Malta and Gozo

I'm now in a hostel in Cork, Ireland that has free internet access so this is another quick lick and promise over breakfast before we go on to Kilarney by bus to pick up our self-guided walk on the Ring of Kerry. I'll get this started and then will edit with details of our ten days in Malta and Gozo.

Amazingly, Carole and I linked up with ease at Heathrow airport which continues to be chaotic. This time, however, I used my UK passport coming in and was rewarded with a fast moving queue and no hassle. Nevertheless, although the baggage handling system has improved to the extent that they let you know on the screen which carousel your bags are coming into, they still sent our bags to the wrong carousel so the whole planeload of people waited patiently for three quarters of an hour while this was sorted. So it was great to walk out of the arrivals door and find Carole waiting.

We found the bus station and the bus to Gloucester fairly easily and by 1.00pm had landed in Gloucester and located a taxi to go out to my brother's house. At that point, I was feeling smug that all our arrangements were working out smoothly! After a few hiccups, we even negotiated the electronic gates into Dave's driveway. When I had waved Dave's family goodbye as they drove off to the airport in Malta, we had arranged for him to leave a key under the herb pot we had planted when I was in Churcham last. We struggled with all our bags over the gravel driveway and located the herb pot but no key! Lots of fumbling and groping and digging out a torch from the bags, but nothing! And it was raining! We had to come up with plan B which consisted of shouting abuse at Dave's bedroom window and knocking on the huge studded front door of the old Victorian vicarage that my brother lives in. He eventually came down in barefeet and stumbled out to the herb pot to reveal the secret, secret location of the key.

So we spent the next day sorting out our gear ready for Ireland and making arrangements for the train trip from Gloucester to Fishguard and the ferry crossing to Rosslare that we planned for the Friday. We managed to fit in a trip to Gloucester cathedral where we picked up the start of evensong with a choir singing beautifully in the stunning space.

The crossing was excellent - very calm and at one point we had a Welsh male voice choir singing behind us in the bar and the men's decathlon finishing on the huge TV screen in front of us followed by the women's hockey match between China and Netherlands but I'll write about that in a later post.  Now I want to tell the story of our trip to Malta and Gozo.

Bugibba

The flight from Tripoli was fine despite my anxiety about Libyan airports picked up from my experience in Benghazi - I still need to update the blog with my trip through Libya.  I am discovering more and more links between Libya and Malta as I continue my travels.  Economic links emerged early on when I had to send funds for my Libyan trip through a Malta bank, and I also discovered from my Benghazi guide that many Libyan people who want to learn English will go to one of the several schools set up in Malta because it is closer and cheaper than other places.

My brother had emailed me to say that he and his extended family were going to meet me in Malta after all and he had booked me in to a cheap hotel in Bugibba for a few days before we all went to a farmhouse on Gozo for a week.  So it was easy for me to get a taxi from the airport straight to the hotel.  They have now set up a very simple process at Luqa airport where you go to a desk, ask for a taxi, pay your money and then are escorted by your driver to the cab.  I was also impressed by the state of the roads in Malta which have been upgraded since I was last there, a decade or so ago.  The taxi driver, however, complained about the down side of joining the European union which has resulted in over-regulation and a sense of loss of local control.

When I got to the hotel in Bugibba, St Paul's Bay, I was greeted by a young man who cheerfully carried my bags in.  There was complete confusion at the reception desk where it appeared that my booking was for the next day and my brother had never been heard of!  Through all this my smiling baggage carrier stood by and then helped me carry my bags up, at which point I learnt that he was from Libya and was planning to return that weekend to his sister's wedding.  I had discovered at the airport that no-one in Malta was going to exchange my Libyan money and I had quite a lot so I gave them all to him and he was delighted.  It transpired that he was a car driver and he offered to be my driver for free if I needed any transport.

