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The Green Mountain or Jebal Akdar Region of Eastern Libya, Byzantine Basilicas, Caves & Greek and Roman Ruins

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	We continued on and now high up into the mountains.  We drove up a long hairpin road with precipitous drops and seeing a helicopter flying hundreds of feet below me made me feel a bit queasy.  The view was stunning but scary and the dazzling sea below us looked magnificent.  We reached the top of this mountain range on a good quality tarmac road, built by the Italians before WW2.  This area of natural beauty, Ras Hilal, has a waterfall and is popular with Libyans:  Men camp and picnic nearby the waterfall.
	Libyan Shabab

But the waterfall, full of rubbish and litter, was a bit of a disappointment plus the noise of the shabab with their stereos spoilt it a bit.  The return drive down back to the coastal road was equally dramatic as the drive up but I was relieved to be back on terra lower so to speak.  Just before we headed down the mountain I noticed some bright mauve wild flowers and had the car stop so I could examine them.  Our driver was not impressed: and with a dismissive shrug said: "Why?  Is just flowers".  They did in fact appear to be small delicate Colchicum.  Our next stop was Susa or as it used to be known Apollonian a pre Hellenistic settlement from 700 BC where I mooched around the ruins and looked at the wharf. 

Our driver had previously told us he knew this area like the back of his hand and as well as being a taxi driver was a history teacher so we were a tad surprised when he pointed to the large site of Greek and Roman ruins and asked:  ' What is this place?'

Before leaving Susa we explored the new hotel that is in the process of being built.  It is beautifully located near the harbour and the ruins and is clean, modern, and quite nicely designed with Greek and Roman motifs decorating the interior walls.  It is still incomplete and might open between one to ten years from now, Insh Allah, according to the building site manager. I have since heard six months later, that the hotel is now in fact open for business and though expensive by Libyan standards it is cheap for tourists at about twenty British pounds a night which is around fifty dinars.

During the days of the Italian occupation of Libya the freedom fighters hid in caves in the Green Mountain area.  Their leader, Omar Muktar, The Lion of The Desert, played by Anthony Quinn in the eponymous movie used the caves in the mountains around Dirna to hide and regroup and as a base for resistance.  The Italian program of Libyan pacification was one of the cruelest and bloodiest in the history of European colonialisation and according to one source,  fifty percent of the population were murdered.  Hundreds of people were hung daily but due to astute media control, the Italians controlled the telegraph machines, there were very few witnesses and the world at large didn't know of events here.  There are however two sources of records to these brutal abominations: a Danish Muslim traveler who writes of the hangings at the time and the Italians themselves who were encouraged to photograph the hangings to send to the folks back home to demonstrate what a good job the army was doing.  Despite the mountains and the protection of the caves Omar Muktar was caught and publicly hung before twenty thousand Libyan prisoners, thousands of whom had been taken from their barbed wire cages in the Brega and Agila concentration camps.  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I had that particular cave as being 80 kilometers away and had no desire to visit it as it is indeed asking for trouble.  I tried to explain the cave we wanted was a prehistoric cave where Stone Age man had lived to no avail.  'Stone men?  What mean stone men?'

	From the outside looking in
	From the inside looking out

The cave is not underground but in the side of the mountain and the entrance is a hundred yards wide.  In the middle of the cave there did appear to be a large bomb crater and at the back of the cave, penned in with a whicker fence were fourteen newborn lambs: probably very tender.  

On our walk down back to the car I noticed some tiny pink cyclamen.  We vetoed the next stop, a basilica: Halas is halas and so headed up the meandering road to Shahat passing hundreds of necropoli built into the cliff face 

On our left were hundreds of Libyans picnicking and using the ancient burial sites as bases and shelters.  On our right was the valley and settlement of Cyrene covered with ancient ruins.  The food gods were with us this day and we got the last two liver and egg sandwiches in the local eating-place.  Our driver had to make do with tuna and egg.  For sweetmeats we had the cakes from Dirna: the knaffa mixture of honey, nuts and rosewater type baklava.  We feasted till replete and I bought some honey as possible Xmas gifts.  When it comes to honey here any sensible taxonomic classification and naming is just so difficult I nearly gave up.  Like with fish and beans attempting to ascertain exactly what is what requires both an effort of will, imagination, credulity, knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Jebel Akdar and sheer persistence but I hope I will be able to demystify the subject eventually.   Now, six months later I think I have made some progress with the honey.  Honey is seasonal here in Libya and naturally enough different plants and trees flower and produce pollen in different seasons.  One of the favorites is the mixed meadow flower honey which is produced in spring.  Other honeys include honey from trees such as mimosa or wild herbs such as mountain thyme. So: a little bit of Christmas shopping in the Green Mountain.  We stopped off briefly at  the stunning Temple of Zeus which we had visited last year. Our driver and history teacher with local knowledge seemed not to have heard of the place or the person.  We were back in Benghazi in a few hours.

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