s but, in a push to modernise and a burst of top-down ‘we know what’s good for you’, the Libyan government decided to build new concrete housing on the outskirts of Ghadames and evict, or at least ‘encourage to relocate’, the inhabitants of the old town and, four years later, there was just one family left there. Rather ironic that this came from a government headed by a man who prefers to live in a tent.
However, since then a few families have moved back for reasons related to the tourist trade. The old town of Ghadames was delightful, with covered alleyways that had skylights at intervals and many white-washed houses. Walking through the cool depths of the old town, our way lit by shafts of natural light, was a delightful experience. Outside the old town were extensive palm gardens irrigated by wells, with elevated walkways between the gardens.
Also a little trip out to a nearby fort called Ras Al-Ghoul. The fort is said to be haunted and, whether it was because I had been told that or the setting of the fort or the time of day that we were there, it did feel quite eerie, especially as we were there at sunset. I didn’t know all this detail at the time, but Ras Al-Ghoul used to be a Roman fort until, some time after the Romans left, Islam reached Ghadames. While most of the locals accepted conversion to Islam, a splinter group opposed the invaders and took refuge in Ras Al-Ghoul. The fortress was under siege and was able to hold out for a very long time because it had its own well. After 13 ‘die hards’ had been killed, the Moslem invaders finally offered peace to the non-Moslems inside. Whilst there on the day, and well before I had read any of this, I well remember looking up at the fort’s silhouette with the dusk descending all around and thinking I wouldn’t want to be there on my own in the dark.
As we were leaving the abandoned fort, we also had a spot of impromptu dune driving and visited a nearby Berber tent. We were treated to some of the very, very thin Berber bread – very tasty.
It was also at Ras Al-Ghoul that we inadvertently gave our guide / Arkno some ammunition for the coming dispute between us, though we didn’t know it at the time. One of the old abandoned houses in the old city of Ghadames had been turned into a rather nice restaurant. We had the phone number, but knew the people only spoke Arabic and so, while sitting atop the fort, asked Amer to call it on our phone and book a meal for us. Amer did so and we arranged dinner in that restaurant that evening. Later on, back in Ghadames, we went to the restaurant and Amer declined our offer to come along, choosing instead to stay in the hotel.
When it arrived, the food was delicious but there was so much of it there was no way we could finish it all. So I texted Amer and asked him again to join us and share the food – it seemed crazy to waste this food because we couldn’t finish it all and then have to buy Amer’s dinner afterwards. Amer duly came to the restaurant and shared the food and all was well. Or so I thought – I was only to find out weeks later that Amer had alleged to Arkno we had given him the slip on purpose so that he had had to come looking for us and found us in this restaurant, eating on our own to evade paying for his food. How ridiculous, when we had texted him asking him to come and join us in the restaurant and he had texted back saying ‘I am on my way’!
In Ghadames, had the oil changed and the tyres rotated. Amer picked up on me wanting to know the price before starting and trying to bargain. After nearly 40 years of Gadaffi’s Third Way, the Libyan way of doing things in this regard is a bit different to other Arab / Middle Eastern countries. They don’t bargain, preferring to give you the price they want at the outset, and don’t try to actively sell you anything…..it almost feels like a socialist country even though it is a mixed economy – it didn’t know which way to be. Truly an example of how a man has stamped his mark on a country.
Imagine filling stations often being dry in an oil-producing country, or banks having information boards showing the daily FOREX rates yet keep telling customers they didn’t change money. I remember also seeing a calendar in an office…..one of those free ones that companies give out, with their logo on the top and pictures either of pretty animals/birds/artwork or, in this case, the staff of the company. Usually they all gather together and pose for such pictures, but in this case someone had taken the picture seemingly without the staff knowing he was there, meaning that everyone was sat at their desks looking down / away – useless picture.
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| Libya – Sabratha to Ghadames – border of desert |
After Ghadames, a very long drive to Sebha. Very soon noticed what was to be a familiar sight on the desert roads of Libya – the twisted, stripped-out hulks of crashed cars. Amer explained how some people made a living cruising the roads of Libya looking for crashed cars to strip of engines, gearboxes and other useful bits, yet left the bodyshells behind. Odd – I would have thought there was money in collecting up the bodyshells and cubing them to melt down for scrap as well. Or maybe Libya doesn’t have facilities for this.