The chaos I had experienced at the front desk was not limited to my own experience, nor was it limited to that area!  But once I had learnt to negotiate a chaotic system, I enjoyed my four days in Bugibba and booked in to return there for the two nights I needed after returning from Gozo and before my flight to UK.  I bumped into my brother and his family at the rooftop swimming pool the next morning and it appears they had checked in to the hotel shortly before I had arrived the previous day.  I discovered an internet cafe down the road, a small bakery for the great flakey cheesecakes they make in Malta and the short stroll down to the bay where there were several restaurants on the front.

I also arranged with the Real Estate company I had been in touch with from Australia, to go and look at some possible flats for me to rent in Sliema and Marsaxlokk.  Marianne came to pick me up at the hotel and took me first to the Marsaxlokk flat which was brand new and set one street back from the seafront in this small fishing village in the south-east quarter of Malta.  Then we went to the old flat in Qui-si-sana in Sliema which was in my price range because it was on the third floor with no lift.  I loved it from the huge creaking front door where the key wouldn't work to the high, high ceilings in the large rooms.  But sadly the woman who owned it was an old-fashioned haggler and started to make the process uncomfortable so in the end we settled on the Marsaxlokk flat where I'm sure the washing machine won't break down and it was beautifully quiet.

Whilst I was flat-hunting, my brother and co. went to Popeye's village.  They had a great time at this theme park based on the film set for the making of the movie but now with added water trampolines and inflatable toys floating in the little bay down from the rocky set.  They also picked up the jeep we were going to take with us for our week in Gozo

I'll continue later with the Gozo saga.

Sister Island

Malta is actually an archipelago of small islands and we passed one of them, Comino, as we went from Malta to Gozo on the car ferry.  As we passed the Blue Lagoon, crowded as usual with tourist boats, my brother and I reminisced about the time we set off to sail our small dinghy around Malta when we were in our teens.  We spent the first night in the Blue Lagoon playing chess under the sail we had stretched out as a tent because it was winter and getting cold.  The wind got up in the night and our dad got worried and came to find us the next morning in the motor boat that he had built himself so we never did get to sail around Malta.  It is an expedition that I might try and complete when I return for six months in September.

The jeep Dave had hired served us well on Gozo and soon had us through Vittoriosa, the main town and into Gharb, the village where our farmhouse was located.  We had arranged to meet the owner, Joe, in the main square to collect a key.  Most Maltese villages have a standard design of a central square with a large church and a street that goes through the village and divides around the church in a one-way system.  Joe arrived very soon after us and led us through the centre to find the house.  It was in one of the classic, narrow cross-streets with large front doors opening straight onto the street.  Newly built but in traditional Maltese sandstone and design with the enclosed courtyard at the back now harbouring the swimming pool.  We quickly sorted out the sleeping arrangements and were in the pool!

The house was big enough for everyone to be able to do their own thing and we settled into a routine for the week.  I would go to bed early and get up early to go walking along the country lanes to the stunning cliffs on the Northern side of the island.  My niece spent most of her time in the pool, and the other girls wanted to sunbathe whenever they had a chance which was all the time.  My brother accommodated all our diverse interests by suggesting group trips in the jeep to some of the beaches  or other attractions such as the craft village just outside Gharb or the big fiesta that was building up all week in Vittoriosa.

I'll finish later as everyone has just got home from school.

Libya

I'm back in the internet cafe in Bugibba, Malta after a great week in a farmhouse in Gozo with my brother and his family. This is by way of a lick and a promise as I am running out of time on my access card. Tomorrow I fly out of Luqa airport back to Heathrow where I hope to meet up with my friend Carole before going over to Ireland for a week's trekking on the Ring of Kerry. We will then do various separate things before we fly to Rome and spend a week or so travelling down from Florence to Sicily by train and catching the fast ferry back over to Malta.

Before I fly out tomorrow, I will make the final arrangements for a six month lease on a flat in Marsaxlokk where I will be able to have internet access installed and should be able to start using my laptop again to upload photos to my blog. In the meantime, I will post this with a promise to come in and edit tomorrow morning with the story of my trip through Libya.

Wednesday lunchtime. I've had two of the great Maltese cheesecakes for lunch and have checked out of the apartment hotel with an hour to go before getting a car to the airport. Here is the update on my trip through Libya.

