The Return to Leptis...Libya Series, Part 9

Today marks our triumphant reentry into Leptis Magna. As you recall, Leptis is a ruined Roman city with a history that’s identical to that of Tripoli and Sabratha. It’s also absolutely ginormous, which is why we had to triumphantly return, of course, so as to see the ruined rest of it.

The trip to Leptis was a little longer this time, as Saturday here is Sunday at home (since Friday is their day of rest, they take Friday and Saturday as their weekends). This means that everyone and their mother (I’m being literal here) are in their car and heading towards some beautiful get-away. As beautiful get-aways are kind of few and far between here in Libya, that means a large majority of the pleasure seekers were headed our way and clogging the roadways with their idiotic driving.

Also adding to the headache were the checkpoints. I haven’t mentioned this yet, and I truly have no idea why. Every 20 or 30 miles or so of roadway here, there is a military or police checkpoint. These checkpoints are in cities, outside of cities, in the middle of nowhere, and pretty much in the most inconvenient locations possible. I’m going to go off on a tangent here for a second, so just bear with me. The police at these checkpoints slow traffic down to a one-lane crawl, gawk at everyone in the car as you pass, and, if you are deemed worthy of scrutiny, they stop you and ask for all of your vehicle papers, your license, etc. AND search your car for drugs/alcohol/illegally imported items. I don’t know why, but these checkpoints really intimidate me, although we’ve never had to stop for one.

Typically, if it’s a man and his wife or family in the car, the vehicle is waved through. Most men (let me rephrase: Most men HERE) aren’t going to purchase/sell drugs with their families in the car or anything to put them in danger (other than maniacal driving), so families are deemed worthy to pass. However, if it’s a single man or a few young guys, etc. they’ll probably be searched. Here’s the tangent: Zack told me a story today about a checkpoint where a man and his wife were stopped by two police officers. The cops questioned the couple and spoke to both the man and the woman. The woman was apparently a very modest (or VERY religious) woman, and wore the full head covering with only her eyes showing. One of the cops told her to take it off, and she refused. One of the cops then pulled off her covering, and the man pulled out a gun and shot them both in the head…yeah, that’s what they do here if you disrespect their women….they shoot you DEAD. When other police tried to restrain him, he put the gun to his head and demanded to speak to the secretary (I don’t know which one, so he’ll just be “secretary”). When he arrived, the man told him what had happened, and the secretary told him that he did the right thing and no charges were brought against him. WOW! Lesson here: do NOT touch a Libyan man’s woman. They are freaking nuts!

Okay, that was all on that subject. Anyway, when we finally made it to Leptis, Zack had to turn around and go back into town to buy me a Red Bull. It’s a big city, folks, and we were in dire need of some caffeine! We then made it to the parking lot just in time to see a whole bunch of French-speaking idiots (I know not all idiots speak French, but surely everyone who speaks French is an idiot) piling out of not one, but TWO buses. They were loud and obnoxious and screaming their loud, obnoxious language every chance they got. They also were pretty much in the way any time I wanted to take a picture. It went like this more often than not: See a nice shot, think, “I want to photograph that.” Look around for French speaking idiots….None. Good! Line up my shot, think “Oh, this is gonna be SO good!” Push the button on the camera, *POOF*. Eighteen French-speaking idiots appear in the frame like persistent, sneaky stealth bombers. (Obviously, the French have no persistent, sneaky stealth bombers, otherwise the Americans wouldn’t have had to save their butts in a little thing called World War II. Ingrates.)

This time, we hung a left at the Arch of Septimus Severus and strolled through the Western Gate of the city. The road continued on towards the beach, and a sign indicated that we were headed towards the Arch of Marcus Aurelius (totally confused me…that arch is in downtown Tripoli, and actually being either restored or destroyed at the moment, as it is covered with scaffolding and really big sheets). Zack wasn’t too keen on going this way, because no French-speaking idiots were there, and I guess he was thinking more along the lines of “safety in numbers”. He was probably paranoid because we watched a National Geographic program yesterday about anacondas, and they showed the creepy Libyan anaconda-type snake with horns. By the way, those snakes can pretty much eat anything, so if you ever have the misfortune of being around them, watch yourself!

