El Kef, Tunisia to Tripoli, Libya

Weds 16th November. After a day’s driving from El Kef through not over spectacular scenery so I read my books we ended up at the Tamerza Palace hotel just as it had got dark, which was a splurge and exceeded all standards so far. For our bank balances sake, we can’t do this for the next few countries to come.
Thurs 17th November
The fellow hotel guest included the Japanese, most of who were painting the hotel in the morning, although two decided that the ruins of the old town were more worthy.
We were less artistic and just drank more coffee on the terrace.
Tamerza is one of 3 desert oasis villages close to the Algerian border. It rained for 22 days in 1969 and washed away a number of buildings, so they constructed new towns next to the old. But they’re now reconstructing the old for the tourists to look at.
With 2 engineers we had to have a construction site safety photo of the extension to the hotel they were building below.
From the road out of Tamerza we could look across beyond the last oasis and see the wide salt flat expanse of Algeria.











Further down the road towards Tozeur, we reached Chott el-Jerid, a salt lake. Some of the first Star Wars was here apparently. There’s some interesting more recent artwork to entice tourists to stop and buy a desert rose or clothing. We reached Douz in the afternoon and set up for our first nights camping. The camp site was in the palmerie. The guys enjoyed showing off the camping equipment and setting up the tents which was fine for Kathy and Me!
In the evening we set about preparing for our first desert driving. Route, T2 in Chris Scott’s Sahara overland book, between Douz and Ksar Ghirlane (100km route). Ksar Ghirlane is too small for the north Africa Mitchlen map and the nearest thing is Mont de la Colonne Leclerc. John entered the co-ordinates onto the computer and downloaded them to the GPSs. Steve cooked some pasta for our first camping meal accompanied by two bottles of Chateau Mornag. A Tunisian red wine which tastes quite good, although 2002 is a bit rough, 2003 tastes much better. John drank all of his bottle of dodgy white Italian wine before I suggested opening the whisky for a final drink before going to bed. Only once John got started he though the bottle should be finished which it was, only Kathy staying clear of it. Then John showed he could no longer walk straight and it was time for bed and amazingly he made it all the way up the ladder to bed.
This probably wasn’t the best preparation for the first desert driving and after going to the internet café in town it was after midday before we started to find the first waypoint. At least there was no whisky left in the car!
We managed the 30km to Café Sahara, quite well only going wrong once. Stopped off at the café and tried some pain du sable – quite a heavy bread but very nice. The trip said it would take a full day, but we were making quite good progress – until we hit the bigger dunes and seemed to be following the quad bike tracks. As we got better track round the dunes the sun was setting and the route to our next waypoint still seemed to be through the highest dunes. This is where we stopped for the night. We didn’t have a lot of choice as we were still about 25km short of the destination and after managing to get John’s vehicle level with Steve’s following the use of sand ladders, digging and Dillon’s carpet it was totally dark and time to stop. It was a great spot for camping though. Watching the moon rise over the dunes was spectacular.
Saturday 19th Nov, we completed the route, which wasn’t too difficult when we were following the right route, but still needed the use of winches at times. We reached Medanine ready to reach the Libyan border by Sunday lunchtime. We were rocked to pieces between Ksar Ghirlane and Tatouine, and winched two Belgians in a hire car out of the sand. What became amazing later was how they’d got that far from Tatouine.
Sunday 20th November. We seem to be setting records for longest border crossing times on what are not particularly known as difficult border crossings. We arrived at 11:00 Tunisian time, 12:00 Libyan time and met Barbara and Lucas for the first time. It took about an hour to get out of Tunisia. The small bit of text in John’s passport about the CB and GPS was found, the cars all searched for whisky and the Libyan official brought through for CB and GPS discussion and search of cars. Barbara was able to show off her great range of languages straight away and looked like our best diplomatic representative. The main thing they seemed to be looking for was whisky. I don't know how much they find as they looked at our particularly glaucous looking bottle of olive oil. We unsealed it for a sniff which seemed to satisfy them. Once on the Libyan side we had to wait ¾ hour for our guide Ramadan, from Arkno Tours to help us with the visa applications (you still seem to need an invite to get a visa and get into Libya). Still there’s been a few occasions when I’ve been this late! The car paperwork needed to be done and Libyan tourist number plates obtained. They look quite impressive! John was elected to help with the paperwork for all the cars. Steve was getting a bit worried when John and Ramadan hadn’t returned after an hour with no obvious sign of them. Meanwhile John was enjoying some red tea with the Libyan border officials and Ramadan. I managed to complete my round the world trip with Ewan McGreggor here. It makes this part of the journey seem quite easy – no Kalashnikovs, 10 hour border crossing and he even used the same mapping software – Tourtech. The Libyan officials were fine with the GPS and CB radio. Maybe it was the negotiation from Ramadan as it was surprising that Tunisia and Morocco are more paranoid than Libya, although we later saw that we could buy our GPSs in Tripoli. We then also got a tall young slim Libyan, our tourist policeman apparently. Groups generally seem to have tourist policeman. This one didn’t have a uniform and fortunately no obvious gun, but like other countries with tourist police he didn’t speak English and I only managed to understand from him that he came from Binghazi. With no more seats for him, we put him in the back of our car where with no where to put your feet you have to sit cross legged and there is not enough space for me to sit up straight. None of the police were interested in us, the requirement for a guide or a policeman. Over the border we soon stopped at a petrol station. Ten libyan dinar, less than five pounds, seem to buy you as much as you like! At this particular place they seemed to be spilling it everywhere. There were lots of police on the way into Tripoli, but we were told this was because Gadaffi (or a fuller title for him is preceded by the leader of the revolution) was on his way back to Tripoli from Tunisia. We didn't see him in the flesh though - only on roadside posters. Apparently water costs 3 times as much as petrol.The drive to Libya gave us a chance to experience the crazy driving. We got our first excursion around Tripoli, trying to find a hotel for the night. In Tripoli we got rid of the tourist policeman, following some animated Arabic between Ramadan and the tourist policeman which cost us 150 Euros. Probably way over the top.