Tobruk
So after the drama of my midnight crossing from Egypt to Libya, I was glad to land in a clean hotel in Tobruk. The arrangement was to be picked up in the morning and go round the war cemeteries then go on to Serena in the afternoon. I had no interest in hanging around Tobruk for two nights which the guide seemed to be angling for.

The following day was Friday so everything was closed and everyone was on holiday and that's the explanation the guide gave me when we had a different driver and a different arrangement. With hindsight, I don't think he could get a driver to start the journey to Benghazi on Friday so we had to spend two nights in Tobruk. I went with the flow.

There are four war cemeteries in Tobruk, a town that has built a whole industry around the neatly dead. It was sobering to visit so many rows of graves neatly enclosed in graveyards that were opened up for me by a special guide. French, Italian, Commonwealth (including Australia) and German, each had a slightly different feel but always the oppressive feeling of so many young lives thrown away. The German monument is very different from the pattern of rows and rows of identical crosses found at the other cemeteries. They have built a massive Germanic castle on a headland overlooking the bay of Tobruk with a colonnaded walkway around a central mass grave with a huge bronze sculpture in the middle. Each cemetery has a small information room with historical photos and artifacts.

The rest of the time in Tobruk we kind of hung around the beaches. After an afternoon siesta, we went to Rassbyad Beach which was very crowded with Muslim families enjoying their day off. My guide advised me that I would not be able to swim there that day as the families would be upset by my Western swimsuit but he promised me an early morning swim when the beach would be deserted before we set off for Serena. The windy road to the beach lead through stony dunes and I understood from the limited English of our guide that the beach used to be the favourite of the king and he alone used it. "Now it is different". My guide has a gentle round face and I think he says that big money will spoil the place - at least that's what I want him to be saying.

I have noticed that the Libyan men wear their robes shorter than the Egyptians and they often wear a subtly embroidered but shapeless waistcoat over it. Because it is Friday, my guide Tarek looks beautiful in a white robe and waistcoat. He is a director of the company that runs the beach and it also appears to be an investment company. We drove endlessly around Tobruk while he made phone calls on his mobile phone. However, he appears to be arranging things for me including a visit to a language school. He also arranges my swim for the following morning and the trip through Serena and Apollonia to Benghazi for Saturday night before flying out to Tripoli on Sunday night.

At St George beach where I understand Tarek lives in the top floor of a service building that used to be used by the king I meet other people from his company and we sit on plastic chairs and have lemonade. As the sun went down behind the ridge, the light softened and the lights came on across the bay so the oil tanks and the German memorial became beautiful. The boys who were playing football on their segregated side of the beach away from the safely married started walking home along the ridge and were silhouetted against the evening sky - skinny bodies exaggerated by the ridge and their dark outlines.

This was the beach I came back to for my promised early morning swim. The sea was calm, turquoise and empty of people. I swam alone and my guide averted his eyes.

We finally got on the road to Serena after 9.00 and I was a little concerned that we would be rushing through the ancient cities to get to Benghazi by the evening. The landscape around Tobruk is flat and much like the Egyptian coast road except that the small square houses dotting the landscape occasionally show an Italian influence. Sometimes there is a Bedouin tent. After a while, the range comes down close to the sea and we pass through Ainlazalas (the eyes) where people are fishers. Now the stony desert has given way to sand and there are men working on the road probably staying in the tents I can see dotted around the area.

Tebibi is a strip village with mosque, shops, square houses on streets running back from the main street. And always the Mediterranean on our right with reddish-brown sand and low coastal shrubs. A little further on from Om Rasem, the sky was clouded with industrial smoke from some kind of factory. We pass a resort for the families of armed forces personnel - mostly flying men - but it is on the left hand side of the road and some distance from the beach so I can't imagine it would be much fun.

The car came down into Derma from rocky dunes up from the sea. A nice harbour, large industrial area, city apartments - "City people, not country". A dual highway is being built along and over the sea front like the Corniche in Alexandria. The sea is rough but still turquoise and deep blue. We continue on through the massive building programmes and out onto the coast road again with the range on our left. There is a left hand fork up to the range and straight to Benghazi but we continue along the coast towards Serena and Apollonia.

