Yesterday, the rain had finally cleared up and my cold was in enough of a retreat to justify going to Leptis Magna. Don’t worry, I won’t inundate you with another history lesson, as it is 99% identical to this history of Sabratha. The only main differences are that Leptis Magna served as the port that provided Rome with it’s seemingly endless supply of wild, man-eating animals for the games, and that Septimus Severus, who became Caeser in 193 AD originated here, and thus used his infinite power to beautify the city and make it one of the most impressive cities in the Roman empire during it’s heyday. Yeah, pretty much everything else is identical, even the city-destroying earthquake in 365 and the Byzantine churches which appeared out of the Roman rubble. As I’ve clearly analyzed the history of every location we’ve been to thus far, I thought I was sufficiently prepared for what awaited us.
I got up at seven yesterday morning, and we were on the road by 9. Before leaving, I did my typical check-list rundown. Wallet? Check. Phone? Check. Camera? Check. Stash of emergency TP? Check. Zack and I were the only travelers, so it was really some nice QT on the way. The extremely positive thing, before we even arrived, is the fact that Leptis is on the east side of Tripoli, meaning we experienced absolutely none of the horrible city traffic and only a few red lights. However, about forty-five minutes into the trip, my tummy began to hurt. I did it to myself when I checked for the TP, I know. I literally thought, “Let me bring some emergency TP, just in case I get sick.” Inevitably, my anxiety over not wanting to get sick to my stomach in the middle of nowhere in Libya (where public restrooms are few & far between, not to mention gross) indeed made my stomach begin to churn. We were literally about fifteen minutes away from our glorious destination, and all I wanted to do was turn around and return to my toilet paper-laden restroom at home. But, what fun would that be?
So, Zack stopped and asked directions from a cop, we turned around and finally found what we were looking for….the parking lot for Leptis Magna! (Parking lots are also few & far between here…most store owners realize no one will use them, and even if they do they won’t use them properly, so they don’t even bother. This, in turn, exacerbates the traffic snarls.) Oddly enough, no one was in the parking lot. It’s at this point that I begin to believe that I may be able, through sheer will-power alone, to rid myself of the tummy troubles, suck it up, and hike over an abandoned ancient city. I had myself believing it, too, until I caught sight of an arrow with the words, “Water Closet” above it. “Stop!” I screamed at Zack as he was busting a u-turn. “I HAVE to go to THIS bathroom!” Zack read the sign in Arabic and then advised me that it’s an Arabic toilet….meaning, a freakin’ hole in the ground. “B..b…b…buuuttttttt,” I began, horrified. Touched by my frantic pleas, he got out of the car and checked the bathroom for me. When he emerged with a huge smile, I rushed past him, and to my relief, found a full-sized, big-girl toilet! Three, in fact, so I had my pick! Let’s see, #1...no, the toilet seat is black with grime. #2.…hmmm, maybe. #3.…..there is, in fact, no toilet seat, so #2 it is! I’m going to leave out all the glorious details here (it isn’t really as bad as all this, I swear, it was totally nerves over me thinking I may get sick and have no bathroom), but I will forever thank God in heaven that He gave me the foresight to carry emergency TP everywhere with me in Libya and also I’d like to give a moment of appreciation to the almost all-knowing internet, where I discovered several months ago that a lot of foreign countries label bathrooms as “water-closets”. Without the help of these two, I would literally have been SOL. Dear seester reading this secretly under our mother’s FB account, I hope you enjoyed that part. Bathroom humor….always satisfying.
After I was 100% sure that I was going to be okay (it was two minutes at the most in there, honestly, and I had a problem undoing my pants because I forgot I wore a button fly) I emerged from the bathroom, and Zack and I set out for the main parking lot. It was about a hundred yards down the road, and we turned in, finding a couple of food stands and some stalls selling tourist crap identical to the tourist crap you can buy in Tripoli for half the price at the sukhs. We went to the ticket booth, where the cop running it called over his cop-in-charge to ask how to charge for us. It was $6 total for us, because cop-in-charge deemed that, as Zack’s wife, I was Libyan, and would not have to be charged the American entrance fee of $10. (Incidentally, $6 in Libya is like $4 in the US, so this is an even better deal than it sounds). The cops directed us toward the ruins, and we were on our merry way. We first walked down a path with overhanging trees on both sides (quite pretty, and almost makes you forget you’re in the freakin’ desert), and when the trees end, you find yourself standing on top of a hill, with ancient stairs leading down (at a ridiculously sharp angle, I might add; Romans were not the best at building safe stairs) to a sprawling city. And when I say “sprawling” what I really mean is ‘SPRAWLING”.