At one point we stopped to stretch our legs and Amer introduced us to truffles, which apparently grow where the ground has been struck by lightning. God knows how he spotted them, but there they were by the roadside. They have a funny musky, mushroomy taste, somehow mildly suggestive of the smell of Camembert cheese.
In the Sebha campsite-cum-zoo where stayed, we came across this miserable wildcat, which dutifully hisses whenever you approach, as if reminding you it’s a REAL wildcat. Unfortunately the illusion was shattered when it then started cleaning itself and growling at the same time, as if it was an involuntary reflex.
Look at dear Mother-hen cluck-clucking away contentedly with her sweet little chicks, also in Sebha:-
Having stopped overnight at Sebha, onwards to Takerkiba, where we dropped off some of our gear to lighten the load in the vehicle before continuing to Wadi Matkandoush. This marked the beginning of our trip off road and we met our desert guide for the first time. Also in retrospect another nail in the coffin of our relationship with Arkno – we lost a day of the desert tour by stopping to offload some non-essential luggage to lighten the vehicle in the desert, but nobody bothered to point this out at the time. We’d arrived at Takerkiba at midday, offloaded the luggage and then there was nothing to do for the rest of the day. Arkno later told us we had upset our itinerary by making this detour, although they hadn’t bothered to make us aware it would do so at the time – if they had, we wouldn’t have stopped. But as we had to drive through Takerkiba to get to Wadi Matkandoush in any case and as it took us only 30 minutes to unload the car, it is unclear why we couldn’t have carried on to Wadi Matkandoush the same day.
But once we finally reached it the next day, Wadi Matkandoush proved to be a beautiful area, with striking ochre and charcoal colors and rock formations. Wadi Matkandoush was also our first introduction to rock art, and also our first introduction to vandalism of said rock art. The whole reason for the ridiculous guide system in Libya (although I would probably have used one anyway in the desert itself) is that in the early 2000s, some Germans decided it would be a good idea to smear some gel on a piece of rock art in the Acacus to take an impression of it, thereby almost destroying it in the process. But as you will see from the pictures, I was quite taken aback to see Arabic words scratched into the pictures (apparently it’s abuse directed against the Italian and Libyan Governments), as well as lines of bullet-holes at Wadi Meghadit. I very much doubt any of this was done by foreign tourists.
Continuing westwards, we headed from Wadi Matkandoush through through Masak Millet and Ouen Casa towards the Acacus. As you can see from the rock formations, the Fezzan Region which encompasses the Acacus is home to some of the most spectacular desert scenery in the world. The Acacus in particular contains formations of the once volcanic mountains that rise darkly from the sands and conceal carvings and paintings dating back about 12,000 years.
At the start of the desert part of the trip, I discover that I don’t know quite as much about driving in the sand as I imagine.
My offroad driving skills came on a treat, thanks to Amir’s expert tutelage and my skills at digging out vehicles that were stuck in sand improved greatly too! The Fezzan Region of Libya where we spent roughly 10 days was a magical place, and the most exotic desert scenery I have ever seen in my life. Later in the trip, when we visited Wadi Rum in Jordan, we came away with the impression that Wad Rum beats the Fezzan value for money wise because of the far lesser amount of hassle involved in getting to and around Wadi Rum compared to the slightly inferior scenery. But in absolute terms, the scenery of the Fezzan, in particular the Acacus, beat Wadi Rum or indeed anywhere else I have ever seen. I know some people rave about Algerian desert scenery though. As a matter of fact, at 1 point when heading south near the Lib/ Algerian border there was even talk of us following a route that took us just over the border – it’s not very well marked. Personally I was keen to do it for the hell of it – apparently the Algerians just keep you for a few hours then tell you off and let you go, but Amer was too risk-averse!
Driving over a small but steep sand dune. For me it was great fun, but for poor Mandy it wasn’t quite so great. Just listen to the soundtrack!
It was also our first introduction to camping in the desert at night and, as you would expect, the difference between the temperature during the day and during the night was striking.
Personally, I think the guides were a little too worried about conserving water – they did not shower for a number of days in the desert, whereas Amanda and I would incur their disapproval by showering every morning using not more than one or two litres of water thanks to the pump-up garden spray that Paul at Footloose had so sensibly recommended all those months before.
