Road trip to Libya via communist eastern Europe, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt
There are times when we all feel that we must have excitement, and this is how we felt this summer when we planned to travel to Libya by car.
As it happened, the most difficult part of the whole trip was obtaining the correct visa. We began applying early in May and within three weeks we had our Egyptian, Lebanese and Syrian visas; then it was another four or five weeks before we got a visa for Bulgaria, and the Romanian legation actually lost our passports for a week which made us think that the trip would have to be cancelled. We obtained our final via only 24 hours before we were due to depart
Tuesday 31 July
Drive and ferry to Ostend, Belgium.
Wednesday 1 August
4am, and we were in a very dark and somewhat misty Ostend. It was very hot by the time we reached Luxembourg and headed for the autobahn, Germany and Austria. We had a pleasant interlude at Neusiedler, where we spent the time swimming in the lake before crossing into Hungary.
The last part of our journey to Lake Balaton was in the dark on unsurfaced roads.
We understood that the international camp was at Balatonfured and so we made enquiries and were directed to a small place just outside the town. Here some boys thought we were German and told us to go into a field which was almost underwater but when we pointed out we were English we were taken into a place with many more tents and we had a dozen or more boys to help us put up our tent and a large audience to watch us cook a meal. In fact, it was a boys camp!
Lake Balaton looked very attractive in the early morning heat haze. It was rather too hot to do much sightseeing in Budapest but the public park on Margaret Island, although very crowded, made a pleasant change from the sun.
That evening we found a delightful camp in the Matra Mountains where we were able to pitch our tent by the side of a small lake.
We were very sorry to have to leave but we had only been able to obtain a transit visa through Hungary. We crossed the Romanian border (then spelled ‘Roumania’). We had the names of three camps: one at Oradea, one at Predeal and the third close to Bucharest. We never found any of them although we searched very hard.
The first night we found an unsurfaced road into some hills. We followed this until we were out of sight of the main road and then we found a small path where we were able to hide the car. We have found that no-one wants to see foreigners wild-camping as it as it would mean having to make a report to the police, a thing which they seem loath to do. It is far simpler to say, “I never saw them”. It was a warm moonlit night and we slept very well.
We were up at dawn in an attempt to cook our breakfast before all the farm labourers went to work. However, work begins at 6am and quite a few people passed us as we ate. All gave us a friendly wave.
The Romanians appear to be proud courteous and friendly people. Many people, particularly men, still wear their traditional dress. They have a bearing which is never seen among those who do not wear it. They still escort their ladies in the time-honoured fashion – they lead their women across the road and help them onto buses and up steps. The whole way through Romania the men and the women as well as the children gave us a cheery wave.
Only the main roads such as the one from Oradea to Bucharest are surfaced so there is little encouragement to wander onto the byways. Further discouragement was added by the road checks made at every road junction and at every town. From these checks, the officials are able to plot your entire journey through the country and can tell to within 30 miles where you spent the night.
Our second night was to have been at a camp at Predeal in the Carpathian mountains. We were looking forward to a day of relaxation in the pine-clad mountains. In the communist countries it is necessary to book up hotels before entering the country. You cannot go into a hotel and book a room for that night. Having planned to camp we could not suddenly decide to spend the night in a hotel. We made several inquiries but no-one had heard of the camp. The only thing we could do was to camp out again in some out-of-the-way spot.
This was easier said than done for once we left Predeal we entered suburbia. About 5 miles from Plakati we saw a narrow road leading into some woods. It was in these woods that we camped the night. When it was completely dark we put up a small tent that we carried for this reason.
We headed to Bucharest and arrived at 6am. It was too early to really look around but we were able to get a good impression of the new city centre which is being built. The view of the parliament buildings through the Marble Arch was very impressive.
It is always quite easy to reach the centre of our city – you just follow the main flow of traffic. The difficulty is getting out again, particularly when there are no signposts as in Bucharest. It took us four attempts to get out. We realised that lorry drivers and policemen were the only people you could really rely on as so few others knew any place outside the city.
