Libya February 2010.

Libya has been in the news recently and one might get the impression that it is a dry barren desolate country with a leader that is past his use by date. Some aspects of this statement are true but I want to show you another side to Libya that we found which we were pleased to have seen and experienced.

My first blog in April 2010 covered a trip to Tunisia and Libya in January and February of that year. Recent events have encouraged me to revisit my albums and select some more of the best of Libya to upload here to show you a different side to the country.

Modern day Libya has been part of many different civilisations in the past with one being replaced by another – are we seeing another such change happening now?

Part 1:

The Phoenicians were followed by the Greeks then the Romans. A devastating earthquake and tsunami in 367AD put paid to most of the Roman cities along the Mediterranean although the Byzantines did do some rebuilding before the coming of Islam resulted in further sackings and the disappearance of more cities. In more recent times, the Italians ruled this part of North Africa in the first part of the 20^th Century before the Axis defeat in WW2. Libya is now in turmoil yet again.

Marcus Aurelius Arch, Tripoli

(Shot details: Canon 450D EF-S 10-22mm at 14mm,

f/4, 1/4s, ISO-800)

The Roman road from Alexandria to Tunis passed through such arches that were built to show of the wealth and power of local regional emperors. This one survives in Tripoli on the corniche not far from Green Square. Apart from the Libyan National Museum and the souk, both off to the side of the square, there is not much else of interest to keep one here.

North west of Tripoli are the magnificent ruins at Sabratha.

The coliseum at Sabratha.

(Shot details: Canon 450D EF-S 10-22mm at 17mm,

f/13, 1/250s, ISO-200)

Throughout Libya, extensive excavation and restoration took place during the Italian colonial period from 1926 to 1936.

Corinthian columns at Sabratha.



The Mediterranean at the Roman bath house, Sabratha.

The original toilet seats still place!

The water channel at your feet was to wash your hands as paper for other purposes was not available!

As one enters the site at Sabratha, first stop is the mosaic museum. I will let the pictures do the talking here.

Close up shot of a 2,000 year old mosaic.

Everywhere we went in Libya we were astounded by the the very large and well preserved mosaics, often in their original positions.

Time to move from Tripoli down to Gardames, about 650km by road in one day. Gardames was a very important town on the caravan route from the Sahara through to Mediterranean. On the way there were stops at Qasr al-Haj and Nalut.

The inside of the round "castle" or storehouse at Qasr al-Haj



Date palm trunks used for the doors.

The round storehouse  here was built in the second half of the 12th Century. There are 114 storerooms which families used until relatively recently.

Inside details.

Each storeroom had 2 levels. Large clay pots were used to store dates and olive oil whilst grain filled up the lower level - enough to sustain a family for a year, inshalla.

Storerooms at Nalut.



The oasis at Gardames

Gardames is, as mentioned before, an old Caravan town built around a very productive spring of clear cool water, still bubbling away. The town is near the borders with Algeria and Tunisia.

House from the outside of the old town of Gardames.



House interior with lunch set on the carpet, shoes at the door please.



Roof tops.

Once married, the women never went down onto the streets. There is a large network of paths that connect all parts of the old town on the tops of the buildings. This was the women's domain.


One the houses in the old town of Gardames.



Mosque

Old Gardames street.

In the summer, temperatures in the desert can get up to 50°C, which is rather too hot. In old Gardames, even when we were there in the winter, it was noticeably cooler in the streets and houses. The white colour of everything, narrow streets and covered communal areas meant that conditions were quite comfortable. Our guide in the photo above lived here until recently and hates the modern buildings built with oil money. I can appreciate his sentiments after having been given a great tour by him. Progress  - is it always better?

Diary quote, Sunday 7^th February 2010:  “Back to Tripoli at the Zumit Hotel after a somewhat hairy drive back. Libyan drivers have no clues about seatbelts, driving in lanes and (following) behind other vehicles.”

Part 2:

From Tripoli, Cyrenaica beckoned after a flight to Benghazi. There are many sites there which have also been excavated and restored to a certain extent. I have selected a few photos here to give you a further idea of the richness of the remains of the civilizations which occupied the eastern part of the country.

From Benghazi the first stop was Ptolemais before heading to Qasr Libya and Sousa for 2 nights.



Ptolemais. The cistern is under the large flat area here.



The cistern at Ptolemais



Mosaic at Qasr Libya



Small theatre at Cyrene



The Temple of  Apollo at Cyrene



Small church at Ras-al-Hilal

What is unusual about this small church are the many marble panels around the walls and on the floor. What has happened for centuries is that the best marble panels, tiles, columns and sculptures have been stolen, looted, call it what you like, and taken to Europe to be used in all sorts of buildings and displayed as trophies in museums. It was refreshing here to imagine what the church might have been like in its prime.


