An officer came out of the border barracks, declaring it was impossible to enter Libya, as my passport was not translated (..?)
For the officer I was not a man of the world - I was only a man on the other side of the border, and there he intended to make sure I stayed - as I was a guilty owner of a non translated passport!
We telephoned our agent in Tarabolos (the Capital we normally know as Tripoli) and suddenly a Genie appeared out of nowhere.
To our and the officer's astonishment he took us directly cross this non translated border. We were on the road again - with only 2000 kilometers (around 1250 miles) between our destination and us. Flights to Libya still prohibited by UN sanctions.
The political theatre are changing - much of this initiated by former President Nelson Mandela's visit to Libya - along with some other African head of state's flights to Libya. Today the Libyan co-operation in the Lockerbie trial is pushing the last restrictions.
Well, still there are distances to go - but somehow these seemed less than our 2000 kilometers from the Egyptian border to Tarabolos.
Today it's easy to predict that this well kept secret of North Africa will become a booming tourist destination. So come and join me on my first trip to Libya with a non-translated passport. The intention was to take the temperature on an important upcoming destination!
In Tarabolos we asked for the famous Grand Hotel - only to learn that this legendary hotel didn't exist. Well that was a white lie, as nobody knew about Grand Hotel as it since the revolution when the hotel got the new name "El Kebir" (which is the Arabic word for "grand" or "big").
On the roof terrace of the famous hotel we was served green bottles with a logo that was nearly a copy of "7UP" (alcohol is not served in Libya in contrast to neighboring Tunisia and Egypt) - but they where of course not named "7UP", but "Sabah" (as you will understand now, "sabah" is the Arabic work for "seven").
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