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.