There’s something very liberating about taking a shower in the middle of a desert, although obviously we would do this behind a rock! But even so, it was just us and complete open space which is a very new experience when it comes to taking a shower. We knew that even though we could see for tens of miles while we were showering, there was no one else watching us – we had the entire desert to ourselves.
I also discovered the hard way that I didn’t know as much as I thought about auto-electrics. I still don’t know exactly what went wrong, but had discovered that the voltage drop in the cable to the auxiliary cigarette lighter socket I had installed to power the freezer was too much to allow it to work when plugged in. So, I tried wiring the freezer directly from the car battery. One night, I had shut the car doors and suddenly saw it had filled up with smoke. Immediately, I opened the doors amid clouds of foul-smelling smoke and discovered that the wires that had gone directly from the battery to the freezer had overheated and were busy melting.
This left trails of molten plastic all over the carpets and the plastic door trims and Amer kindly helped me rewire the fridge freezer properly to make it work. But even after I wired it directly to the battery, I never got it working properly and this was because a split-charge system and an insulating jacket was needed. It would run the batteries down too fast if used when the engine wasn’t running, but didn’t stay cool enough if not kept on overnight. Something I would make a better fist of next time around.
Thanks to the freezer not working properly, we had to eat up the camel meat we’d bought in Takerkiba pretty quickly. Made the mistake of trying to cook it for the guides rather than letting them cook it for us and what do you know – even a whole hour in the pressure cooker wasn’t enough to relieve the unremittingly awful toughness of the tractor tyre-like meat. Later that evening, while we were eating I cracked a dirty joke. Amanda: “Do you mind – you’re putting me off my camel”
When we left the desert temporarily and rejoined the highway en route to Ghat, we stopped at a town called Al-Awainat. Obviously high on the agenda was getting diesel from the filling station. Arriving shortly after us at this filling station was a group of French overlanders. I could see that one of them in particular was a bit cocky by the way he was talking and acting. Just after he arrived, I had tried to get the attendant to fill my tank but he was busy and gestured to me to go ahead myself. So I filled up and replaced the pump nozzle before going to pay the attendant – as one does. I had seen the dial hadn’t started on zero, although I didn’t know this was because the one of the French had already been using this pump. But I had memorised what the dial said at the start and the attendant was aware of it, so I paid the right price. Cocky French bastard decided to have a go at me for being impatient and doing this and I tried to explain that the dial was set on the wrong amount to begin with, but he did a Gallic shrug motion.
Then, instead of waiting for the attendant to set the dial back to zero, cocky French bastard decided to take the nozzle and fill up himself and I was treated to a delicious moment of schadenfreude watching him get into an argument with the attendant because he didn’t know how much fuel he’d actually taken!
Following this, we reached Ghat. Ghat is not dissimilar to Ghadames, although the old town is much more derelict than that of Ghadames and the buildings are not white-washed, but are made of an adobe-like brick mostly with no roofs. The tightly-packed Medina is a fine example of an ancient Sahara desert town and it was here where we came across this amusing sight:-
In the Medina, we climbed up to a Turkish-Italian fort that rose above the town and looked down for a fine view over the old Medina. Greatly amused to see the plethora of satellite dishes atop all the houses in the new town! We had stayed at an absolute toilet of a hotel, which looked more like a unit on an industrial estate, with corrugated metal-clad walls, than a hotel. It had holes in the walls, lights that didn’t work and was absolutely awful, but it was the only reasonably priced hotel in the town and the Sudanese chap running it was very affable.
Amer’s antics in trying to get hold of some special water from one of the black African workers were funny to see – he was very clearly the gringo in town! Also had a funny episode trying to change money – unlike other countries, the black market rate for money exchange in Libya is a little lower than the official rate. I had tried to change money with the hotelier and had been quoted the rate. But had insisted that no, I would go to the bank and get a higher rate. I was just about to find out why……
Hotel manager very kindly ushered me to the bank, and down we sat in the manager’s office with a cup of tea. So far so good. BUT the whole sorry episode took the best part of one hour, while the bank manager phoned the headquarters in Tripoli, waited for the fax of the daily FOREX rates to come through, and filled out form after form after form of bureaucratic paper work. Amanda, the guides and the hotelier were all most amused by my humble pie apology for not listening to their advice.