It was 9am before we made the Bulgarian border, which was less than 20 miles from Bucharest. There were only two cars in front of us so we thought we might be lucky and get through customs in an hour. After two hours we were still there so we made a cup of tea on our petrol stove. Just as the water was on the point of boiling, they wanted to see the engine number. We made our tea and then showed them the number afterward. We had just started to wash the car when, sure enough, we were allowed through.
We crossed the Danube and entered Bulgaria and we were greeted by friendly waves from soldiers and taken into the customs house and given a lovely welcome.
We were greeted by friendly waves from the soldiers and taken into the customs house. The road from the border to Vaina is said by the Bulgarians to be one of their best. We found that it was one of our worst as the hot sun had melted the tarmac and made the road more slippery than if it were icy.
Our camp for the night was very crowded with people of every nationality. There was a camp shop which stocked bread, cheese, a few tins of sardines, potatoes and nothing else. We were glad that we had bought a large quantity of tinned food with us.
The Black Sea is wonderful for swimming and it was very hard to move on.
We took what the map showed to be the most direct route to Sofia. This is not a good policy in countries that have unsurfaced roads! Although one cannot agree altogether with communist policy, the one feature of it that I would like to see introduced into Britain is the way people are encouraged to help each other. For example, the moment a lorry broke down, the next two or three lorries to pass would stop and help. We saw this happen many times as the lorries often had punctures. With aid, it was only a matter of minutes before the wheel was off, the inner tube replaced and the wheel put back on.
There is very little public transport so many people try to get lifts in private cars or lorries; they are usually lucky.
Just about 100 miles from Sofia the road deteriorated until it became completely unsurfaced. At this point whilst we were checking that we were on the right road, someone from a passing car gave us a large watermelon.
The road took us through an area of mountains and the scenery was well worth it.
We camped the night in a small field by the side of a mountain stream. It was a most interesting evening. First a shepherd and his flock came past. The sheep paused to drink from the stream. Then came about 20 women in national dress and they too stopped and washed themselves in the stream. Next came a large herd of cattle – we stopped counting after 100. This herd was led by a man on horseback. Yet another large herd of cattle came by just as it was getting dark, led by a boy on a donkey and a man on a fine horse.
Sofia is a small city for a capital but it is a charming and friendly place.
We did not stay long as we wanted to leave the country before 4pm and visit the Rila Monastery on the way. It is some 28 miles off the main road. It is a picturesque village with old houses which were covered with drying tobacco. The tobacco was hung up in such a way that it looked like giant curtains. The narrow streets were congested with horse drawn traffic and people carrying heavy loads of tobacco.
The monastery is being restored and everywhere was gleaming white in the brilliant sunshine. To say that the restoration was carried out by communists, the paintings on the church walls were particularly well done.
We had to get out of Bulgaria before our visas expired. The road to the border became gradually worse and storm clouds were rapidly gathering all around us. The storm broke just as we entered a narrow gorge. It rained so hard that we had difficulty in seeing the road. We did not want to camp out for yet another night and wanted to reach Salonika before it was dark. It did not take many minutes to cross into Greece.
The first thing we discovered was that we could not change money at this border and the nearest place was Salonika over 70 miles away. This meant 70 miles before we could buy any petrol for we had inadvertently failed to get any Greek money in advance. The first 20 miles in Greece was the worst road we had ever had the misfortune to meet. It was stony track. We would have been sure that we were on the wrong road had there not been five or six checkpoints where we had to show our passports.
This region was very heavily guarded. There was barbed wire everywhere including across the river. There were also nets stretched across the river to prevent any underwater swimmer.
Shortly after the last checkpoint we came to a surfaced road and petrol stations. I cannot decide which is worse to have money and find no petrol stations or to have many petrol stations and no money. I have little recollection of the scenery on the way to Salonika as my eyes were on the petrol gauge. At every opportunity we freewheeled. The gauge was reading empty some 40 miles before Salonika. Luck was with us and we were able to freewheel for nearly five miles. We ran out of petrol outside a garage. We asked if they would accept an English pound note but they would not. Instead they said if we went to the railway station before 7pm we could change it there. We arrived with two minutes to spare.
