Spent yesterday pottering, and avoiding starting to work through my Libya photos on my frustratingly slow eMac. The time is fast approaching when I'll need to spend a relative fortune on a new Mac.
The day's successes included buying two "Moneymaker" tomato and a "Red hot chili" plants from the Barbican greengrocer, and Simon's 40th birthday celebrations plus my first Pimm's of the season. I had a lovely evening, and I think my liver's survived relatively unscathed.
I also really enjoyed catching Inside the Mediaeval Mind: Belief on iPlayer. Rather annoyed that I missed episodes 1 and 2 of the series and that these aren't available but episode 4 on Power is in my diary.
But now, back to lounging on the sofa watching Sharpe - the final two DVDs in the box set....
Slowly digesting my 14 days in Libya courtesy of Peregrine Adventures.
The highs were:
- drinking in the Milky Way in the desert silence of the Tadrart Acacus
- walking around the empty streets of Ghat's old medina (although the absence of our local guide contributed to the experience)
- Pippi, Lois and Sybl
The Greek and Roman ruins of the coast were almost too impressive in their extent and had benefitted from rebuilding/restoration by the Italians. Similarly, the rock art in the Tadrart Acacus is in an amazing condition considering that some of it is 14,000 years old. Ghadames felt like a dying town - a very melancholy place. At least Ghat had been put out of its misery.
The lows were:
- the unprofessional behaviour of Peregrine's local guide
- ending the trip feeling that it has been overpriced and that I'd got extremely poor value for money
Lessons for me:
- avoid local leader-only tours.
- trust my gut instincts on value for money.
I'm certainly not travelling with Peregrine/Gecko's again. Libya's worth visiting though, especially if you liked Syria - it has a very similar feel.
Phil pointed out that Wikipedia is letting you make your own book out of Wikipedia pages, and it is super, super simple to do.
I created my own first book in about 15 minutes, built out of the pages I'd added to my Where Next page, (plus a few more - so easy! Too easy?) and called Libya, April/May 2009.
Comprising 25 Wikipedia pages, the PDF version of my proto guide book weighs in at at hefty 14.3 MB and prints out on over 100 pages. Setting my PDF print options to two pages to a side, double sided that makes more than 25 sheets of paper.... hmmm next time I'll be more judicious in my Wikipedia page selection. But for this edition the plan is to jot down additional information on to the less bountiful pages so that I can give something back to the wonderful Wikipedia.
... Gaddafi storms out of Arab League - although reading this BBC article, it does seems like they just wanted a good headline to hang their "this is who's here and what it's about" story onto.
But more sadly: Hundreds feared drowned off Libya, and subsequently Libya migrant search called off.
The team at Travcour have been their usual brilliantly efficient selves. I got an email confirming receipt of my passport last week and an email on Friday telling me that they'd sent my passport back to me, which I picked up today.
Simple.