Google Translate’s Arabic to English is wild, man

Day 6: Libya - Cyrene and the ancient Greek cities

We spent the day driving north and east of Benghazi into the green, verdant countryside that you’d probably associate more with Provence in France than in Libya. We stopped along the way to Cyrene to try some bread and coffee and then we met some locals celebrating their football team on a bridge (not sure why) before stopping at the ancient Greek city of Cyrene.

Cyrene was established in the 6th Century BCE by the Greeks (who are only 200km away) and grew into a huge city before being occupied by the Romans, the Byzantines, Italians and others. We spent most of our time seeing the Temples of Apollo, Artemis and Zeus before heading off for dinner and an early night. It’s been a tremendous day, but we’re all quite tired from all the flying and driving. There are more ancient Greek cities to see tomorrow.

My Libyan photos are here (Opens in new tab.)

Welcome to Benghazi

One of many airport cats that kept us company through bureaucratic boredom

Day 5: Libya - Flight to Benghazi

Today was supposed to be a rest day but a last minute change in flight schedule meant that it became a travel day. Anyone who has travelled with Lupine Tours knows that nearly every day is chocked full of things to see and do. No one does these tours for rest and relaxation. They are meant for explorers or ADD people like me. But eventually even us stimulation junkies need a break and they will usually throw one in in the middle of the trip.

Unfortunately our flight to Benghazi on LibyanWings for tomorrow was cancelled so today we had to take a flight on Buraq Air, a mostly domestic Libyan carrier. So off to the airport we go. Western Libya is under the control of the National Transition Council (the group NATO wanted to work with after Qaddafi fell), but Eastern Libya is under the control of a rival government called the Haftars (or the Libyan National Army). Each government thinks the other is illegitimate though they seem to cooperate when it comes to security, currency, infrastructure and other matters meant to make the country functional. But flying from one part of the country to the other is almost like flying internationally (minus the passport stamp… dammit.)

Much of the day was spent hurrying up and waiting, handing over our passports, getting them back and then immediately being asked to hand them over again, running bags through X-ray devices watched by security guards more interested in their phones than the bags, and then repeating the whole thing.

At one point, while waiting for our gate to be announced we all found some open seats and had a sit. I ended up sitting next to a rather severe looking older man in traditional Islamic dress with his wife who was rummaging through her suitcase for a niqab to wear for Benghazi.

After sitting there for a while the man must have seen my US passport and asked in English:

Him: ‘’Are you American?’’

I said: ‘’Yes’’

Him: ‘’Where in America are you from?’’

Me: ‘’New York City’’

Him: ‘’Are there lots of Libyans there?’’

Me: ‘’Yes, I think so’’ (probably, right??)

Then after a pause, he pointed at the ceiling and said:

‘’Muhammed is the last prophet of God. No other prophets followed him.’’

I said: ‘’Okay’’

Him: ‘’The Qu’ran is the holy book of God.’’

Me: ‘’Okay’’

Him: ‘’Are you Muslim?’’

Me: ‘’No’’

Him (reassuringly): ‘’Oh, it’s all the same God’’.

Me (with relief): ‘’Yes, it is.’’

With that settled, his demeanor softened. He pulled out his phone and started showing me pictures of his granddaughters, his house, and pictures of some beautiful places that I *must* see near Benghazi. He's a very creative photographer. As he’s scrolling through his phone, I see cat pictures so I say ‘’I’ve got cats’’ and we showed each other our cat photos. (Because what bridges divides better than sharing photos of our cats?)

Finally, our gate is called so he and his wife take off and I walk over with our group to the gate. The boarding line is divided into three queues: 1) Libyan men; 2) Libyan women, and 3) foreigners of any gender. We got into line three. But then the chaos started as we’re immediately pulled out of our line by our fixer and shoved to the front. A few of us go through the metal detector and bag scanner but then we’re urgently told that we need to go back somewhere for some unclear reason, so I pull my bag and go back the wrong way through the detector to the security guy's protests. Then a guy in a flannel shirt with no official markings on him asks for our passports and disappears. No one knows what is going on, so we stand there and wait.

Finally, after an uncomfortably long wait, Flannel Guy and our passports reappear and we can go through the detectors again. So we do, and were finally able to board the bus to take us to the plane to Benghazi.

