Homeward bound.

The long drive back up to Tripoli went smoothly and as a farewell David took what was left of the team (others flew back last week for teaching commitments) for a slap up meal. A fleet of taxis whisked us out of town to a collection of fish stalls and open barbecues with restaurants behind them. The deal was you selected a few fish, they were weighed and you were given a table number. Once seated - we waited about 20 minutes as it was busy, there was a salad buffet to keep us amused, whilst the chefs gutted and grilled the fish. Being within feet of the Mediterranean and busy it all looked fresh. I shared a big Gilt Head Bream, in the middle of the picture, with my pal Ian. Delicious. Just lacked a glass or two of Chablis, but that’s not far away now.

Pick-me-up.

The whole of North Africa, is kept moving by Peugeot 404 pick up trucks. Grey in Libya, Biege in Tunisia. All of these must be at least 35 years old, but show no sign of giving up just yet. I have long been impressed with their sheer stamina in the face of eastern competition (slowly making an advance now). There are not hundreds, but thousands, probably tens of thousands, of these battered Peugeots to be seen daily carrying everything from workers, building materials, crops and livestock. The drivers of modern cars call them ‘scorpions’, as you never quite know when one will jump out and sting you. Whilst I was having a puncture fixed by a group of excited Nigerians one pulled up. I exchanged greetings with the driver and his two companions and gestured that I admired his truck and would like to sit in it. He offered me the drivers seat. Pulling the door open it fell off. Fantastic! A full half turn of the steering wheel before any movement of wheels and two good pumps of the brake pedal prior to any pressure. The steering wheel - from a BMW, was welded on. There were no dials at all and the wiring was a mass of twisted wires hanging below the dashboard. I watched in awe as he twisted two together for ignition, then flashed another pair for the starter. They have evolved into motorised wheelbarrows and with pattern parts now being made in North Africa will probably be lumbering around for many years to come.

The answer is blowing in the wind.

It has been a windy few weeks on and off and being outside so much makes one acutely aware of the weather. One day whilst working indoors at our base there was a gentle wing coming up from the south. Warm, and with a bit of dust in it, but nothing too threatening. Within half an hour it swung right round and came from the north, across the great Ubari Sand Sea bringing with it hundreds of tons of sand. We all went outside to look, as the air literally went orange. Working throughout this was the mighty Fiat bulldozer out on the road, the squeak of it’s dry tracks on dry driving wheels audible over all other things. The Government are laying infrastructure to take fibre optics and improve communications throughout the Wadi. This involves the Fiat dragging a huge hook that rips a metre deep gouge out of the land at the side of the road. Then another equally huge Fiat comes along when the trench has all but filled up with dust and lays the tubing to take the cable. Somehow I can’t see it working.

Gabrun Yacht Club.

Part of the remit for the Geographers was to take core samples from the lake bed of Lake Gabrun, an oasis about 45 km north of our base at Germa. It involves a sporting drive through the dunes, which with a strong wind was quite challenging. The difficulty is that the wind soon blows away all traces of previous tracks, leaving us to pick our own route following GPS waypoints. Once there - four hours instead of the usual two, we launched the bigger of my two inflatables and Simon, who rowed for a minor Oxford team in his youth, had a preliminary paddle about and sank a 6 inch drain pipe into the mud at the base of the lake. This was to be the site of the core sampling the next day following a comfortable nights camping where we cooked chicken with garlic and lemon juice, wrapped in foil, on the fire. The morning dawned fine and with the bigger boat as lake base station, Kev paddled back and forth with the core samples in the dinky little yellow boat. These cores went through four meters of mud to the bottom which was sand. Once back in the UK these will be examined for organic matter - plants and Diatoms (single cell life forms) to establish what was going on there over the last 2000 years or so as the lake went from wet to dry to wet again. The beauty of this science is that everything ends up on the lake bed offering a neat cross section of life. Pics show an overall view of proceedings from half way up a dune, our camp and one of the core samples laid out on a sand ladder. This was then wrapped in foil and slid into the drain pipe for safe transit back to UK.

Ancient boozers.

Desert adventure over for a while, it was time for us to turn ourselves in and work with the Archaeologists in and around Germa, a breeze block town, once the capital of the Garamantian Empire that ran in parallel with he Roman Empire some 2000 year ago. In this once noble city slaves would have been exchanged for luxury items carried by camel, a new form of desert transport back then, from the coast some 600 miles north. Pottery, glassware, fabrics, beads and fashions crossed the desert to satisfy the Garamanties. The project, under the direction of Professor David Mattingly, is excavating a selection of tombs some 10 miles east of Germa to learn more about these sophisticated people. This tomb at Taglit had, like most, has been robbed, but a second layer missed by the robbers all those years ago came up with an abundance of pottery and glassware. Pictures show; Two truly stalwart Libyan labourers who have worked for the project for ten years now. Both in their late seventies they have sharp eyes for a find and labour in heat and dust for an eight hour day, six days a week. Hats off to Abdul Rakman and Ishmal El-Khair, a kite shot of the excavation, Matt and Steve working out where to place a ranging pole and an exquisite piece of glassware representative of what the Garmantians were drinking from. Cheers.

Within range.

During the Second World War the Long Range Desert Group launched an ambitious attack on an Italian air base. I have read an account of it, but am going on memory here. A small group - probably three Chevrolet, or Ford, 30 cwt trucks and 18 men (ish) set off from the LRDG base at Kufra to drive about 500 miles northwest to Muzuk where they succeeded in blowing up all of the enemy’s aircraft - about 15 planes. Mission accomplished they headed south to Chad and met up with the free French. Interesting stuff and a great trip that was thankfully successful. A straight line from Kufra to Muzuk would have taken them past our camp in Waw en Kebir and wandering around looking at rocks Kev spotted an old petrol can. Closer inspection revealed three and some engine parts and a spent bullet. The petrol cans were the products of Shell, stamped 1941, the Sphinx Oil Company and Atlantic Motor Spirit. What marvellous names and this is how petrol was carried in pre jerry can days. Pure speculation, but not impossible that this could have been a brief camp for the LRDG on that daring mission 65 years ago. There is a little cover to hide them from patrolling aircraft on an otherwise totally flat expanse of unforgiving desert where they would have stuck out like sore thumbs. We took a GPS waypoint and left the finds to weather for another 65 years.

Mosquito coast.

The bait that lured me back to Libya for this, my tenth visit, was a chance to hoon off southeast towards Chad and take a look at Waw en Namus, an extinct volcano in the middle of nowhere. Leaving the bulk of the party to dig up bits of rock, four of us and two Libyans set off across the vast expanse of nothingness that is this part of the desert. Easy gong over largely flat terrane it was about 150 miles. We checked in at the loneliest police checkpoint in Libya and gave one of the guys stationed there some laxatives. At his request! The piste started to go uphill as we approached what appeared to be a black dune sandwiched between the sand and the sky. Over a distance of about 100 yards golden sand turned to volcanic ash, heavier and not subject to movement by the wind giving a sharp cut off line when viewed from Space (Google Earth it). As we popped over the crest, before us lay a breathtaking sight. Looking like The Lost World, was a crater some 3 miles across with three oases, trees, birds and reeds. We walked down the steep edge into the centre to be met by an army of mosquitoes (Namus is arabic for Mosquito) Like steam trains it was clearly better to be outside looking in, rather than inside looking out, so we retreated and camped about a mile away, before returning to meet up with the others the next day. Pics show; the police checkpoint, the approach to the black stuff, the stunning view over the edge and the lost world within.