The camp we were looking for was some 12 miles outside the town.
We headed off in search of another camp. We travelled a very hot 100 miles to Kavala which is an interesting town huddled around a picturesque harbour. Just outside the town there is a cafe where camping is permitted. The area was very small but as it was actually on the beach we did not mind being crowded. It is a delightful beach. However that night changed our minds as it was noisy all night with wireless sets.
We carried on in the hopes of finding peace. Along the roads in this region of Greece there are many soldiers. Every little cove along the coast was filled with an army camp, every single bridge was closely guarded and in every conceivable hiding place there would be half a dozen armed cars or two or three guns all guarded by soldiers with rifles at the ready. It gave one the feeling that a war was imminent.
We arrived at Alexandranopolis early.
The camp is in the grounds of a motel. There was absolutely no charge for camping but of course they hope that you will have a meal at the motel. We really thought we had found a peaceful camp. At 8pm other campers began to arrive, by 10 the camp was quite full and by 11 they were still arriving and having to put up tents in the dark. The wireless sets started not in the camp but so loud that we were nearly blasted out of bed.
We headed for Istanbul, Turkey. Eventually the road to Istanbul will be a first-class motorway but at the moment there is 100 miles of dust and rubble.
In Turkey as in Greece there were many soldiers and camps in all the places that would have been ideal for swimming. The BP camp facilities are all first class. There is hot water aplenty and even cooking stoves for those who need them but the best part of all was the servicing of cars. As we had come 3000 miles and had a more difficult 3000 miles ahead of us, we decided to avail ourselves of this service. The car was greased, the engine oil changed and other oils topped up all in the space of 10 minutes.
It was at the camp that we learned much about Turkey from the wife of one of the British embassy officials in Ankara who was in Istanbul on holiday. Despite all propaganda to the contrary, Turkish women are still far behind their European sisters. They are divided into two groups: the rich and the poor. The women of poor families do all the work both in the fields as well as the house whilst the menfolk sit down drinking Coca-Cola or similar drinks. If the women are rich they will not do any work at all, not even looking after their own children.
The conditions in the hospitals are very bad because Turkey’s still clings to the old idea that nurses must be prostitutes, so no clean-living Turkish woman would dream of helping.
For all their faults the Turks are generous and friendly people always ready to aid a visitor.
We carried on past Lake Golan which had completely dried up, and onto the small town of Aksaray. Here we took the unsurfaced road to Nevsehir and then onto the village of Ungup and the famous valley of Goreme. Ungup is a small town where half the houses are carved out of the solid rock.
Whilst looking around we had seen a van going up and down with Hotel Goreme on the side, and having seen several sign posts along the road to this hotel we thought it must be quite a big one, probably out in the country. We followed the signposts and after two minutes we really began to wonder where we were going. The road was hewn out of the rock and was not particularly level. At times we wondered if we had left the road altogether. We passed houses hewn out of rock where the women were cooking and preparing food on the road.
The main form of transport is donkeys: the men ride them and the women wearing veils follow on behind on foot. We felt we were entering another world.
After a very steep descent we arrived at the village of Ortahisarda and there in front of us was small but pleasant looking Otel as it is called in Turkey.
Whilst I was in the hotel seeing the room and finding out the cost, Annette was surrounded by the villagers who were all saying, “Do stay at our hotel”. How could you resist such a plea from so many friendly people. The hotel was spotlessly clean.
After a good wash we set off to explore the surrounding districts. The first area was the valley of Goreme with its ‘fairy chimneys’, as the guide book calls them. These are large pillars of rock which stand up like sentinels in the floor of the valley, many having been hollowed out to form houses and churches.
Every available piece of soil has been turned into a garden. The peaches had all gone over, but there were many tomatoes. Gardening in this rocky and arid countryside must be very hard work.
At the next village of Avcila we took the wrong road – or more correctly track – and found ourselves by more of these chimneys. Two young lads stood guard over these monuments and were most anxious to show us around.