After an hour’s flight, we landed in Benghazi. As we got close to landing, some women who weren’t wearing niqabs started putting them on. Benghazi is definitely rougher-looking and more conservative than Tripoli, but the people are friendly. After a sunset walk on the ocean front corniche where locals wanted to take selfies with us, we had dinner at a kebab place. Now it’s time to call it a night.

My Libyan photos are here (Opens in new tab.)

More police selfies

Libya’s Secret Police aren’t very secret. The keep coming up and asking for selfies to share with their friends, so of course I have to get one. Fortunately, they’re happy to oblige.

Day 3 and 4: Libya - Ghadames and the drive back

We spent Day 3 in Ghadames, which is an oasis town of about 10,000 near the Libya-Tunisia-Algeria tripoint. The hotel is so huge it made us wonder what it was originally built for as we were the only group of people there. It’s not all that uncommon to stay at huge, empty hotels in Africa and Asia; they were obviously built and are maintained for reasons other than profit. The staff tend to spend lonely days cleaning and maintaining the place until someone (usually a tour group) finds them and starts using them in their itinerary.

We spent the day touring the old city of Ghadames. It was an important trading stopover point between Timbuktu and the coast. At its peak, the old city held about 7,500 people but is now mostly empty though the families still own the dwellings. The homes, squares and mosques were ingeniously designed to maximize airflow to stay cool during the day while retaining heat at night. You could feel about a 15 degree difference between the bottom floors of the homes and the rooftops which are exposed to the sun.

Women weren’t allowed to go outside of the homes during the day, but they had the fourth floor to themselves and could directly move from fourth floor to fourth floor to other houses so that they weren’t trapped inside their homes all day.

Ghadames other claim to fame is being where many scenes from John Wayne and Sophia Loren’s movie ‘’Legend of the Lost’’ were filmed.

After the tour, we were driven out into the desert near the Algerian border to go off-roading on the dunes. This seems to be the way young local men (I didn’t see any women - they seem too sensible for this sort of thing) to let off masculine steam. Dozens of cars race up and down the dunes, spin out; they pour tea, watch the sunset and do it all over again. They would tease each other if they got stuck and it was pretty obvious that some cars had rolled over at different times. It felt a bit ''Mad Max'' at times but everyone was in good spirits and it was a lot of fun.

After having tea and sand bread (which sounds worse than it is) with a couple Tuareg sellers, we went back into town to have dinner and catch our tour bus back to the hotel, but the bus was m.i.a. A huge thunderstorm had rolled in, unleashing buckets of rain. So the local police took turns driving us back to the hotel in their police cars. It was probably the most action they saw that day.

Me to police officer: Can you woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo (making light and siren gesture)?

Police officer: No.

Me: Okay (pouty face).

Day 4 was the long drive back to Tripoli.

Today, our group separates. Those of us who are flying onto Benghazi have to board a plane to take off there this afternoon, while the rest of the group continues on in the Tripoli area. It was hard to say goodbyes last night but hopefully we’ll all keep in touch.

My Libyan photos are here (Opens in new tab.)

With one of Libya’s finest

Day 2: Libya - The ride to Ghadames

Today we spent the day driving 650km from Tripoli to Ghadames which is a small border oasis town on the Libyan-Algerian-Tunisian border tripoint. About 100km south of Tripoli we started to see things transition from the more Arab coastal part of Libya to the Berber community. The signage first on government and then shop signs started to be in Arabic, Berber and English script. Then as we moved on, the Berber script started to come first on the signage.

The Berbers or Imazighen people are the indigenous people of North Africa, numbering about 25 million people scattered from Morocco to Egypt. They settled in the Sahara between 10,000-20,000 years ago, when the Sahara was a fertile grassland teeming with wildlife that you’d find on the Serengeti today. At the time, the Sahara was more like Iowa or eastern Nebraska, with many rivers, a chain of lakes, and abundant fauna. Then about 7,000 years ago the worst environmental catastrophe imaginable happened to the Berbers. The climate changed: the rains became less frequent; the lakes evaporated or went underground; the trees disappeared, as did the fauna. The grasses gave way to rock and sand. Most people migrated to the coast or the Niger, Senegal or Nile river valleys (the latter eventually giving rise to the Egyptian civilization). But the Berbers adapted to the changing climate and found ways to eke out a living in their new reality. They are the ultimate survivor people.