Ghat marked yet another nail in the coffin of our relationship with Arkno, although again we didn’t know until later, when Craig Baguley, in Arkno’s London ‘Information Office’ claimed in response to our complaint that the guides had done us a favour by detouring to Ghat at all! Arkno’s lack of organization and internal communication had clearly continued once we got on the road, for the itinerary Craig had sent us way back in Mar 2007 did, on day 15, refer to a day trip to Ghat whilst Amer’s copy of it did not include Ghat. But the detour to Ghat was at Amer’s suggestion and he had said we did not need as long in the Acacus as the itinerary provided. I further make no apology for not paying for the extra petrol when a) we were not asked to do so, b) the trip to Ghat was in our copy of the itinerary, c) we were effectively paying for it anyway out of the 68 pounds per day for the desert guide and d) an 80 litre tankful of petrol in Libya costs less than 5 GBP.
Back into the Acacus, with dark basalt stone monoliths rising out from the sands of the Central Sahara. The site features a number of unique natural rock formations enhanced by the ever shifting sounds of the desert, including prehistoric rock paintings and carvings including elephants, giraffes, wedding ceremonies and dancing human figures. If you know what you’re looking for, you can distinguish the various periods that the rock art covered. For example, the Sahara had a temperate climate from 10,000 BC until 2500 BC. Therefore, the early period of the rock art was characterized by the portrayal of creatures that could live in an area with plentiful trees. Then the pastoral period showing the gradual transition from temperate to arid climate, depicting human figures in positions of dominance over the natural world wielding spears, and with domesticated cattle and ceremonies more in keeping with settled rather than nomadic communities. Following the 1000 BC point, we have the horse period, characterised by pictures of wheeled vehicles, reflecting more sophisticated methods of getting around.
Passing through the Awiss Region, a famous site that we also saw was the 150 meter high natural arch. Then a petrified forest, and even on one occasion an area full of rocks that appeared to have been built into little cairns very much in the same way as you would see with Buddhist prayer rocks in a place like Nepal.
As the trip wears on, I start getting a bit more used to sand dune driving – Mandy doesn’t unfortunately!
Driving in the desert was fun, and I found myself sometimes driving quite fast trying to keep up with the guides – on one occasion, so much so the GPS flew out of the window and I had to stop and pick it up!
General footage of driving through the desert 1
and 2
One place that I think we could have missed was Wadi Meghadit. Absolutely nothing wrong with Wadi Meghadit – if anything, it looked like a miniature Wadi Rum – but quite simply after the rest of the Acacus, there was nothing really about it that added to what we had already seen in the Aacus. However, the grotto-like rock formations were kind of odd in that they altered their perspective as you approach them. They looked a lot bigger from a distance, but when up close, they were smaller. Put another way, they were small, but looked like they would have been much, much bigger in proportion if you didn’t put something like a vehicle next to them to give them a true perspective.
The Acacus contained some amazing colour combinations – the rich colour of the sand contrasting with the almost black charcoaly rock on the floor of the wide Wadis (valleys) and the sand dunes rising into the distance before meeting the vivid blue sky. The picture called Acacus Scenery 11 is a particularly good example of this.
Following the Acacus, we retraced our steps to Takerkiba and spent the last of our time in the desert, going to Ubari Sand Sea.
We reached an oasis in the middle of Ubari Sand Sea, and I was amazed to see in the distance some fellow tourists skiing down a colossal sand dune! One can only imagine how many hours it must have taken that poor man to climb to the top of that sand dune just for a few seconds of skiing down afterwards. It was highly incongruous also to be able to take a swim in a pool in the middle of the Ubari Sand Sea, but highly refreshing.
Ubari Sand Sea was an entertaining place to drive around, and it was here that the GPS flew out of the window of the car thanks to me ‘giving it some’. Have a look at this footage of descending sand dunes there
It was also here that the main problem occurred with Arkno, for we were under the impression that we would be staying overnight in the Ubari Sand Sea but it proved to be a day trip, as we discovered suddenly when we ended up back at the camp site near the Takerkiba road at the end of the day. Next thing we knew, the desert guide was saying goodbye to us and departed before sunset – a day earlier than the itinerary said.
When I dared to question this with Amer, he became quite angry and dismissive and refused to eat any of the food we were cooking that night, or for the rest of his time with us. He went and sat in the office with the owner of the campsite, glaring out at us. I didn’t take him for somebody whose social skills were so poor that he chose to get angry just because somebody questioned why something was happening. Defensiveness, perhaps?