In the first chimney they showed us a simple chapel; then they took us to a second larger chimney. They indicated that they wanted us to climb up. After the first ten feet I refused point-blank to climb any further as we had to ‘ascend’ the chimney in the mountaineering sense of the word. I could have got up but I was certain I could not get down.
However, Annette is always willing to try anything once. She was advised to remove her sandals and she began to climb barefooted. After a few minutes she emerged onto a ledge some ten feet above me, then I heard no more for some 20 minutes when she had arrived at the top. To get up, the two lads had almost lifted her up a series of chimneys each one over ten feet tall. It was one thing to get up but it was even more difficult getting down. For two small apparently under fed boys to lift down a nine stone woman is no mean feat.
The track we took led to Uqhisar, a village built on top of an enormous rock. The road was so steep that we almost could not make it. Again the villagers flocked round, one group trying to sell us a beautiful local made carpet, another group trying to sell bags, and the rest trying to get us to take the car up to the castle on the very summit of the rock.
As we stopped to take a photo, two women with donkeys came by. Seeing that it was two girls they let their veils drop and we all four did our best to converse in sign language. Annette attempted to take their photograph but they looked worried, but when I stood by them they seemed reassured and we got our photo. These two seemed so delighted to see two women on their own driving a car.
A little further on we stopped to fill up our water carrier from a roadside tap. Some more women came up to see what we were doing. One offered us some apples for which we tried to pay but no payment was accepted – they were a gift. We were glad that we had some sweets in the car to give in exchange. At moments like this that one really wishes that there was a universal language. There was so much we would have liked to have known and they would have liked to ask us questions in return.
Later on we found the road at Avcilar which we had missed previously. It turned out to be a dried-up riverbed. After two or three miles along this deep sandy gravel we re-christened the car ‘the tank’. As the day was so hot we kept stopping to make tea; every time we attracted a good deal of attention.
By the time we arrived back at the hotel, work had finished for the day. The men had gathered in the main street and the women congregated outside a house. Here they were combing each other’s hair or spinning wool whilst the girls were skipping and playing games. That night we heard the soft sweet voices of the girls singing, later drowned by the noise of the men brawling and the dogs howling.
The next morning we were a little worried to see our car surrounded by three or four of the local white dogs. We had heard tales of how these dogs would attack and rip a strange at pieces. In this case we must have been considered friends for as we approached the car the dogs got up wagging their tails and wandered off as if to say, “There you are, we have guarded your car all night”.
Shortly after Nidge, we had our first glimpse of the Taurus Mountains. The number of wrecked cars increased considerably on this road and we saw in two separate places the wrecks of cars which had overtaken us less than half an hour before. We wondered if we would ever arrive home in one piece. All the way there was a drop of two to 20 or more feet on one side of the road or the other with no wall or posts.
Gulek Bogasi, the head of the pass, is at 3806 feet. It is a busy market town where the local people hope to sell their grapes, peaches and melons to the passing travellers. The pass is better known as the Cicilian gates which has been famous since the time of Alexander the Great. It was the only way from Syria into Turkey.
We went onto Mersen in the vain hope of finding a camp. The beach just outside is used as the rubbish dump. This did not deter the locals from swimming or having picnics there. One group saw us looking longingly at the sea and made signs for us to join them in the water. We were so hot and sticky that we really could not refuse. The difficulty was that the womenfolk were bathing with dresses on! Recalling the saying ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’ we plunged into the water just as we were. When we came out it was so hot that our clothes were dry within ten minutes.
As there was no possibility of camping we pushed onto Adana to find a hotel. It is an industrial town and we decided it was no place to stay so we pressed onto Ceyham where the AA said there was a hotel. But what a hotel! We were the only women in the place. The fact that the room only cost us four shillings each will give you some idea. The room was reasonably clean but I am always put off a place when I see spittoons.
The hotel receptionist, for want of a better word, accepted our money that night but gave us no receipt. He wanted our passports but we refused to hand them over; instead I wrote out all the particulars.
