With a huge discount , the owners gives us an enormous apartment on the top floor of the building . We take up our gear , enjoy a shower and sit around the map to look at the route into Egypt . At the beginning of the evening , Kamal and Sharif return with dinner . Together , we enjoy freshly fried fish , soup and bread . It tastes great ! While eating Kamal explains that he is captain of the Tourist Police . He tells us that when Hakeem had stopped the car that morning in the middle of the desert , he had thought we were being followed . He only continued after Kamal had confirmed that it was safe enough for us to cross to Tobruk . That explains that ! After a relaxed evening in the hotel , with Sharif and Kamal , we go to bed and try to get some much-needed sleep . Tomorrow awaits a new challenge : the Libyan-Egyptian border .
We wake up early and immediately start packing . When we are ready to leave , we are joined by Kamal who will escort us to the border and help us with some of the paperwork . After about 100 km , we stop in front of some offices . In the distance we can already see the gate that forms the entrance to
Egypt . We hand in our Libyan license plates and give our passports to Kamal who will have them stamped for us . After about an hour all the paperwork is done . The exit stamp in our passports marks the end of our incredible ride through Libya !
It was an amazing week . We met many friendly and remarkably hospitable people , each of them very proud of their country and happy to receive us as their guests . We were not even a month into our trip when we entered Libya and it completely overwhelmed us . It was nothing like we had seen on TV and everything like the other riders ’ reports had told us . The anxious and excited feeling about riding through Libya was soon gone and we never really felt unsafe . Whether we were right to feel safe or just naïve remains to be seen . Only a few days after we left Libya , on the 3rd of January 2014 , two foreigners were killed not far from Zuwara .
We feel very fortunate that we were able to ride through Libya and met all these wonderful people . Libya has an incredible amount to offer and we hope to be able to visit it again in the
future . ATA
Make sure you get the next issue of MEM as we will be catching up with Amsterdam to Anywhere on their next amazing exploration . Click below to go to their website !