Crossing the border

Leaving Alexandria

I'm now in an internet cafe in Bugibba in Malta. I met up with my brother and co. a few days ago and we're going over to the sister island of Gozo in a few days to stay in an old farmhouse. My week in Libya between finishing my course in Alexandria and flying out from Tripoli to Malta was stunning and I'll tell that story in my next blog. For now, I want to write about the journey from Alexandria to the Libyan border.



A week ago on Thursday - I can't believe it was such a short time away - I completed my TEFL certificate after 4 intensive weeks. I had booked a car for 2.00pm to drive me the 6 hours along the desert road that runs along the Mediterranean coast to the Libyan border. It is quite complicated getting into Libya and I had to be invited by a Libyan travel company in order to get my visa but I had completed the arab translation of my passport and done all the necessary things before I left Australia.



My car arrived on time but I was still racing to get my apartment packed up. My laundry had been delayed the day before so I had to walk through the sandy streets in the hottest part of the day hoping that my clothes had turned up. In addition, the telebanker down the road wasn't working so I had to walk a further half hour down the main street to the bank where there was a huge queue at the one telebanker that was working. I needed money to pay the driver when we got to the Libyan/Egyptian border.



In the end, we were only half a hour late getting started. Most of the others who had completed the course with me that morning went off in a minibus for a leisurely farewell lunch and I waved them off with a few doubts in my mind about my decision to travel through to Libya immediately after the course ended. But now I was committed.



So I was saying goodbye to the apartment campus guard and the cleaner when Shaun came strolling down the road with a plastic bag of groceries. Shaun is one of two Texans on the course - a lean young man with a classic laconic Texan style. He hadn't gone to lunch because like me he was leaving later in the afternoon to fly to Greece. Most of the others were hanging around for a few more days and going on a Cairo tour the following day.



Getting out of Alexandria was the usual chaotic, stop/go battle until we were heading West on the desert road. For the first hour, we drove past massive resort developments, most of them unfinished but with huge elaborate entry gates. The rows upon rows of stylish apartment blocks appeared to be designed mainly for Egyptian holiday-makers.



As the resorts petered out, we began to catch glimpses of the sea in strips of calm turqoise and deep blue. We drove for another two hours with flat stony desert to the left and pink/red sand dunes to the right. Occasional square farmhouses dotted the landscape with the dove roosts I have become familiar with on the Alexandria/Cairo desert road.



At Marsa Matruh - 'Half-way' announced the driver - we did a U-turn on the highway so that we could take a left fork in the road. Then more desert country for another three hours. Somewhere off to the left towards the Libyan border is Siwa, an oasis village that people in Egypt had mentioned as a good place to visit and I also heard more about it when I got to Libya. My dive brochure mentioned the 'Jesus Lacks' and 'putrified forest'. Nathan, anther colleague on the course who was from Washington, DC, was trying to find a way to get there during the few days he was staying on in Alexandria prior to returning to his teaching job in America. I hope he got there, and if I return to Egypt, Siwa will be on my itinerary.



We, however, drove straight through with occasional stops to refuel and use the toilets. Most were pretty evil-smelling squat toilets, but at one place where women were praying in a tiled area on the way in, the toilets were fine once I worked out the queuing system which had fewer rules than Alexandria roads!



I'm running out of time on my cafe access so will post this and finish the story tomorrow.

At the border

At about 8.00pm Egyptian time, we climbed the range of hills just before the Libyan border. The driver had clearly never driven such hairpin bends before (Egypt is predominantly a flat country) and kept trying to take photos on his mobile phone as we overtook on frightening curves. Since the sun was sinking, we were heading west and there were several large lorries also trying to negotiate the steep hill, this worried me a lot!