Amer spent the last 2 days with us sulking in a state of near-mutism. It was a shame we had fallen out, for during the desert trip we had been getting on OK with him. He had procured a supply of special water that we shared at every opportunity, and he was a reasonable person to drink with. We had had some good conversations together. Such a shame that, when we questioned why the desert guide was leaving a day early, he chose not to sort this out with us in a reasonable or diplomatic fashion.
Stills of our desert trip
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| Libya – Ghadames to Gharyan – incl desert |
Following the Ubari Sand Sea, we returned to Sebha. A number of Colonel Gaddafi’s relatives live in Sebha, and for this reason, it is full of posters and billboards with quotes from Colonel Gaddafi’s Green Book and various pictures of Gaddafi – more so than anywhere else in Libya.
At one point, we had gone to change money and, as is common in Libya, were having many problems trying to find a bank that would take our US dollars. One bank in particular was apparently closed for refurbishment – or at least part of it was. We had opened the main door and found the customer area on the ground floor was closed, although the manager was still there. Ironically in the extreme, he was able to change money for us more quickly in a bank that was shut than any bank was able to do when it was open!
Hassan, the manager of this bank then insisted on taking us for tea at a local café, before taking us back to his amazing house, as you can see from the photographs. He had a lovely wife and child and a dear little kitten which was only a few weeks old and had just been brought down to Sebha from Tripoli. This little kitty was so tiny that whenever we walked anywhere around the house, it would follow us but when we were climbing up the stairs, each step on the stair was bigger than the entire length of its body – it had to jump using its entire strength to get from each step up to the other!
Then we retraced our steps north across the interior of Libya. Whilst heading north, we came across these camels being transported in a pick-up. Clue: they weren’t going anywhere as pets
Then Gharyan, where we bid a civil but not particularly fond farewell to Amer. This had been prearranged all along, owing to his family commitments. I believe Amer was annoyed we hadn’t paid for the food/accommodation; we would have paid Amer for this before parting from him but during the last 2 days it was impossible for us to discuss anything with Amer and the issue of the desert guide arriving a day late and leaving a day early had reared its head, so we were not about to hand over more money to Arkno’s people. Would anyone have done, in this situation? It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if some of the money we overpaid for the desert guide has since found its way to Amer behind the scenes in any case.
The next morning, we met our second guide, Uthman Ashara. Our first morning with Uthman was spent seeing one of Gharyan’s underground [troglodyte] houses. Built by Berbers, this consisted of living quarters at the base of a circular pit, anything up to three stories deep, which were reached by a tunnel leading from street level. It provided a refuge from cold winters, hot summers and invaders – rather similar to Coober Pedy in Australia.
After Gharyan, we reached the north coast not that far east of Tripoli, where we had started the trip, and stopped at Leptis Magna. The pictures for this stupendous site are in an album all of their own below.
While stopped overnight in Leptis Magna, I was sitting in an outdoor café with Uthman who, at that point, we were getting on OK with. Meeow, meow, I kept hearing from some bushes behind me, and I kept turning around to look for the cat. Much amusement from all present when I finally got up to peek under the bush, only to find out it was one of the patrons practising a bit of ventriloquism. He was good!
The next day, we visited Leptis Magna. There is very little I can say about the place that other people haven’t already said and doubtless far more eloquently than me – it was truly amazing. I have also seen plenty of other ruins so through no fault of its own the impact of Leptis on me was less than it would have been on somebody who had not seen so many other ruins.
While walking around the ruins, there were various school parties of various ages of Libyans. The girls in the picture of the Severan Temple and Basilica [19] had been laughing at us and obviously talking about us to each other earlier in the afternoon as we were walking around Leptis Magna, but later in the day they fell into conversation with us because their Egyptian teacher had started talking to us. He had quite an appealing intense and studious air about him, with a PhD and extremely pleasant. In this way, it broke the ice between us and him and his students. Like in any Moslem society, some people are more observant than others and I got the distinct impression that the girl with the dark headdress was a bit more ‘up for it’ than the others!
A brief stop at Villa Sileen after Leptis Magna, with mosaics that were quite possibly the best I have ever seen outside of a museum anywhere – I was also surprised to see one room of Villa Sileen that was obviously a children’s room. Thought childhood was a Victorian invention.