The most notable thing is a huge, huGE, HUGE four-way arch directly in front of you. HUGE, YOU HEAR ME? I read somewhere, at some point, that pretty much everything here is made out of marble, so I assume that meant this beast of a creation as well. There are magnificent (magnificent, I tell you!) engravings of angel-type things, people, animals, birds, etc. EVERYWHERE. I mean, everywhere! From the top to the bottom, inside and out! Zack and I gawked at this behemoth for God knows how long, took some pictures, and both agreed that the stupid internet had not prepared us for the enormity of this artifact. After we recovered enough from our shock, we decided to set out in a counter-clockwise direction and begin exploring the city. We were walking on the original road, which didn’t even need to be restored when it was finally dug out from the sand. This, of course, made me verbalize “All roads lead to Rome,” which Zack totally did not get. I guess they don’t have that saying in Arabic. While we were walking down this road (probably a good ten minutes before we got to anything) we were basically in a pit of walls. I don’t know if these were the walls from houses or what, but they rose up about 6’ on either side, and you couldn’t see a thing, except for where you were going and where you had been.
Finally, the walls gave way, and the first thing we encountered was the athletic field (seriously). I had no idea Roman society operated like high school, either, but right next to this was the bathhouse. The athletic field basically looked like a track, with a small road-type thing cutting it into four pieces. There were columns that surrounded it (for the most part) and no seats or anything, so maybe this was just the practice field. To the right, as I already said, was the bathhouse. At Sabratha, the bathhouses were a few tubs here and there with in-tact mosaics on the floors of the tubs. They were really, really impressive. Here, there were no mosaics, but there were TONS and TONS of baths….a large, outdoor swimming pool (complete with what I can only assume was the base for a diving board!), a large, indoor swimming pool, several rooms of cold baths, several rooms of warm baths, communal and private baths, changing rooms, etc. Catty-cornered to the left of the bathhouse was the public restroom. I learned my lesson at the last Roman ruin, and did not sit down. Good thing, because when I later touched the marble toilet seats, I found that they were, indeed, soaked.
Let me pause here to say that the weather was gorgeous yesterday, it was low 60’s (yeah, fahrenheit, you obnoxious rest of the world…I’ll never stoop to using the idiotic celsius!) and it eventually worked it’s way up to upper 70’s, with the remainder of the recent deluge slowly drying out.
Continuing on, we found something else, which we can only speculate on. It really seems to me to be the entrance to the business district or something like that….you know, like when you go from one neighborhood that’s not so nice to the REALLY nice neighborhood, and the REALLY nice neighborhood has this huge sign/gate to showcase their wealth and status and welcome you for your visit (spend your money here, but go home, you sorry saps!) and when you’re leaving to go home, there’s no stupid sign welcoming you home cause guess what? No one wants to live in your part of town! (I have absolutely no idea where that came from, my imagination just took over.) Anyway, this is where Zack suddenly decided he was intrigued, impressed, and in fact, enamored with all the fine details these Romans put into their marble slabs. Okay, I know it’s truly impressive what they were able to do, and with such accuracy, too! But a hundred pictures of the small engravings at the top of a column are good, I think.
When I was finally able to drag his butt away from this, we found the Byzantine church, where I sat and had my picture taken. (Mom and her friends, please stop reading here. I’ll tell you when you can look again.) Now that they’re gone…I just didn’t want to hear the whole, “You see! You need to go to church more often!” I KNOW this already. Anyway, this is the first time I’ve been in church in probably more than five years. Also, it was truly the best church experience I’ve ever had, and actually, I felt closer to God there than I have in any other church (maybe due to the fact that there was no roof, so I suppose I would have to be closer). Also, no hypocrites present. HALLELUJIAH! (Okay, mom & friends, feel free to join us again.)
From there, we walked around a wall and discovered the elaborate forum. There’s a picture of me seeing this for the first time. I’ll post it on the return to the states, it’s pretty entertaining….my mouth is hanging wide open from the shock. There’s also some strange tunnel between the church and forum, which leads into the rear of the forum, but also has an arm off to the right, leading nowhere, with a small window cut in letting in the faintest bit of daylight. The interior of the forum now is a hodge-podge of broken columns, etc. It seems that, in the attempted restoration of Leptis Magna (which is ongoing, as we saw several workers clad in orange jumpsuits digging & moving relics), the forum has come to serve as a storage area for some of the large pieces. The portions that belong in the forum are typically on the ground around the former walls, and they’ve attempted to set them up in their original location (just, you know, on the ground now). This is where those strange child-heads are. I’m unsure as to the reason why, but Zack is in love with these things, as well. He wants one. I mean, he wants one BAD. He wants our home decorated with them. To me, they’re kinda creepy. There’s two different types, one is kind of happy-looking, and the other looks pissed. The happy guy’s not too bad, but the pissed guy just looks like a three year old that’s capable of committing murder. There’s also, for some reason, two wicked-looking dogs touching noses at the bottom of the crazy guy. They’re also touching extremely creepy-looking front paws, in some evil-dog form of a high-five. I know, in the picture of Zack with the heads, they really don’t look so bad. Pictures can lie, people. Pictures can lie.
