Leaving Libya
Trip Start
Unknown
1
14
16
Trip End
Ongoing
Matmata, Tunisia
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Then there was a long drive in searing temperatures, getting sand blasted through the open-sides of the truck. We drove through some very pretty desert to Nalut - where there is a wonderful, old fortified granary where the local Berbers used to keep their produce – a bit like a bank where they could deposit grain and goods, trade it, make withdrawals etc. It's abandoned now but very picturesque – see the photos. We continued down to Gadames which is an interesting place. The old town (all made from mud bricks) is a maze of covered alleyways with a very ingenious system of water distribution from a central spring. We had a guided tour through the town and a traditional Berber lunch in a beautifully decorated house (although the vegetarian couscous had a lot of camel in it)!
There is a very clever way of telling the time for the farmers in old Gadames. In the town squares, time was told in knots. Someone was employed to sit at the water channel with a bucket with a regulation sized hole in the bottom. They filled the bucket from the channel and watched it drain. Once a bucket had drained they tied a knot in a bit of rope and started again. Farmers bought shares in the water supply – one share equaled one knot. So, if you bought 200 shares, you got the water supply (directed down irrigation channels using stones to block and direct the flow) for the time it took for 200 buckets to empty. You were told that your supply started at a certain time in the day ('You can get water at 500 knots’), and you went to the town square to count the knots in the rope to find out what ‘time’ it was and to work out when your turn had come! All very clever and much more fun than having a normal watch!
The next stop, much to our pleasure, was on the coast. Two nights camping on the beach with a side trip to Sabratha was just what we wanted to do. Sabratha is another Roman site – this one with a VERY impressive theatre with a three-floor structure on the stage – one for actors playing mere mortals, one for nobles and the top one for the gods (hence our phrase ‘a seat up in the gods’).
Camping on the beach was good fun especially the last night when we had a great fire on the dunes in the evening, and had fun playing cricket and football in the sand (we had to stop when it got dark, as nobody could see the ball – but we consoled ourselves by making a hot chocolate and roasting marshmallows over the fire)!
All in all Libya was well worth the cost (of the visas, a compulsory guide at every site and tourist tax of $50 tourist tax per group/per day) and the constraint of going on an organized tour (We had to be accompanied by a tour agent and a policeman (who were both very friendly and helpful) everywhere we went. The Roman ruins were every bit as good as we were expecting and we saw only one other group of tourists the whole time we were there which made them exceptional. Would love to go back and see more of the desert country one day….
Today, as we write this, we are sitting on the truck at the border waiting to cross in to Tunisia. We’ve been nine hours so far, and at the moment both the keys to the truck and everyone’s passports have been taken away, and the guards have left their posts to go to lunch! Wish us luck!!
Comments
was never sure why you were so keen to go to Libya but I confess I am converted and now understand - looks gorgeous and really worth the trip. Hope you get your passports back and across the border :-) x