Pictures of Leptis Magna and Villa Sileen, as explained above
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| Libya – Leptis Magna and Villa Sileen |
After Leptis, we continued east along the north coast or very close to it. The part of the Libyan coast between Leptis and Benghazi isn’t particularly appealing, with flyblown, dusty towns and featureless, rubbish-strewn beaches interspersed with many abandoned half-built construction sites.
1st stop after Leptis was Zliten, with the modern-built Mausoleum and Mosque of Sidi Abdusalam. Then Misrata and to Sirte, where we spent the night in a cheap hotel much to the chagrin of dear Uthman, who told us that he had a relative in Sirte but wouldn’t be contacting him while there because “he’ll ask where we’re staying and I’m ashamed to tell him we’re in this hotel”. My spend a night not a fortune philosophy did admittedly take a knock in this place, for although the staff were incredibly nice we had to change rooms twice because of bed bugs! But Uthman said what he said before we even checked in there.
Besides being Gaddafi’s birthplace, Sirte is a potential new capital of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. Modest outskirts of low mud and brick houses give way to a complex of hotels and government offices. Landscaped towers of white stone and black glass could be a corporate HQ in California, until you look at the roads and street furniture around them. The Pan-African conference which led to the Sirte Declaration ie the establishment of Gadaffi’s brainchild the African Union was held here on 9th September 1999 was held here. Amusingly, it is from this declaration that the airline Afriqiyah Airways derives its brightly coloured 9.9.99 tail logo. But ever since, as with so much of ‘official’ Libya, this grand and expensive campus was deserted.
More featureless and desolate coastline until Libya’s 2nd city, Benghazi.
Pics of Gharyan to the north coast, then along to Benghazi but not including Leptis Magna.
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| Libya – North coast – incl Benghazi |
Benghazi was badly bombed in World War II but still managed to look older, more Italianate and more characterful than Tripoli. It was the best place we found in Libya for food including the Tobakts Restaurant. All of us who have been travelling will be accustomed to seeing amusing mistakes in signs or other literature written in English by people who don’t speak it as a mother tongue. Certainly if I was writing something for Chinese / German / French / Russian etc people to read I wouldn’t simply use a literal translation, but would get someone who spoke that language to proof-read it before I dared use it. Unfortunately, not everyone does this and I am sure you will agree that ‘lost in translation’ has been taken to a new level……
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| Tobakts Restaurant |
The real irony is that, although ordering a meal from a menu like this was something of a game of Russian Roulette, the food turned out to be delicious. The Clo-Slo salad was excellent, and I can recommend the Kaboob on the Sikhs and the 300 grams of Feathers Stingy, served with potato and a generous fence.
NB – if Uthman, our dear guide at the time, is reading this – I know he wasn’t happy with us laughing at this menu and he said we were “making jokes about Libya”, but that’s just him using artistic licence to smear us. This restaurant was run by Egyptians not Libyans and he was well aware of that – so much so, he didn’t want to eat there himself. Neither he nor Amer would eat in any Egyptian-run restaurants as they were “dirty”. In any case, I wasn’t aware that policing what people said about Libya was the job of anybody, except perhaps Colonel Gaddafi’s ‘Thought Police’. For such an avowed Libyan patriot, he certainly did his best to send us away with a bad impression of his country.
We also met an interesting chap named Ahmed El-Rida, in a cafe in Benghazi, a town planner specialising in disability access – http://www.designforall.at/ (German) and http://www.designforall.ly (Arabic). I was quite surprised to hear about planning issues like that being taken seriously in a place like Libya, but I guess I answered my own statement there because Ahmed said it was an uphill struggle!
Benghazi marks the start of Cyrenaica, the north eastern region of Libya, home to the extensive Jebal Akhdar or Green Mountains, a rugged area crossed by deep gorges and strewn with ancient remains. With its substantial annual rainfall, it is the least Libyan part of Libya. The Greeks built the Pentapolis cities of Cyrene, Appolonia, Teuchira, Ptolemais and Eusperides in this lush, fertile region.
