31 october 2008, friday, Tripoli-Benghazi

 This day we had an early start. We got up at 05.00 and did not have breakfast. We packed and left at 06.00. We drove out of a quiet and sleeping Tripoli without any problem. When we came out of Tripoli we had a fuel stop. We even filled up the jerrycans. Just in case! When it became light, after driving about 220 km, we stopped to buy drinking water. Victor went into the shop and I had a look underneath the car. Terrible! The filling plug of the front differential was missing and lost almost all of its oil. Where to get a replacement for that plug on friday? I asked a man if he knew a worksop and he said no all is closed today because it is friday. Soon we were surrounded by people who wanted to help us. After a while we had a new plug: a central heating plug combined with camel hair did the job! We filled the differential with oil with the aid of a hose and a .... This was brought to us by someone else. They did not except anything: they said that helping us was the most important, not the money. One man said that the people of  Simratah were the nicest persons of Libya. We agreed with that. So soon we were on the road again. We drove through one of the more green parts of Libya where they had a lot of agriculture. But soon it became more desolate and desertlike. There was a lot of roadwork going on to make a 4-lane coastal road. We also saw herds of camels and sheep with their keepers. On the road were the trucks who brought these animals to definite and certain destination! As we went on more to the east, the wind from the south (Sahara) became stronger and much warmer. Also a little bit of a sand storm. After having done 460 km, we reached Sirte, where Maria was waiting for us in the Al Mahary hotel. We had a cappucino and went on again, further to the east. Late in the afternoon we reached Ajdabiyah and went on to the north to Benghazi. Today we had about 12 police check points and all went wel. Some knew that we were on the list that Khalid with the group haad already given. Just before Benghazi we saw a lot of things we only saw on Google Earth before, like the universaty and the football stadium. We then soon reached our destination: the Tibesti hotel. We had covered about 1000 km from Tripoli to Benghazi. We checked in at the hotel and brought our luggage to oour rooms. Soon after that we went down to have dinner. There we saw the rest of the group, who had just finished their dinner. After we had dinner, we had some drinks together with Atske and Heert-Jan on the top level of the hotel: an open terrace with a fantastic view. We went to our rooms at 23.30. After that I started to write 2 dayreports. End of an exciting day again.