Cave on way back to Sousa from Ras-al-Hilal

Excavations in this cave and the use of C14 dating put human activity on the north coast of Africa back to 80 - 90,000 years ago.

After 2 nights at the Al Manara Hotel at Sousa we headed back to Benghazi which will never be a tourist town.

Benghazi was one of the main bases for Rommel's Afrika Corps in WW2. It was of course heavily bombed with many casualties. We requested a stop at one of the Commonwealth war cemeteries. We found some New Zealand graves here including one of a family connection to a person we know from Pleasant Point.


Benghazi war cemetery.

Part 3: This will round off our Libya trip with the visit to Leptis Magna - the largest and possibly one of the best excavations we saw in the country.

Leptis Magna is about one hour east of Tripoli and was the site a major city in Roman times. As many as 50,000 people may have lived here before the city was destroyed in the earthquake of 367AD.



The colosseum at Leptis Magna



The fish market



The Arch of Septimius Severus on the main road through Leptis Magna.

After the city was abandoned it was slowly covered with sand and dust over a period or around 1,500 years or more. You can see where the level of the ground is here now, several metres above the road.


Stones put back in place on a temporary basis. The covered of sand preserved to details on the faces here.



The reconstructed amphitheatre.

The main road from Alexandria to Tunis

Another view to show the extent of the sand which covered the city. Less than 10% has been excavated. Much is yet to be discovered and so long as it is covered up, things will stay as they are for a few centuries to come.

What I've tried to do here is to give the reader an idea of the beauties to be discovered in Libya. I hope you appreciate this side of the country which not too many from the west are aware of.

I am now signing off for several months as we travel in Europe for a month and relocate to China.

Lunar Eclipse from Abu Dhabi.

Wednesday 15 June 2011 saw a total lunar eclipse although once totality had begun I didn't hang around for too long to see everything in reverse. I had seen one other such eclipse from Brisbane in 1988 but this one was not as good. There are very good reasons for that.

Atmospheric conditions play an important part in any astronomical observation. A dark, clear, cold stable atmosphere is what is needed in order to get good images of the stars and moon etc.

The park at the edge of the city on a humid night, 28 -30°C where the heat haze during the day extending into the night meant that few stars were visible. This did not go well for photos I consider to be good ones of an eclipse.

However the following photos are the best under the circumstances. I will add some photography notes shortly to explain how I managed to get these photos.

9.03pm The full moon before the eclipse started.
(Shot details: f/9,  ¹/₃₂₀ s, ISO-200)



9.38pm. Another full moon shot
(Shot details: f/10,  ¹/₄₀₀ s, ISO-200)

All photos were taken with a Canon 450D using a 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L IS USM lens at 300mm.  The camera was mounted on a tripod with a remote release and mirror lock up in use. Some test shots were initially taken and then manual mode used for all exposures. As the moon entered the earth's shadow, I had to push the ISO up to 800 because the lens at 300mm only allows a maximum aperture of f/5.6.

The custom lens hood was vital in keeping out light spill from the city.
           
All these images are crops from the original where the moon was about 2.5 cm wide on the screen.



10.22pm. The earth's shadow starting to become noticeable.
(Shot details: f/10,  ¹/₅₀₀ s, ISO-200)



10.53pm
(Shot details:f/10,  ¹/₃₂₀ s, ISO-200)



11.08pm
(Shot details: f/9,  ¹/₁₂₅ s, ISO-200)

11.23pm
(Shot details: f/5.6,  ¹/₁₃ s, ISO-800)

A change of tactics here when I opened up the exposure to show some of the detail to the moon which is now mostly in the earth's shadow.  This one is quite interesting because it shows part of the moon outside the shadow, the middle is in the penumbra whilst the umbra, complete darkness, is starting to show its presence. Wikipedia has some good diagrams to show what this all means.

One of the advantages of using manual mode is that you can play around with exposures to get the best effect. In most of these shots I also did auto-exposure bracketing (the AEB function) and selected the best image to use here. As you can see I have pushed the ISO out to 800 with the result that images larger than those on screen here show quite a lot of noise. This is a compromise with the lens open at f/5.6 (it maximum at 300mm), and a shutter speed fast enough not to show any apparent movement of the moon across the image.

Another advantage of the DSLR is that you can play around with the settings to find out what works best. This type of eclipse lasts for many hours so you have time to experiment.