After leaving this area, we headed into the basilica, which is another jaw-dropping moment. This area is smaller, but a million times more impressive. There’s small columns, which started out as marble and were turned into a magnificent piece of story-telling rock. There’s men fighting, and mythical creatures, what I can only assume are gods and goddesses, plants, animals, etc. You’ll just have to see the pictures, there’s no way to do these things justice with the written word. There’s also two huge columns at both ends of the basilica, with smaller ones all the way around. At the top of the large columns are griffins, one on each, and at the top of the smaller columns, there is basically a banner wrapped around the entire place which states first of all, Caeser Septimus Severus (because he was emperor at that time) and then continues on to name several others. (All of them?? I have no idea.)
Zack and I took this opportunity to go somewhere we obviously were not supposed to (yeah, screw your door, we‘ll go around and jump that six foot rock!), and climbed all the way to the top of the basilica (think, right next to the griffins) and shot some great pictures and also realized that we really needed to pick up the pace if we had any hopes of seeing the entire city. We then climbed down and headed to the beach, where we ran into a local couple. The man of this couple sweetly held his wife’s hand and assisted her every time there was even a small stone pebble in the road. Meanwhile, the light of my life was about a hundred yards ahead of me, snapping pictures like a mad man, while I sat on a collapsed column coughing up a lung and God knows what other internal organ. I hate that couple. We also were closely watched by a police officer here, though I have no idea why. The only thing at this portion of the beach was a few Roman rocks (big uns!) and a lot of trash from idiotic visitors who can’t seem to locate the bright yellow trashcans spread out EVERYWHERE on this site.
After my coughing fit subsided, we realized that we would need to continue down the beach for several hundred yards to see all of the ruins. This is a lot more complicated than it sounds, because there’s actually only a very small portion of actual beach, and the rest of it is basically a small cliff on the water’s edge. Also, there are very dense space of vegetation (horrible, scrubby, prickly desert stuff) and quite a few extremely deep gullies that you have to climb down into and then climb up out of. Add in the ruins dispersed intermittently, and you’ve got quite a hike, I assure you. The first dot of ruins we made it to were maddeningly just a few uncovered blocks. We continued on to some more ruins, jutting out over the sea. This was more complete, but as is typical here, we have no idea what it was at one time. There were steps leading down quite literally into the sea. I attempted to go down them, but my ever-caring husband refused to let me. This is also where we took that fantastic profile picture of us. Isn’t that gorgeous? (And for once, I’m not talking about me OR Zack, I’m actually talking about the water and the sky). Below this house-thingy, there was a man fishing off the rocks. He wasn’t catching anything, but I assure you, it looked like a lot of fun!
We then had to climb down a semi-cliff to get to the small beach below. On the beach, I marveled at the water, as I always do here. The water is not brown, like it is in the Gulf. Neither is it kinda green like it is in parts of Florida, or a brilliant blue, like it is in southern Cali. No, the water here, my friends, is indeed clear. Clear water! How do they do it? The only thing that gives the water any color is what is actually in the water, so it’s several different shades of green and deep blue all throughout. The most amazing beach I’ve ever been on! I tried several times to write in the sand “Sarah Loves Zack” or “Leptis Magna 2010”, but each time that dang Mediterranean came in much farther than any prior time and washed away my writing. That’s when I realized, maybe Zack and my thing is not something so cliché. Maybe the Mediterranean was telling us we were far too original and cool to engage in this hokey tradition (so sorry, dear seester, I know you love this, and maybe that’s where I got the desire to do it). Anyway, we stood on some rocks in the water and found several hermit crabs (one was HUGE), Zack caught me a fish (really! Although I think the fish was dead when he “caught” it), we snapped more pictures and just generally laughed and enjoyed the view. Then we made it to what appeared to be the final round of ruins on this side (they weren’t).
