Alexandria, Egypt

Trying to keep up

Sorry about the lack of posts recently, but the pace of this journey and the dearth of laptop-friendly net cafés in this part of the world prevents us keeping you regularly updated.

At the time of beginning to write this post we were in Benghazi in Libya and Day 12 of our expedition had just drawn to a close. Day 12! We've seen so much and travelled so far it already feels as if we left Tunis months ago. Much has happened. Our expedition leader/driver George drove ten of us out of Tunis, but we're down to eight already. Kevin and Tanya had to leave us in Tripoli to fly back to Australia as Kevin's Mum is seriously ill. We miss you T&K and our thoughts are with you...

The same day that our friends received their sad news we had to take Amber to hospital for a flu that had resulted in infected tonsils. By that time we were in outback Libya in the town of Ghadames. Mau's consultation and treatment at the hospital were completely free of charge and the folks there wouldn't accept the donation we wanted to make either. They also supplied us with a course of penicillin and all the gear required to prep it for intra-muscular injection as well. All without charge. Can you imagine that happening in one of our countries?

Luckily Tanya is a nurse and administered the first few injections, but as she was flying out before the course was complete, yours truly had to pick up the slack. I now have a skill I'm loath to use. I can prepare and administer IM penicillin injections but let me tell you: I was shitting myself far beyond anything I've ever felt on the receiving end of a needle! I'm pretty sure Amber was more nervous than me though. Especially the first time, when the syringe jammed while I had the needle buried in her thigh! She's now feeling a lot better, but the damn flu hasn't departed yet. Martina from Switzerland boarded the trip with a flu as well and it has subsequently jumped to Nick, the other Australian on board, as well as our driver George, who doesn't have the luxury of retiring to a sleeping bag on the driving legs of the journey. (If you can call being sick as a dog and bouncing around in the back of a windy, dust-filled truck a "luxury".)

We've six more days in Libya before crossing the border into Egypt. Our first stop there will be El Iskandreya, better known to us as Alexandria, then it's down to Cairo and all the fabled sights of ancient Egypt. I really hope we've found a net café to post from before that, as we've quite a bit of catching up to do.

Update: Alexandria March 31

Live blogging! (Almost.) This pic was taken a few moments ago here at Carlos' Shisha and internet café on the Alexandria waterfront. Thanks Margrete :)

The last week in Libya has been amazing. So has the weather. From Saharan sandstorm in Ghadames to pouring rain and freezing wind at the ruined clifftop Greek city of Cyrene. We've seen perfectly preserved Byzantine mosaics discovered on ancient church floors in the Green Mountain region where fields of luxuriant grain crops alternate with groves of fig, almond and newly flowering fruit trees. We've walked the dark subterranean hallways and lion cages beneath the circus of Leptis Magna and gazed across the Mediterranean from the heights of the theatre there.

We've walked among the graves of the brave who defended Tobruk and this morning we again walked silently amid endless rows of headstones at the last resting place of so many young men who helped finally stem the tide of Rommel's Afrika Corps advance into Egypt. The sand and limestone of El Alamein still occasionally resounds to the blast of the abandoned ordinance that litters the battlefield, still claiming lives all these years later. Rommel had it right when he decried the "rivers of blood spilled over a narrow strip of land that in any other time even the Arabs would not bother with".

Now we sit here in the city of Alexander and Ptolemy, smoking shisha, writing instant letters home on our laptops, watching the traffic of the boulevard that separates us from the sea. It's a different world...