11.29pm Sunlight just touching the edge, top right.
(Shot details: f/5.6,  ¹/₆ s, ISO-800)

11.32pm. The moon is now completely in the earth's shadow.
(Shot details: f/5.6,  ¹/₅ s, ISO-800)

Even though the moon passes into the earth's shadow it is still visible. The lovely coppery coloured glow is due to light being reflected off the earth onto the moon and back again. You also get some refraction through the atmosphere as well.

To get some really great photos of the moon, a much longer focal length lens is needed as well a wider maximum aperture than f/5.6. Of course a properly telescope mounted camera which could follow the moon and ideal atmospheric conditions help enormously as well.

My main aim was to see how far I could push the camera and lens. I am quite happy with results here.

Do not try this with solar eclipses!

More top photos

Time for another selection of some of my more memorable shots.

Looking through some photos taken in the Serengeti I came across this one of a topi. With some cropping of the original, this has inspired me to search out some other photos to start another selection of my top photos. 



Topi, Damaliscus lunatus
One of the few antelope species where the female also has horns.

(Shot details: Canon 450D. EF-70-300mm F4-5.6L IS USM  lens at 200mm, f/5, 1/500s,   ISO-200.)



Serengeti leopard, Panthera pardus

(Shot details: Canon 450D. EF-70-300mm F4-5.6L IS USM lens at 252mm, f/6.3, 1/320s, ISO-200.)

By tightly cropping the original photo, I have been able to make up for the greater depth of field at f/6.3 by filling the frame with  the animal. This makes up for the fact that I don't have super telephoto like a 500mm either.

The following photos I've selected from my pre-DSLR days when I used a Canon PowerShot S1 IS. (I still have this camera and take it with me for its video function.) I don't claim any of these photos to be great technically correct ones that could be classified as worthy of competition entries, but rather memorable in terms of the story behind each one.



Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna, 3 July 2008

Overlooking the palace on a hill is a magnificent water feature which adds something extra to the palace.

Halite Crystals. 3 July 2008

One of the museums in Vienna has an amazing collection of rocks and minerals. In a glass cabinet was the biggest collection of perfect halite (sodium chloride) crystals one is likely to ever see. The largest crystals would have been around 60cm. There is also a silica needle around 1.2 m long as well. A truly magnificent collection to take the breathe away!

Still in Austria is the lakeside village of Hallstatt. In my Top 10 blog there is an image taken in the centre of the town. But getting back to the theme of salt, there is a salt mine above the town which had been operating (and still is) for seven thousand years, yes 7,000yrs!

Hallstatt on the way up to the salt mine. 9 July 2008

Farewell to Hallstatt

On the way from Austria to Switzerland in the summer of 2008 we took a short diversion into the Czech Republic through Linz. The attraction being Česky Krumlov. To get there we had to change trains at Česky Budĕjovice. Imagine our surprise when we got to the platform to find 4 vintage carriages which was the connecting service. Shortly after we boarded there was a bump as the loco below hooked on.

The loco on the way to Česky Krumlov

Instead of 45 minutes to Česky Krumlov, it was a two and a half hour trip with large numbers of the spectators who had come out to see this little loco struggling up the hills. What we subsequently found out that every three months on a Sunday afternoon, the vintage train runs to Česky Krumlov.

Česky Krumlov, Czech, 6 July 2008

Lauterbrunnen Valley, Switzerland, 15 July 2008

This shot was taken from the cable car going up from Lauterbrunnen to Grütschalp. From there a train goes to Mürren where we stayed and explored the surrounding mountains.



The Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau. 15 July 2008
taken above Kleiner Scheidegg

This is my first attempt at stitching photos together into a panorama. Not a good job however as I had to crop out the part of the lodge in the foreground in order to make it look like one photo.

Now that I know a bit more about photography and have some better gear, I look forward to my next excursion into The Alps around Mont Blanc and The Matterhorn this summer. Hopefully I will get plenty of photos which show my photography skills have developed.



Cappadocia, Turkey, 27 July 2007.

What a remarkable place! People still live in these houses carved out of the soft volcanic rocks.

The Fairy Chimneys, Cappadocia, 27 July 2007.

An early morning balloon ride over Cappadocia yielded some great sights. A truly memorable day.

Kilchurn Castle, Scotland. 14 August 2009.



Every photo has a story and this one is no exception. On the way from Oban to Edinburgh appearing out of the Scotch mist were these ruins. In order to get this photo and not get the camera and lens wet, I literally had to sit on the gear lever to take it. Rather uncomfortable but worth it as the photo conveys the sense of cool temperatures ( 11°C) and the dampness of course.

The first collection,  and now later  third collection, fourth collection and fifth collections can be found at these links.