There was no wind at night and the room was like a furnace. The noises from below made us think that we were in the Wild West. There was the sound of horses, the breaking of glass, men throwing stones at passing cars. Annette had just made the comment that she wondered what happened to all the women in the town when there was a terrified shriek of one woman.
We rose at daybreak after a sleepless night and left without breakfast. On the way downstairs the receptionist wanted us to pay again; we then realised why he was so anxious to keep our passports. Naturally we refused and the argument was continued outside as we packed our cases into the car. The argument finished abruptly when we insisted that a policeman should be brought.
The next difficulty was to get the car out. Someone had parked right behind us. The men were sleeping in the car, which was parked in the main square, and we had to wait whilst they changed from their pyjamas before they could move the car out of the way.
We halted for breakfast some 20 miles from Ceyham. As we were boiling the water to make tea, three young lads came up. At first, they just stared, and then gradually came closer and closer. As we were drinking the tea, one started to play with the wing mirror on the car. I raised my hand as if to push him away. He pulled out a knife. I pulled out our tent pole which we kept handy for such emergencies. He put away his knife and I kept hold of the pole. It was a good job he gave way for I was feeling so angry that if I had been forced to fight the lads I would have really injured them. Their parting shot was to try and throw stones at the car as we moved off but as we pulled off in front of a lorry, the stones hit the lorry instead.
This small region between Adanan and Iskenderun was the only area of Turkey where the people were unfriendly. It was a with a happy feeling that we left Turkey and entered Syria. The customs officials were most kind and helpful.
We then continued our journey to Aleppo. We decided that we were having no more cheap hotels like Ceyham if we could avoid it. We booked in at the Barron Hotel.
Aleppo is famous for its souks which are said to originate in the 13th century. ‘The roofs are beautifully built with stone vaulting,’ continues the guide book but the souks that we saw were roofed with scraps of iron, wood and canvas. The streets were dirty and the men stared at us. Later we realised that these were not the souks where tourists are supposed to visit.
The citadel covers some 20 acres of ground and is well worth a visit. Here we had a delightful Syrian guide to take us round. We were shown the pits where prisoners were left to die, the battlements and gatehouse where lead and boiling oil was poured onto the heads of any unwanted visitor, and we drank the cool water from one of the original wells.
The journey to the coast is very varied. We took the road to Lebanon. The sea was so tantalising and yet there was nowhere where women could go swimming. Once the day got hotter, the sight of the cool sea became more annoying until we were some 20 miles from the Lebanese border when we found a sandy track leading down to an apparently deserted beach. “At last,” we thought, “We can get cool.”
Just as we entered the water, we noticed a group of men about half a mile down this otherwise deserted beach. One man immediately broke away from the group and came towards us. By the time he got near us we had put our dresses over our bathing costumes and started to return to the car. The man came on towards us shouting, “Missus, missus.” Remembering the Arab custom that it is considered indecent for an Arab to show his chest, we turned round to look at him and pretended to be horrified to see a man in bathing trunks. With a look of extreme annoyance he hurried away.
When we reached the car we began to make tea. We were drinking when the man returned dressed and accompanied by four young lads. “Vous parlez francais,” he said. “No,”we replied, “We are English.” “Not English; French,” he sat in English and proceded to give us a lecture in French about being on private land and about swimming women.
Before he got very far, I put on my most English of English voices and, completely ignoring him, said to Annette, “Is the tea ready yet?” The Syrian gave one snort and turned on his heels.
It was 3pm when we entered Tripoli, Lebanon. We had a long list of hotels. No one had heard of any of the more reasonably priced places. Just as we were becoming desperate, an English woman came to our rescue. She advised us to go on to Beirut or even to go to Les Cedres, as she was unable to recommend the hotels of Tripoli.
The journey to Les Cedres takes about an hour and a half along a narrow winding road with sheer drops of many feet on one side. We found the trip something of a nightmare. Traffic was rushing down the road at 50 miles an hour and expected everyone to get out of its way. It was however impossible in many places as there was no edge to the road, just a wall of rock on one side and this great drop on the other. To make matters worse the road is gradually crumbling away.