Utman was superficially a more enthusiastic and proactive guide than Amer, but it quickly became clear that Amer had primed him thoroughly with what he thought of us. From his home, Amer frequently called Utman on his mobile and they spoke in our presence (in Arabic), Utman feeding us a steady diet of snippets of how much Amer hated us. During this time, we were also repeatedly trying to contact Arkno to try and resolve the overcharging issue. Uthman refused to let us talk to them directly, choosing instead to talk to them himself and tell us that nobody from Arkno would speak to us. We heard nothing but a deafening silence from Craig Baguley in the London office and from Ghuman Adains in the Tripoli office. We did finally speak to Ghuman by phone, and he told us to discuss the issue with Craig. It seemed that each was trying to pass the buck. Uthman insisting on involving himself in our dispute with Arkno regarding the desert guide issue, before suddenly deciding he didn’t want to be involved any more also did nothing to help our relationship with him.
Interspersed with all this was of course the sightseeing which was what we were actually in Libya for! We had a busy day the day we left Benghazi. The ruins of the Greek city of Ptolemais, covered by sand for centuries, have survived well. The best bits about Ptolemais are the vast underground cisterns, with high arched ceilings. They were originally built by the Greeks and extended by the Romans to collect drinking water from springs. There are also the remains of several Roman villas once occupied by the wealthy and examples of inspiring solid Byzantine architecture such as the Teuchira Gate and Western Basilica.
After Ptolemais, on to the museum of Qasr Libya with the finest Byzantine mosaics in North Africa. These very small ceramic pieces were originally laid in about 500AD in the Eastern Church nearby. One of the 50 mosaic panels is a rare representation of the Pharos lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the wonders of the ancient world.
Wadi al Kuf has great significance in Libya’s modern history. It was here, from 1911 to 1931, that the guerrilla-style Libyan resistance fighters, often living in the caves of the Jebel Akhdar, waged their long and determined battle against the Italian occupation. Despite the overwhelming military superiority facing them, the Libyans refused to surrender. In response, the Italian army fought back with increasing brutality, imprisoning 100,000 Libyans in concentration camps, killing their livestock, and building a 300 km barbed wire fence to block them from the outside world. Huge numbers of people – by some estimates as many as a quarter of the entire Libyan population – died directly or indirectly as a result of this campaign.
Over the final years of this struggle, the resistance was led by the elderly Omar Al Mukhtar, who organized determined strikes against the occupiers, including many in the Wadi al Kuf area of Cyrenaica. He was finally captured in 1931, when he was about 70 years of age. He was executed by hanging, in front of 20,000 supporters in a concentration camp; when asked whether he had any final words, he replied “from God we have come and to God we must return.” His death effectively marked the end of the Libyan resistance. Today, he is revered as one of Libya’s greatest national heroes, and his face is on some of Libya’s banknotes. A film has been made of his life entitled The Lion of the Desert, starring Anthony Quinn; it was partly filmed in this Wadi.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8098681.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8092535.stm
Stayed overnight in Al-Bayda. Earlier that day I had injured my foot and Utman drove the car. During this time, 2 important keys disappeared off my keyring. There was no way this could have happened without someone physically removing them and nobody but Utman on that day had possession of the keyring apart from me. Against my better judgement, I stopped short of accusing Utman for being responsible for the keys going missing. On the same day, I know Utman and Amer spoke via mobile and I got an initially mysterious text message that read ‘According to what you have said, how can it be to make mony of skinny pig…..?’ I sent a text back to this number which read “who the hell are you? What does this mean? It doesn’t make any sense” and then a second one arrived which read ‘You are riff-raff of England’. After leaving Amer in Gharyan, I had deleted his number from my phone, not believing I would have any further cause to speak to him, and it was a complete mystery as to who the sender was. It was only at this point that I discovered I still had Amer’s number written down on paper and only then that I realised these hate texts had come from Amer. I felt sorry for his pupils after seeing tjose messages, for Amer had already told us his day job, when not acting as a tour guide for Arkno was……..English teacher!!
We actually spent 2 nights in Al-Bayda for it was our base for seeing Cyrene the next day and then Apollonia the following. Cyrene is set amid pine trees and views of the Mediterranean. Founded in 631BC, it was the first Greek overseas colony and tens of thousands of people lived here. It was one of the greatest intellectual and artistic centres of the Greek world and is today a UNESCO World Heritage site. It had many impressive remains. Outstanding amongst these was the imposing 5th century BC Temple of Zeus, with its huge golden columns. It is larger than the Parthenon in Athens and the Temple of Zeus in Olympia. The Sanctuary of Apollo has a rich collection of public buildings. Among them is the 6th century BC Temple of Apollo with an enormous altar covered in marble slabs. The Northern Necropolis is an extensive eerie area with some 2000 tombs cut into the rock face. There is the impressive Roman house of Jason Magnus and the Greek Temple of Agora with some fine mosaic floors.
