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Thank God we left Al Bayda today, one more afternoon of watching their one channel in English and eating junk food in my hotel room and I think I would have jumped off the balcony.
We had a few stops today, the first of which was 45 minutes from Al Bayda, it was a very small site called Slanta, it was behind a locked fence and was not even as big as the area covered by my parents garden shed. The policeman who is travelling with us climbed over the gate and unlocked it from the other side. I was waiting to see if anyone came to arrest him for trespassing, that would have been funny and ironic. Was also waiting for the guide to materialise to show us around the minute site, thankfully none did.
The site was really interesting, it was a pre Greek temple, Tarik our tour leader said some scholars think its Persian, but I doubted that. It looked pre Roman Italian to me, I also secretly wondered if it hand any connection to the Sea Peoples, it would be dated to about the right time.
Qasr Libya was our next stop, and there were some familiar faces there! The couple we kept running into all over Africa from our Dragoman trip had now caught up with me in Libya. They had originally planned to do it on their own with an armed guard in the car. However, once they got to the border they were shoved on an Oasis overland truck and were now stuck on a tour the same as me.
We saw some fantastic mosaics at Qasr Libya and then we walked about 35 metres into the bush and saw the church they were removed from, which begged the question, why didn't they just leave them where they were and make the church the museum?
Our longest stop for the day was at the site of Ptolemios, the capital built by Ptolemy of Egypt. Again, we were forced to have a local guide, who we had to follow around. I thought, I am quite capable, as is everyone else, of looking around at least the museum and flatly refused to follow the guide.
We had lunch and then went to see the actual site. I think the guide picked up on my obvious hostility, because he kept telling the group all his credentials, including the famous archaeologists he had worked with and that he had studied in London, all the while looking at me. I really didn't care what his credentials were, that's not the point at all. I don't need a guide at ancient site, full stop. He could have been Howard f***ing Carter in the flesh and I still wouldn't have wanted to follow him around. I like exploring things and I don't want to be told which statues are which in museums. I like to try to figure it out based on the iconography shown on them. Greek statues are my favourite to try to work out. If I have someone with me telling me who they are, it takes the fun out of it for me.
I enjoyed the site, but spent most of the time feeling irritated and bitter about the guiding situation. The site contained the largest Roman cistern in North Africa, which was pretty impressive. We got to go down into it, there was no water in it and although it wasn't quite as spectacular as Basilica Cistern on Turkey, but it was still amazing.
After we left Ptolemos and the guide behind, we headed for Benghazi and checked into our lovely hotel. I went on the internet and let my parents know I'm not dead and then went out to explore with the group. This was actually my favourite part of the day as it was the only time we didn't spend being tailed by about four people. We went to the souq, which really only sold clothes and household items and then went and had dinner in a nice sea food restaurant. The shop had two sharks hanging up in the window and we picked what we wanted and then they cooked it for us. I opted for half a kilo of Calamari, which turned out to be awesome. Fried calamari, can't remember when I had that last.
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