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.)
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