Apollonia the following day was the port for Cyrene and was also enchanting, consisting of a series of stately ruins along a kilometre of coastline. Traces of superb mosaic floor lie intact where they were laid over 2000 years ago, but most of the remains are Byzantine or Roman. Looking out over the sea is a perfectly located Roman theatre in excellent condition. Four Byzantine churches lie within the Greek city walls.
Later that day, we rounded it off with visiting the Byzantine churches of Ras al-Hilal and Al-Atrun. Ras al-Hillal lies in an area of dramatic scenery and is one of the most beautiful locations on this wild coast, as is the church at l’Atrun. The walls of the church are intact and its sugar-white marble pillars are adorned with neatly carved Byzantine crosses.
And then on to Derna, our second to last night. Derna contains perhaps the only waterfall in Libya, cascading from a cliff into the Wadi. And here was where dear Uthman told another lie about us. We had wanted to stay somewhere cheaper and did not ask Uthman to subsidise us, but he OFFERED to pay an extra 10 LD out of his own pocket to stay in the Funduq Al-Ferdous hotel as he liked it so much. Subsequently, when we complained to Arkno they told us Uthman had said we’d refused to pay his hotel bill!!
The penultimate day in Libya, and last night, was spent in Tobruk – famous for being the scene of some of World War II’s most important battles. The cemeteries, of varying design are impeccably maintained and have an air of quiet dignity and peace, with seemingly endless lines of graves receding into the distance. Even to this day the Allied one is maintained by the UK government’s Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The German one was never a cemetery as such, as having been defeated, taken prisoner and then repatriated the Germans weren’t able to bury their dead in the same way as the allies. Poignant, though. Also visited was an open-air military museum with various guns, armoured vehicles and – interestingly – the carcass of the Lady Be Good, a USAF B24 that had got lost on the way back from a bombing raid and crashed in the desert after running out of fuel – http://www.ladybegood.com/
Thursday 3 May was our last day in Libya and in the morning we were due to drive from Tobruk to the Libya/Egypt border but, as repeated searches had failed to turn up the missing keys, we decided to report the suspected theft/loss to the police before leaving Tobruk. Utman clearly was not happy with this and it is a matter of considerable regret that he was the only person in the police station who was able to speak and write English. I wrote a statement in English, but have heavy reservations about the accuracy of Utman’s subsequent translation of it into Arabic. Meanwhile, he was chatting happily in Arabic with the police and they were offering him cigarettes, which I thought rather suspicious. Amanda noticed that Utman had discreetly copied my UK home address from the statement onto a piece of paper and put it in his pocket.
Before getting into the car, Amanda and I challenged Utman about why he had written down my home address. Utman responded by shouting abuse at us, taking the piece of paper from his pocket and ripping it into shreds. He then got into the car. Fearing that he would come back to Tobruk after leaving us at the border and pick up the address, I retrieved the shreds of paper from the ground. Utman jumped out of the car and tried to prise the paper from my hand before throwing a punch at me, which fortunately I blocked. During this scuffle, I sustained 4 scratches to my left hand.
I regret not going straight back to the police station in Tobruk and taking matters further regarding this assault – or hitting Uthman back. But I was conscious that using the only person in the vicinity who could speak English to interpret for us whilst reporting him for assault would be highly problematic. Of course, we could have contacted the British Embassy in Tripoli for help but this too would have delayed matters, to say nothing of us having to return to Libya (or being kept in the country waiting) for any possible case to come to court.
But in the meantime, I did at least get some revenge by making Uthman miss his flight back to Tripoli. He had wanted to make an early start that morning so as to get back to Benghazi to catch a flight, but after what happened in the car park I made sure to drive at 60 km/h all the way to the border. Uthman bid us an exceedingly condescending farewell, and it is a matter of regret that I didn’t give him the 1/4 dinar tip I was planning to do, but kept the note as a souvenir instead.
So there you have it. Interesting country, dreadful tour company and guides.
Pictures from Benghazi to the Egypt border, Cyrene, Appolonia and Tobruk.
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| Libya – Appolonia, Cyrene, Tobruk and to Egypt border |