There, we found a local getting into his skin suit to go spear fishing (that water’s cold, folks!) I ignored him, as is appropriate here when you’re a female. Apparently, as long as you’re the biggest b!tch alive and never engage any male anywhere in any kind of social interaction, you’re the ideal woman here. I’ve got the first part down (the b word I used earlier, sorry, mom, I had to) but it’s really difficult to act like a person is NOT there when they obviously are. Anyways, there was some type of house (I think) here, which didn’t look quite as old as the Roman stuff, but I could be wrong. Apparently, this is an area that most tourists don’t visit at Leptis, as locals regularly camp out there (there are no homeless people here, so it’s not a band of vagabonds) and use the beach as a recreational area for their shin-digs or whatever it is they do here. Zack, very like a prissy little girl, refused to go into this “house” because there was a lot of trash on the floor and he just KNEW there was human urine and feces SOMEWHERE in there! I replied, “Suck it up, Nancy, I’m going in cause I wanna see the roof. You’re wearing shoes and just don’t touch anything!” I found a quaint little spot to sit on the roof, and soon heard the pitter-patter of little-girl feet when my husband finally decided to join me. (Okay, I wasn’t REALLY that mean, but the bada$$ inside my brain was). We actually sat on the roof for about a half hour, soaking up the sun and breathing in the Mediterranean, which, by the way, smells delicious.
Finally, I decided it was time to start trekking again, as I had just discovered there were MORE ruins further on, and I was determined to see every part, since SOMEONE made me miss a couple of key points of Sabratha. The little girl on the roof pouted, saying she was hungryyyyyy and tirrrrrred, but I refused to back down, and we then found ourselves among some Roman apartments (once again, a total guess). This was either the projects OR the suburbs for the not so wealthy Romans. It was basically a long string of “rooms” which seemed to be houses, all connected within a really long building (like an apartment building, of course).
After checking these out for a few minutes, both Zack and I heard something in the brush. Remember that dense vegetation I told you about earlier? From this side of the ruins, it actually proves to be an area the size of Australia, which you have to literally hug the cliff walls in order to avoid. Zack seemed to get a little nervous at this point, which did wonders for my security. Then, the sound continued. It was quite apparent there was SOMETHING moving through the brush, towards us, and it seemed to be following us along the beach. Zack threw a couple of priceless, ancient Roman rocks towards the sound, hoping to scare off our stalker. Then he began to talk about it probably just being a wild dog (dog tracks everywhere on the beach), who was more afraid of us than we are of it (Yeah, thanks, pops, but not when they’ve got rabies); then he started talking about this wicked mean snake they have there, that’s like a constrictor or something with horns (yes, horns) on its head. It only eats once a year, but it eats at least three full grown sheep when it does (or 1 Zack and 1 Sarah). My imagination kicked into overtime here, as we began to discuss whether or not snakes spit out the bones once they’re done digesting their meal. (By the way, does anyone know this? I told him they did, in the hopes that if we were eaten alive, together, at least someone may find our bones and realize what happened). He said it didn’t matter, because the snake would spit our bones out in its lair, which surely would be impossible for anyone to find. This is when we heard a voice several yards behind us, which scared the bejeebus outta me.
Somehow, a cop had materialized on the ruins we were just on, and asked Zack for our tickets. He was astounded that we had walked as far as we had, because apparently no one else has ever walked all the way there from the main ruins. Apparently, there’s some shortcut by car that no one took the time to tell us about (jerks). He then tells us to stick to the water, because the very snake that Zack had been telling me about was known to reside in the brush. Zack then asked him if he had been following us in the brush, and the cop basically said, “Hell, no, I don’t go in that stuff with that snake!” (The snake’s name is “something big” in Arabic, if that tells you anything about its size). This complicated the return trip, as I refused to walk anywhere near anything green and basically clung to a rock wall for the mile or so back. This is also when the sun hit the middle of the sky, and we started to sweat our butts off. It wasn’t that hot, but the sun here seems stronger, it affects you quickly and without warning.
We finally, after a couple of wrong turns and backtracks, found our way back to the original beach we had been on, and began to work our way toward the theater. On the way, we stopped quite a bit in the shade, and really, ignored the Roman marvels all around us. Peeking down a side road, Zack found the market, which was pretty neat. We detoured and snapped some photos there, then continued on our way to the theater. By the time we reached the theater, we were so exhausted that we literally just snapped some pictures, stood on the stage, talked about air conditioning, water, and what in the world we were going to eat. Then we high-tailed it back to the front of the ruins, where we bought some drinks and sat in the parking lot, absorbing all the air conditioning the car could emit. We then headed home, with nothing of importance really happening. We did have a very nice drive, just talking and enjoying the scenery ( a lot of beach and a lot of desert). Don’t worry, we are actually going back to Leptis Magna in a few weeks to stay for a couple of days (Zack’s uncle’s friend owns a house on the beach there, and he is going to let us stay there), and we are going to further explore/photographically document the theater, amphitheater, and whatever else we missed. All in all, it was an amazing day, but I am ACHING today…we did a lot of climbing and walking, and both of us are really paying for it today!