In the 7th Century CE, the Arabs began their conquest of North Africa and conquered the Berbers. The Berbers learned how to speak Arabic and converted to Islam but were treated as second class citizens, being taxed at a higher rate than Arabs and sometimes forced into slavery. This oppression and marginalization continued on into the 20th Century and intensified under Qaddafi who tried to stamp out the Berber identity altogether. He quipped ‘’I don’t care what they do in their own homes but outside they are Libyans.’’ And for him, being Libyan meant being Arab.

So when the Arab Spring commenced in 2011, the Berbers were quick to join forces to bring down the Qaddafi regime. Their cities and villages often suffered some of the worst massacres and war crimes during that First Libyan Civil War. There are still some Berber villages that show evidence of that conflict.

After Qaddafi’s government fell and he was killed, the Berbers in Libya have had a cultural renaissance. Their blue, green and yellow with the double pitchfork flag flies everywhere, often more commonly seen than the Libyan national flag. They can now learn about Berber languages and cultures in school.

Many Berber towns have wall murals and art celebrating their liberation from the Qaddafi regime and some even have decommissioned tanks originally captured from Qaddafi forces on display.

On our ride out to Ghadames we stopped at some historic Berber trading posts and villages and learned about how they lived.

My Libyan photos are here (Opens in new tab.)

Sabratha, Libya

Day 1: Libya - Entry and Sabartha

The trip from Tunis to Tripoli is just over an hour. We flew on LibyaWings which none of us had heard much of before this trip. Whereas in the US, Europe and Australia, it’s regarded as discrimination to select flight attendants based on their looks, other parts of the world have no such qualms. And LibyaWings' male flight attendants were very easy on the eyes. Everything was completely professional. They even managed to serve a meal on such a short flight.

While the flight over was quick, the bureaucracy at the airport wasn’t. It took four hours to process everyone’s visas, change money, and get SIM cards. Apparently nothing bureaucratic moves quickly in Libya. So after a lot of waiting and waiting and waiting, we finally were able to leave the airport and grab a bite.

There are 16 people in our group, a Lupine Tour guide (Sean) and a local guide (Ali). Ali is a real character. He’s in his 70s but acts like a young adult and can crack jokes with the best of them. Sean is a soft spoken guy who was born in the States but has lived in Europe his adult life. Everyone else seems pleasant: a few Brits and Aussies, a couple Irish, a German, a Pole and a few Americans. I haven’t identified any assholes yet. Fingers crossed.

After grabbing a bit of a late lunch, we set off for our first destination which are the ruins at Sabratha, a UNESCO site two hours west from Tripoli. The area started out as a Phoenician seaport 2,500 years ago before being taken over by the Romans. Much of it was destroyed in an earthquake and the existing ruins have been stabilized with the use of modern concrete. It’s an impressive site. The only other people there were the curious and friendly locals.

They rushed us through lunch to get us to this site because the guides kept saying that they didn’t want us driving back to Tripoli in the dark.

Me: Why? Animals or people crossing the road? Cars driving without headlights at night? Typical Africa highway stuff?

Guide: No. Bandits.

Me: Oh... well, that does seem like a rather good reason.

So we set off through Tripoli’s rush hour to Sabratha and got there at around 5:30PM, with everyone wondering how we were going to make it back before dark. But they took their leisurely time explaining the history of the area, its establishment by the Phoenicians; the Roman conquest; how it was used since; the earthquake, and the restoration. Due to my inattentiveness while taking photos and looking around, I got separated from the group and after searching for them with no success, I gave up, took a few more snaps and then headed back to the bus. The sun was about to set and I didn’t want to be the one who made us Bandit Bait.

So I waited and waited and waited, the sun set, and it got darker. Finally, the rest of the group showed up. Is not driving in the dark a stretch goal? Is it a nice-to-have? Should we be worried? I dunno, but there were police all over that highway so it’s hard to believe much banditry takes place there at least. Finally, at 9PM we made it back in one piece and had dinner at a Turkish place. Apparently, Turkish food is as trendy in Libya as Korean food is trendy in gentrified Brooklyn.

My Libyan photos are here (Opens in new tab.)