Les Cedres is at a height of 6300 feet. There are some 400 trees varying from 200 to 1000 years old. It is a great pity that the Lebanese do not endeavour to replant the lost forest. We stayed in a type of youth hostel which was very pleasant.
We looked around the ruins at Biblos with a guide who could not keep his hands off women, and then found an empty beach. It was too good to miss. We had not been in the water more than a minute when three youths came up and made themselves objectionable.
We went to Beirut we booked into the New Royal Hotel which overlooks the sea.
It cost us only one pound, two shilling and four pence each for a room with a private bathroom and breakfast. It is one of the older hotels but it is kept spotlessly clean and service was very good. We left the car in a small car park opposite the hotel. Fortunately we were able to see it from our bedroom window. We were under the impression that it would be safe for the taxi drivers as it indicated that they would look after it.
The night was so hot and humid that we found it impossible to sleep. Instead, we watched the taxi drivers below. At 4am, we saw a group congregate around our car; the burglar alarm sounded but we thought that they must have accidentally knocked the car and set it off. The second time we heard the alarm we thought there must be a mistake and that it was the horn of some passing car. Beirut is such a noisy city even at 4am.
In the morning we drove south to Tyre. It is a disappointing place, dirty dusty and very hot. The men stared at us so much that we soon departed. The same happened at Saidon.
That night at the same hour of 4am, three taxis gathered around our car, one on each side on one blocking the view from the road. This time we were ready. The moment the alarm went off, I rushed down but had to wait for the night porter to let me out. As I arrived on the scene so did two policemen. The taxi drivers said that they had just brushed past the car and the alarm had started. After much discussion the police left and our car was left alone for what remained of the night.
In the morning we went to visit the ruins at Baalbek. This vast temple is impressive. The columns rise to a magnificent height.
When we return to our hotel there was no space left to park our car. The taxi drivers were very anxious to show us a space out of sight from the hotel. We would not move. A policemen came up to try and move us on. “Why not take your car into the mobile lock up garage round the corner?” We felt this was the only solution. That night we slept well thinking the car was safe.
When we went to collect it early, switched off the alarm or so I thought but as we opened the door it went off. Someone had tampered with it. There were a man’s oily footprints on the floor inside and a trouser button which was definitely not there the day before. There is no question about it, someone had been inside the car and had there not been a second switch for demobilising it, then this time we would have lost it.
The whole of that morning we were followed, even when we went on to the beach five miles out of town. We became so fed up with being watched by some men that Annette went up to their car, which was parked next to ours, and made a great show of taking their number. One of the men made as if to attack her. It spoilt the rest of our day.
As we left the beach, we took great care to see if we were being followed. Then we took the car into a lock up garage about three miles from our hotel. It took us an hour to walk back.
On the free beach we had noticed that we were the only women unaccompanied. At the beach clubs, things were very different – there were at least a dozen policemen in uniform scattered around the bathing area making sure that the women were not molested. This was the country which claimed you could go swimming anywhere! They should have added if you are a man.
We left the country by boat the following day for Egypt. We breathed a sigh of relief. The car and all its contents were safe at last.
We did not go ashore at Port Said as the boat was anchored out in the harbour. The time went very quickly. First we watched the crew of the ship try to unload six cars onto a barge. It took nearly four hours of arguing. The Egyptians would not take orders from the Greeks and vice versa. Another very amusing hour was spent trying not to buy from the Egyptians who came aboard with souvenirs. It is well worth the few shillings spent on a bracelet or a wallet just for the entertainment of trying to see how low they are prepared to sell things. These men are such good salesman that they make you feel mean if you do not buy anything and yet it is all done with such a wonderful sense of humour.
At 9am the next morning we arrived in Alexandria, Egypt. It took three hours hard work on the part of the Egyptian automobile official to get us through the customs but very little bothered to ourselves. At the end of it we had Egyptian number plates which had to be fixed over our own.
The journey to Cairo is 125 miles through desert; all the sign posts are in Arabic only. Our first morning in Cairo was spent walking through the streets.
