Ghadames Peal of the Desert

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Trip Start Feb 20, 2007 Previous
Entry Trip End Ongoing

  Ghadamis, Libya
Wednesday, December 3, 2008

As Claudia was visiting we decided to book a trip to Ghadames, the old town know as the Pearl of the desert. It was an 8 hour drive inland from Tripoli and situated on the edge of the Sahara desert near Algeria and Tunisia. We had a wonderful guide Mustafa take us out there and show us around. He was actually born in the old Medina so was full of information. We stayed in a lovely new hotel Dar Ghadames for 2 nights. Although nothing to do at night our days were full. The old Medina was being done up but no one lives in it any more. We visited houses decorated as they would have been, walked across the roof tops  the "womens social space" and explored tiny pitch black alleyways underground. Lance had a swing on the grown ups swing at the café and Claudia dressed up in traditional dress. We also enjoyed a delicious lunch of soup and cous cous stew accompanied by rosemary tea and Pepsi!
On the journey there and back we stopped at several old granaries which were built like forts to store the communities grains, olives and oils.  These were really interesting and one even had an underground tunnel network connecting to the outer town.
On the last evening we went out to watch the sunset over the dunes of the Sahara and 4 wheel drive through the dunes. Well we thought we were going to 4 wheel drive but instead the drivers dropped us off at the base of the dunes, we had to walk up to watch the sunset and they went off hooning around and showing off how fast they could go up and down the huge sand dunes and racing each other.
We also went to a lookout where we could see Algeria and Tunisia.
The local desert people are the Tuareg and very welcoming. They have some lovely handicrafts so we came back with colourful food covers, a bright blue scarf , hand sown leather boots colourfully embroidered and a decorated camel saddle!

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Claudia in traditional dress	colourful medina living room	grain storage fort	Lance and Claud in the Medina cafe
looking out to Tunisia and Algeria	lunch in the medina   Comments!	me and Clauds	medina 1
medina 2	medina 3	medina 4	medina 5
Mustafa and Lance on the Medina rooftops	Mustaffa and Lance in Medina House special area	oasis	old decorated door to show they have been on Hajj
old oil storage	old storage fort	old storage fort 2	palm tree swing
Sahara sunset	tourists	Tuareg	very old Mosque tower over looking valley
village we visited on the way

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