Taking a tour of Libya

TRIPOLI, Libya — “Inshallah” means “God willing” in Arabic. It’s good to know if you visit this Muslim country on the north coast of Africa, now open to Americans after 20 years of U.S. sanctions.

The thaw in relations cracks open a tantalizingly closed door. On the other side are such marvels of the ancient world as the ruins of Sabratha and Leptis Magna; the vibrant capital city of Tripoli, poised between dilapidation and rehabilitation; 1,250 miles of Mediterranean coast; oasis towns still visited by camel caravans; and the intelligent, self-sure Libyan people, who met me with eager curiosity on my visit in late April and early May.

Best of all, Libya, like China in the 1970s, remains largely untouched by the despoiling hand of commercial tourism. There’s a prevailing air of naivete and freshness unlike any I’ve ever felt.

Visitors have been trickling into Libya all along. It received 300,000 foreign tourists last year, mostly Europeans drawn by Libya’s fabled Roman ruins, considered the best outside Italy, and its sandy Saharan south, which in the past decade has taken the place of strife-torn Algeria as a destination for desert treks.

There’s nothing easy about visiting Libya, especially for Americans. A U.S. State Department warning, citing the country’s sponsorship of terrorism, remains in effect, and tourist services are unsophisticated. Except for the new Corinthia Bab Africa Hotel in Tripoli, accommodations are rudimentary. At tourist sites, printed information is scant, and guides speak halting English. Changing dollars for Libyan dinars is an ordeal; credit cards are rarely accepted; alcohol is banned, in adherence to Muslim law. And just try to get a visa.

At the time of my visit, tourists could enter the country only as part of a group, with a letter of invitation from a tour company. So I joined a desert trekking party organized by Mountain Travel Sobek, a Northern California adventure-travel company.

The journey, billed as the first American tourist venture into Libya since travel sanctions were lifted in March, featured a week of hiking in the Acacus Mountains near the Sahara oasis town of Ghat, followed by a three-day extension seeing the sights around Tripoli on the coast, which interested me most.

I flew to Tripoli, where I was met by Ludovic Bousquet, a Sahara Desert guide for Hommes et Montagnes, the French company with which Mountain Travel Sobek had subcontracted to organize the trekking part of the trip. With him was local Libyan guide Bilal Aghali, a willowy fellow in a billowing white robe, who told me immediately that he was mentioned on Page 203 of the Lonely Planet guide to Libya.

They took me by van to Aldeyafa Hotel, on a street in downtown Tripoli surrounded by construction sites; nine hotels are due to open here in the next year, they said. The rooms at the Aldeyafa were small, ugly and airless, but the baths were sparkling clean and oversized. Breakfast was yogurt, muesli and Nescafe.

The three of us headed out to see the city on foot. He showed me how to cross the street in Tripoli, where the roads aren’t divided into lanes, there are no stop signs and vehicles move in herds. You walk out bravely, with a raised hand and index finger pointing heavenward, as if to say, “Fail to stop at the risk of Allah’s wrath.” It worked.

Tripoli, which has about 1.5 million people, one-fourth of Libya’s total population, has been many things since the Phoenicians founded it about 500 B.C.: a Roman colonial hub that sent grain, slaves and gold from central Africa to the Imperial capital; an outpost of gilded Byzantium; home port of Barbary pirates; and the seat of Italian colonial aspirations before Libya gained its independence after World War II. It sits beside the Mediterranean, all white and toothpaste green, decorated everywhere with portraits of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

In the city’s heart is Green Square. Streets to the east, with shuttered balconies and Baroque plaster molding, speak of the Italian colonial period, which started in 1911 and left many Libyans fluent in Italian, eating pasta and bearing Italian last names.

To the west of the square are the walled old city and castle, which date largely from the era of the Ottoman Turks from 1500 to 1800 and house the Jamahiriya Museum, where I saw much to admire and intrigue: its extraordinary cache of sculpture, mosaics, coins and other treasures from the classical world; Roman friezes from the triumphal arch in Leptis Magna; a polished marble statue of the Three Graces from Greek Cyrene in eastern Libya.

The next morning I went by taxi to Sabratha, an hour’s drive west of Tripoli on a good highway.

Among its chief glories are villas with private baths, including one with the words “Bene Laba” (Latin for “good wash”) inscribed in a mosaic on the floor. Sabratha’s monumentally colonnaded Temple of Isis, built from 30 B.C. to A.D. 14, looms by the beach, waves occasionally spilling over its foundation. The nearby second-century theater is exquisitely intact, designed to amplify actors’ voices and keep the audience cool by funneling ocean breezes through doorways on the backstage wall.

I returned to Tripoli and was installed in the 28-floor Corinthia Bab Africa Hotel, overlooking the ocean west of the old city. The hotel looks part space shuttle launchpad, part Mormon temple. It opened a year ago as Libya’s first deluxe hotel and has all the obligatory bells and whistles: a spa with a smashing indoor swimming pool, numerous restaurants, room service and 300 handsomely decorated chambers.

The Mountain Travel Sobek group arrived, bright eyed and expectant. We visited Leptis Magna the next morning, a two-hour drive east of Tripoli. Vast and remarkable, it was once the terminus of a trade route to sub-Saharan Africa, one of about 600 colonial settlements on the coast of North Africa that fed the empire’s talent pool. By 200, one-third of the senators in Rome were from North Africa and a native son of Leptis Magna, Septimus Severus, was acclaimed emperor. The partly reconstructed arch near the entrance of the site was built to commemorate his visit home in 203.

From that arch, toppled Corinthian capitals, cracked columns, floors with mosaics still clinging to them, temples and forums roll down to the sea. We stopped at the Hadrianic Baths, which had cold and hot pools and still-intact marble toilets. Although the spell of ancient times was strong, there were, at every turn, groups of Libyan schoolchildren to break it. Some peeked at us shyly, others stared boldly, then burst out laughing. We had been advised to be careful about photographing the camera-phobic Libyans, but clearly, no one had warned the kids about snapping pictures of us. They all wanted photos of themselves with the Americans.

In the end, their eagerness to know us is what I’ll remember most about being a part of the first American tour group to Libya. There will be many more, “inshallah.”