Anyway, we continued down this road until we reached….nothing. There were a few columns and blocks with writing strewn here and there, but nothing too impressive. The aforementioned sign must have lied. The road kind of dead-ended into the beach, so we strolled down the beach picking up seashells. The water was extra clear today, which is amazing given how it’s always sparkling clean. We then came up the side of the city we hadn’t seen and crawled through houses, walls, what-have-you. We again climbed a lot of areas that I’m positive we weren’t supposed to, and enjoyed the breathtaking views our vantages afforded. We then went to the theater again, and took some more photos, and ended by coming up a few side streets that we hadn’t been down. This time, we found the school. Also, a strange room with three entrances (all blocked but one); in a wall about ten feet up were two more doors, which were impossible to get to. That is, impossible unless your names are Zack and Sarah. Fortunately for us, those are our names! Zack went up first and I literally rock-climbed to the top, with a little help from him. This turned out to be some sort of weird labyrinth, with tunnels and strange little rooms and an area that some creature had obviously made home. Next to this area was a three-room pit type thingy. I know no other way to describe it, sorry. This had two doors at the top level, but no stairs. What is this pit thing for??? No idea, because, as per usual, there’s no sign. The pit wasn’t that deep, though, maybe about twelve feet down, so it wasn’t a catacomb or anything. (Oh, hey, I found out that I actually entered a catacomb at Sabratha. There were no dead people, which is what I thought made a catacomb a catacomb. Guess I was wrong.) We also found another huge, long pit area, about fifteen feet deep. It was shaped like a swimming pool, with half-columns running the length of it. Also in this pit were loads of broken pottery and Roman junk. You know, just your typical, worthless 2000-year-old crap. (I don’t understand these people at all.) Leptis was a blast, again, and we ended up wandering around for about three hours. Zack wasn’t too into it this time; I get it, you see one big rock, you’ve seen ‘em all.

We returned to the car and prepared ourselves for the short trip to Zack’s uncle’s friend’s beach house. (I can’t remember his name, so I’ll just go with “Mohamed”. Let’s be honest, if he’s Libyan, he’s probably got “Mohamed” somewhere in his name.) It took a while to find, because there are no street signs anywhere here (like a post-Katrina New Orleans, only way fewer landmarks). When we finally arrived, Mohamed grilled us some fish, which was DELICIOUS. There was also a spicy salad (think chunky salsa you eat with pita bread or just regular old bread), and a honey sweet for dessert. While the fish was grilling, we went down to Mohamed’s private beach, where Zack stripped down to his skivvies and dove in. I rolled up my jeans and waded around in the water for a while, until I finally worked up the courage to go for a dip myself. Now, there were no people around, but I wasn’t convinced that we were that secluded, so Zack held up the towel and I pulled off my jeans. I fortunately had worn a tank top as an undershirt today, so I took off my shirt (and my bra…so glad I remembered that one!) and wrapped my scarf around me like a skirt. I then waded out, bit by bit. That water was COLD!!!! But, not cold enough to stop me from taking a swim in the Mediterranean! I mean, really, how could I come all this way, and not get in? We swam for about fifteen minutes and returned to shore before hypothermia had a chance to fully set in (Joking. It wasn’t all that bad, really.) The sun, which everyone reminds me is so much stronger here, dried us in just a few minutes, and we quickly dressed ourselves, then went for dinner. Mohamed offered us the house for a few days, so one nice day, Zack and I are going to go back and spend some alone time on the beach! Yay! Ehh, anyways, we finally got home about 8pm, and now it’s almost time for dinner. We’re definitely going to sleep well tonight, I’m exhausted! Tomorrow morning, I’m going to get coffee with my sisters-in-law since Heba is leaving Monday (booooo). I’ll leave you for now, love to everyone.