Libya/Tunisia Trip
email Cristy Trembly

First of all, I got back from Libya safely even though people imagine that it is a scary place and people don’t like visitors. Actually, I could not have been safer, people are very sympathetic since Sept. 11, and they wish tourists would come back. A lot said they hadn’t seen an American for years, some had never seen one. I flew to Tunis first, I left Saturday morning and arrived Sunday night. I went around Tunis all day Monday, visiting Carthage, the old city (medina), and downtown. I chose a place to stay right downtown, 15 mins. from the airport, 10 min. walk from the subway, the medina, and town, spotlessly clean, modern, $30 a night! People in Tunisia are so friendly and nice and it is very modern, very westernized but still quite different. Walking around, you’d hear Destiny’s Child on the radio in one store, then next door another station would have evening prayers!

Both Tunisia and Libya are Islamic countries, but in Tunisia you see teenagers in designer clothes, talking on their cell phones with their moms and grandmas wearing hijab (hair covered.) In Libya people are more traditional, though most women don’t wear hijab. In both countries, women have every kind of job, work with men, even serve in the military. Since the week of Thanksgiving coincides with Ramadan, the month of fasting and a pillar of Islam, I knew I couldn’t eat in public in the daytime, but thought there would be places to get food and take it back to my room, but that turned out not to be the case. Everywhere you could possibly eat is closed, and there’s no take-out food at all, I mean you can buy a raw chicken but where would you cook it? As the days wore on, I learned to save a sandwich for the road, but I did fast a couple days, which wasn’t so hard when there is no food available. Ramadan is to remind us that there are people who are hungry every day. It was great to be there at sundown, where everyone is with family, there is no one on the streets, because they are all home having a special meal called iftar, where they break the fast. Stores are open late at night, people are out on the streets walking and visiting and eating, it’s a very festive time. You break the fast with dates and milk, and people always invite strangers home, so that no one should be alone to celebrate iftar. For dinner, you have special soup, then meat, salad, all served family style and all the courses at once. For me, a great advantage of travelling during Ramadan is that people are also forbidden to smoke, which is wonderful, because that is always a problem for me when I travel in other parts of the world.

I got on the train and went to Carthage, about _ hr. away, walked up the street, the famous Byrsa Hill to the Roman ruins, where I walked around the ruins, looked at the fabulous mosaics in the museum and saw the aqueducts, the roman amphitheatre and other sites of the ancient town. All of these sites are built on top of one another, so Greek or Punic is on the bottom, then Romans built on top, then Christians built on top, very interesting. It’s the same all over the area, from Jordan to Israel, Libya, Malta, all over. The Mediterranean is beautiful, so blue, and the weather was basically good--a lot like Los Angeles at the same time of year, with temperatures in the 60s in the day, in the 50s at night. I returned to downtown, the new city, and walked around the buildings, beautiful parks, of course the post office where I bought the stamps for all the holiday cards I sent out, and then back to the medina, the winding streets and little shops, the ancient gate to the city, it was great. You might have seen some of Tunisia on the TV show Amazing Race.

So the next day I flew to Djerba, an hour away in southern Tunisia, where the tour people picked me up to drive over to Libya. I had all kinds of papers, forms, a special visa, everything to get in. They have several checkpoints on the way to the border, about 2 hours in the car, then a line to get across the border. They were quite perplexed to see my passport, they usually get Libyan and Tunisian people crossing and few foreigners, some trucks from Germany, and a caravan group from France (their RVs are so small compared to ours, just like the cars!) transiting to Egypt. They were the only tourists I saw except for some German people on a cruise ship that I met at Tolmeitha.

We drove to Tripoli, which is the largest city in Libya, an old city with a lot of Italian architecture from the occupation in the 1920s and 1930s. We drove around there, looking at the old buildings and had a great dinner at sundown before the went to the airport for a domestic flight to Benghazi. They told us to drive to the international airport about an hour from town and not the domestic one about 10 mins. from town, but when we got there, they told us to wait and they were going to take us on a bus to the domestic airport! So we all got on a bus and left late, and got to the hotel after 11 pm. Benghazi is a 10 hour drive, but an hour flight, so since it is a $30 round trip, you can’t beat the deal!

As we’re checking into the hotel, an incredibly opulent, deluxe hotel right downtown with a sea view, I hear some familiar music on the TV set over in the bar (there is no alcohol sold in Libya, but it’s still called the bar) and it’s the Millionaire show, in Arabic! Everyone is glued to the TV set, staring, because a guy has just answered the 500,000 question and becomes their first million dollar winner! I saw the Millionaire show on satellite TV several times during this trip, from France to Italy, in several languages.

Libya is a very modern country, where people drive Honda cars, 4-lane roads and flush toilets, cell phones and blue jeans. They have CNN and BBC World and almost every house has a satellite dish, with Arab, English, French, Italian channels, access to news, everything. A lot of people knew the song “Almost Heaven, West Virginia” which made me homesick, they know a lot more about us than we know about them.

The next day, we drove to several archeological sites; there are 5 ancient cities in Libya (Cyrene, Appolonia, Tolmeitha, Sabratha, and Leptis Magna). Today was Tocra, a smaller site, Tolmeitha which is a very large site, and Qasr Libya, an old church from the 5th Century AD which has spectacular mosaics which have been restored and put in the museum. The mosaics are all over North Africa, the colors and designs are beautiful, and you can see how they have built one on top of the other over the centuries, they restore in some places so you can see both styles. There was also a Roman road connecting all the cities, continuing up to Carthage, which still exists, a 2000 year old freeway!

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