Libya - 6 October 2010

Along the Gulf of Sirte

After a broken night, I was woken up by the alarm.  By 06.00 we were all at breakfast and the bus was loaded up and ready for the off, bang on 06.30.  It was still dark and the moon was the narrowest slither.  As it grew lighter, I thought that the silhouettes of the date palms would have made a great subject for a pen and ink drawing.  By 07.00 it was light enough to read.  Darak turned the radio on, which drowned out the music on my headphones.

We stopped for a coffee in Misrata, which Mahmoud said was his home town.  I had a tea, but it was already sugared and far too sweet, so I had an apple juice which cost only D0.25.

The roads were much slower beyond Misrata.  A new road was under construction, but the old one was so full of potholes that vehicles often had to resort to driving on the left to avoid them.  Fortunately, there were some large gaps between the on-coming traffic.  To add to the delays, there were several checkpoints.  We were stopped at one and Ali “had to prove his worth over a cigarette” as Kim put it.

On and on we travelled, sea and new tarmac to the left, scrubby desert to the right, with a few power cables and lots of rubbish.  There was the occasional bush which sprouted plastic bags instead of leaves.  We saw some camels and, when we were in the queue for the main check point into the Sirt area, we saw two donkeys.  The larger one was hobbled, so walked slowly in search of something edible.  There did not seem to be much.  It took a bit longer to get through this checkpoint so that Caroline began to despair of reaching the hotel much before 20.00.

Eventually, Ali had done his stuff and we were off again.  We stopped for petrol and used their multi-sex loo.  While we were inside, local men were outside, washing their hands and feet in preparation for their prayers.  We decided to have a drink in the café.  Again, my coffee was horribly sweet, so the guy who made them gave me another one, this time with no milk or sugar.  By then it was nearly time to leave, so Heuly topped it up with some water to cool it down enough for me to drink before we had to go.  Then we went to the shop next door to buy some food for our journey.  The water only came in huge containers, so I went back to the café and got a small one from the fridge.  Because he had no change, the cashier gave it to me for nothing.  Another sign of how generous the ordinary people were.

Philaeni Brother from Italian Arch

The road was a lot better after our stop and Ruth estimated that we would reach the broken Italian Arch in about an hour. Meanwhile Mahmoud told us the story of the Philaeni brothers, who were commemorated on the arch.  The Greeks and the Carthaginians wanted to agree a border between their lands to settle their territorial disputes.  So they decided on a race.  The aim was to have two people set off from Cyrene and two from Carthage and the border would be where they met.  The Philaeni brothers ran from Carthage and were very fast, so that the two pairs met much nearer to Cyrene than Carthage.  The Philaeni brothers were accused of cheating, which they denied to the extent that they were willing to be buried alive so that the border would stand.

We saw a few trees and Mahmoud pointed out the reservoir for the Great Man-Made River.  We also saw the Ouagga Dougga Hall in the distance.  This was the venue for the conference which had prevented us from staying in the area.

Philaeni Brothers from Italian Arch

Our only photo stop was during our lunch break, taken at Medinat Sultan.  We were taken to where the ruins of the Italian Arch lay in the sand.  The ruins seemed to be of helmeted men or a lot of spare legs, so I didn't take any photos.  We walked back to some buildings, one of which had plastic chairs outside.  Behind the buildings lay the statues of the Philaeni brothers.   They had been cast in bronze in 1934 and were now on their sides having been taken from the Arch.  We ate our supermarket purchases in the shade of a building.  There was another building nearby, which functioned as a small hotel.  There did not seem to be many bedrooms when we went inside.

It was a long time before the next stop.  I finally finished my book, which had been a really tough read and started my next book, which was a Star Trek novel.  It was some light relief and I just raced through the pages.

Our journey was broken only by the occasional coffee stop and comfort break, but we mostly just pushed on to Benghazi.  Mahmoud took over the driving for a while to give Darak a much needed break.  Gradually, as it grew dark and I could not read anymore, we started to see more and more buildings.  We even came across a set of traffic lights.  The left turn led only into what must have been a very important building, with a large gatehouse, spotlights and security fences.

At first, we thought Mahmoud was teasing us when we finally drew up to our hotel, the Hotel Tibetsi.  It looked far too expensive for us and even had topiary outside.  Its only fault was one which comes with most expensive hotels:  the room was too dark, with no bright central light.

Caroline went for dinner, but I stayed in the room and ate some more of my supermarket food, washed my feet of all the desert sand from Medinat Sultan and went to bed early.  I had just started the crossword in my BBC History magazine when Caroline came back and we managed to get most of the answers between us.  She tried to open a window to let in some air but, as we were on the 11^th floor, they were all sealed to protect against the high winds and prevent anyone falling out.