We made it to the top, but before we came to the first checkpoint, the driver said I should get out the money to pay him since he wouldn't be able to come any further with me. I had already sorted out the agreed money for the company and some for the driver so that was the easy part. What concerned me was that I was suddenly going to find myself totally alone, without any Arabic, knowing nothing about the procedures and with a large suitcase, a backpack and a laptop to negotiate. I had given the driver a large tip so he was very helpful and arranged a lift for me with one of the guards down to the next checkpoint. There I gathered, from observing what other people were doing and from the gesturing, that I had to go into a large, echoing hall with people queueing at glass-fronted booths manned by the white uniforms of Egyptian militia. Someone thrust a pink card into my hand and told me to fill it out and go through one of the gates where a few Muslim women were gathered. The pink was gender specific!

When I got to the booth with form completed, a fat stern-looking man in uniform indicated that I needed to get a stamp and pointed to three more men in uniform at the other end of the hall. So I dutifully trundled my case, backpack and laptop across the echoing hall and had a green stamp affixed to my pink card at a cost of two Egyptian pounds. Back to the booth where my passport was taken off me and passed into a back office with a great pile of other assorted passports.

The fat man indicated a suitable place for me to stand and wait away from the milling crowd of waiting men and again I dutifully took up the proferred advice. After about ten minutes of anxious waiting, the fat guard muttered 'Australian - OK' and pointed me through. I trundled my trolley through the waiting men hoping to see a man from my travel company holding up a sign with my name on it. There was no-one. I stood on the steps trying to avoid panicking and think calmly about what I could do in a strange country with no language skills, no transport and no Libyan money. After a while, a man who didn't look like a thug or a slave trader asked me in English if I was waiting for someone. I said I was expecting someone from the travel company to meet me and curiously he said 'Don't worry.' Foolishly I blurted out 'Is this Libya?' and he looked surprised and said 'No, no,' and pointed down the road to another checkpoint some distance away.

There was nothing for it but to start trundling my case etc down the road. There had been phone calls from the fat guard after I had given him the name of the travel company who were supposed to me meeting me with a Libyan visa. The call must have been to the next checkpoint because I was waved on without too much fuss. But again, the dilemma of where to go next and still no sign of someone comfortingly waving my name at me. So once again I dithered, fighting off the panic attack and muttering as I looked anxiously up the road to what looked like yet another checkpoint.

At that point, the man who had spoken to me in English, pulled up in a car and offered me a lift. 'But I don't know you,' I said pathetically, thinking he was offering me a lift to somewhere in Libya.

'I'm only taking you to the next checkpoint where your tour guide will be.' What could I do? I trustingly got in. The car drove down the potholed road and was directed to drive down a pit full of water, presumably to disinfect the wheels. Just before he drove in, I was directed to get out of the car and go and stand at the side of the road next to a man in a grey robe. Once again, I dutifully trundled my case around the potholes and puddles of disinfectant and stood by a large man in a flowing robe who shouted something to two other men that I could glimpse through a window. They appeared to be praying. At that point the fogging machine went by.

At regular points in the evening in Alexandria, a truck would drive down the road belching out evil-smelling smoke to kill the mosquitoes. Evidently they did the same on the Libyan border. But in my fragile state, the scene was like a war zone - night, heavy smoke fogging out the lights, puddles of oily water in the potholed streets. At least now the uniforms had changed to the blue-grey of what I presumed was the Libyan militia.

After another five minutes of anxious waiting, the two praying men came out and introduced themselves as my tour guide and my driver. I felt overwhelmingly grateful and relieved to see them, but there were more anxious moment as they took my passport and wandered off. After a while, they returned with a smart mini bus and again I was flooded with relief only to have my anxiety levels soar again as we got stopped by more guards and the tour guide went off to negotiate them picking all sorts of official looking documents from his briefcase.

This time we were directed to a mini bus waiting area and I spent the next half hour anxiously watching several Bedouin men in their distinctively tied red and white head gear buying soft drinks and take-away food from a booth that looked very similar to the checkpoints.

Eventually we made it through and drove the two hours to Tobruk to a basic hotel where I was to spend the next two nights. I hadn't wanted to spend two nights in Tobruk but the next day was Friday, the Muslim holy day, and they couldn't find a driver to take me on to Selena. I'll write about Tobruk in my next post. I have so many photos but will be unable to put any up for a while.