We found ourselves at the military museum. The soldiers who acted as guides were most anxious that we should go into every room, particularly one which depicted the battle for the canal in 1956. Once we have been in there and taken it in good part they seemed very pleased.
It was 1pm when we arrived at the Egyptian museum, the time when it closes. A guide came rushing up to tell us that we were too late. He asked if we would like to go to the pyramids. “It is only a few pence by tram, and taxis are too expensive,” he said. “We have our own car,” we replied “That is much better. I will take you in your car and show you the way.” As there are no signposts in Cairo, we thought that this might be a good idea.
We went into the pyramid of Chephion and climbed to the tomb of the king, and then on to see The Sphinx.
Our guide then suggested that we should go onto Saqqara to see the oldest pyramid of all, the step pyramid.
Once at Saqqara we were taken first to the tomb of the sacred bulls. As the tomb officially closes at 1pm, the electricity was cut off so we went through this dark underground cavern by the light of a small oil lamp. As we walked along the wide passage, strange shadows seemed to play on the walls. The light of the lamp seemed to shine only on the wrinkled face of our guide in a most strange way.
Next we went to the temple of Rameses II where we were showing the beautiful paintings that cover the walls. What struck us so much after our experiences in the Lebanon and Syria was that in the days of the Pharaohs there appeared to be complete equality between the sexes. All the pictures depicting the kings showed the queen close by, whether it was at work, hunting, sport or play.
We went on to Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt. Here we saw the little Sphinx and the statue of Rameses II.
The Cairo museum is a must. I am not a person to spend hours in a museum – to me the living are more important than the dead – but this is one of the rare museums where there is so much detail of the life of the Pharaohs that they almost become living.
We returned to Alexandria by the same road we had come and then took the coast road towards Libya. The nomadic Egyptian is a fine looking man – tall, handsome and ferocious at first sight with a brand new rifle slung over his shoulder. Yet the minute they saw two women in a car, broad grins spread over their faces and there was always a friendly wave. The women, too, look cheerful and attractive, and they never bothered to hide their faces under veils or barracons.
A Mensa Matruh, the Egyptian women went swimming without anyone interfering with them. Mensa Matruh is a delightful seaside resort with a lovely bay for swimming and a small harbour.
This was our first real experience of driving in the desert. At first, I was a little apprehensive at the thought of 100 miles without a town or petrol station. Soon all apprehension left me. There is no need to worry about breaking down for every time we stopped to take a photo or make a cup of tea, the lorry drivers would slow down to make sure that we were not in need of help.
At the Libya border, the customs were somewhat amusing although not very fair. There is no queuing – everyone just push themselves forward. Those entering the country had to show all that they had bought. The customs officials looked at the articles and put certain ones to one side – a lovely dressing gown and a shirt from one bag, then he saw a shirt he like better in someone else’s bad so the first man got his inferior shirt back.
Our first night in Libya was spent at Tobruk in a room which looked more like a prison cell. Our next stop was Cyrene where the beautiful retreat of Apollo was built some 2000 feet above sea level. The ruins are very attractive.
The hotel at Cyrene was like a palace with beautiful Italian inlaid furniture and a cut glass table lamp. Our room had a large balcony with a table and chairs on it. It was only two pounds for two people for the night.
The scenery around Cyrene is very attractive after the miles of desert. It is amazing how you appreciate trees after several hundred miles of sand.
From Benghazi to Mizrati however is 600 miles of desert with only the occasional village. Ten miles from Agaladia we found a road leading down to the sea. We found a small village and a deserted seashore. We had a glorious hour of swimming and sunbathing before the local lads discovered us. Then we found out the worst trait of the Libyans: they will sit and stare at European women. The only way to get away from it is to sit in the sun miles away from any shade.
The journey to Tripoli, Libya, was hot and tiring. We were surprised to see so many camels and donkeys in regions where there was only a very poor type of scrub. We saw very few women and what few there were all wore the barracan which is like a white sheet which covers them in such a way that only one eye is visible.
Thus, we entered Tripoli, exactly five weeks after we began, having covered 6400 miles in the car with neither engine trouble nor a puncture.