Currency
The
exchange restrictions on Libyan dinars appear to
be finished. Pounds, dollars and Euros can be exchanged
into Libyan dinars at the border. The rate was
the same as in Ben Guerdane (last Tunisian town)
so no black market to speak of any more.
At Ras Ajdir (Tunisian border) the bank is a temporary-looking
building just inside the border where drivers wait for
their Libyan number plates. All surplus currency can be
changed back into Euros on leaving. No currency declarations
required.
Exchange rate for Euros into Dinar 1.65
Exchange rate for Dinars back into Euros was 1.7
There's even an ATM machine at the border
and another one in the car park at Sabratha.
Price
of fuel
2 star petrol 0.12LD/litre; Super 0.16D/litre.
Diesel 0.15LD/litre. Libya and Egypt are about as cheap
as it gets in the Sahara.
Costs
Visa/invite/entry costs apart, Libya is still cheap. Notes come in 10, 5, 1, half and a quarter with the numbers written in English as well as Arabic.
Useful languages
Arabic and English. Road signs names are in Arabic but the distance numbers are in Roman ('English') script. Nevertheless it helps to learn the ten cardinal Arabic numerals (read from left to right, unlike Arabic script which is read from right to left).
Visas and regs
They have reinstituted the requirement
for a bilingual stamp in your passport. It's a handy thing for Arabic
countries anyway.
In London you can get the
official UKPA-approved blank stamp (as pictured left but
filled out) done for free over the counter from the Passport
Office, Clive House, 70 Petty France, London. SW1H
9HD (just inside
on the right, no need to queue) and maybe other UK ppt
offices too. Send your passport with a request for a stamp, and they will stamp and return it by special delivery free of charge within a couple of weeks.
Don't then simply expect matey at the
Libyan embassy to fill out your details in Arabic onto the
blank stamp for you while processing your visa app, even
if it would take him 60 seconds. Once you have the stamp you can meet a guy from the embassy who will do you an 'official'
trans for £30-50 although any writer in Arabic could fill in the details.
UK visa agencies are now charging an extra £100
for the stamp and trans service.
With your translated stamp and invitation
organised by a tourist agency a visa is issued for 30 days
(and are valid for 45 days from issue (not three months
as some may tell you), though extensions may be possible.
These visas are available at the Tunisian/Libyan
Ras Adjir border for about €35 euros, though
it might be considered more of a 'collection' as
you need a agency's letter of invitation, along
with all your other paperwork obtained in advance.
They also now insist on you showing $1000 or equivalent on arrival "to encourage tourists to spend money". This is on top of
the money you will spend to get the carnet, plates, etc, although you don't have to spend all the $1000
in Libya
before you leave. This rule also applies to
fly-in package tourists who have just about all their expenses already paid for.
Note that Libyan authorities
often over-react to some tourist infraction or slight
from overseas and suddenly impose severe travel or
immigration restrictions as above but then repeal or lose interest in applying them. It is often hard to keep up with the latest regs, their veracity or whether they will be followed up.
Away
from the northern coast highway transit (see below)
you need to travel with an escort (around €50
in your vehicle - at least twice that in their own
car - but see below).
They are more difficult to get but, a one-week transit
visa can
get you between Tunisia and Egypt along the north coast
highway. Apparently a guide is not required if you don't
leave main coastal road, but you have to hand out photocopies
of your documents at each checkpoint and officially you can't pop into Leptis, etc..
By the way...We met a French
couple with a Land Rover here in Libya and they received
a 7 day transit visa from the consul in Alexandria, Egypt
which allowed them to travel without a guide. They had
to wait a week for the visa to come through though. Costs,
I don't know.
Roel
- December 07
Don't get your hopes up as an overlander for a "transit visa" if applying in Cairo. I met two guys who have been here waiting on the papers for over a month now. One finally got the visa, but he's traveling via public transportation on a Taiwanese passport (it took him a month of waiting, though). The other fellow is a Brit who, after waiting for over four weeks, has finally decided to hire a guide to take him through. If you want to try your luck without a guide service, it may be better to try somewhere other than in Cairo! Alberta March 08
In other words: business as usual...
Costs
A quote
I heard of recently added up to:
• $50 US visa / person
(invitation)
• $150 / car for the plate, insurance, carnet.
• $100 border services per car
• $45 / day for the guide in your car
• $20 / day for the tourist police in your car.
This company also wanted another $45 a day for a guide to Waw Namus and Tazerbu (one presumes guides around the lakes and Akakus are included).
Another quote I got recently for a 5-day
transit of 8 cars from Tunisia to Egypt added up to €2900
including the following:
• visas
• 8 cars entrance at
the frontier
• tour guide
• two policemen
• transportation and
accommodation of the guide and policemen
This lot also quoted me €1800 for
a 10-day desert tour (on top of entry fees).
Finding
a reliable Libyan tour operator is
tricky; they seem more interested in making a quick
buck than offering a professional service. www.fessano-w-tours.com
have been recommended recently, as has www.almuheettours.net.
Getting a visa for UK citizens
In the
UK the Libyan Consulate is at 61-62 Ennismore Gardens,
SW7 1NH. Telephone 020 7589 6120 Fax 020 7589 6087. Send
an sae and they'll send you the green form to fill out.
Visa applications
are accepted on Mondays and Tuesdays, between 10am
and 1pm. The fee is £20. Collections are on
Fridays only,between noon and 2pm.
What
about Americans?
Despite Libya coming
in from the cold and the US's long involvement with
Libyan oil exploration right through the sanctions era,
this is the situation as explained me by a London-based
travel operator specialising in Libya:
At the moment US citizens are still
not allowed to obtain Libyan Visas. The situation could
change any day and there have been a lot of political
movements recently but not enough to allow American
visitors in just yet. We are actually in the process
of trying to get an American journalist in and it is
proving extremely difficult (to impossible).
... but spotted this on the LP Thorn Tree in March 08
yeh americans do get in, but not on tourist visas. u need a vip visa if your an american and they are pretty hard to get unless you go through a tour company which is "connected" enough.
try matia tours, they do all the visas and and other stuff for our company coz there pretty hard to get
anyway, i think its matiatours.com
Border formalities
Show green form
and passport. Rent number plate (around 100LD with
a 50LD refund on return) and buy local carnet (€50
cars, €30 bikes)
in the hanger on the left and insurance (about €24
a fortnight) at another hanger further up. Allow at
least two hours. You can change money at
the kiosk in the hanger. Within 3 days
(no great urgency but certainly before you leave) you
must get registered and stamped at a police station
in any town for around 10-12 dinars. Usually your agency
escort or hotel does this for you.
Leaving at Ras Ajdir for Tunisia, get
your carnet stamped, fill out a green form again (in
Arabic, you'll need help), get a passport stamped and
return the number plate and receipt for a 50LD refund
(which they'll buy off you in Tunisia). All pretty straightforward,
even without a helper.
Leaving Libya
for Egypt
About 100km from
Tobruk, the road forks with English-language signposts
for the first time. Take the right hand fork, signed
Musaad (Ahsaad on the maps). Drive through Musaad
(about 130km from Tobruk). Just before you get out
of town, look out for a building on the right-hand
side of the road with flags flying and several cars
parked outside. You MUST stop here to return your Libyan
plates and get back 100 Libyan Dinar. When you do this,
give them the group of 3 papers that were issued with
the plates on entry. They take the top 2 copies and
you keep the bottom, larger copy. Nothing is stamped,
but it was all accepted by customs at the border. Note
that if you miss this, you may end up having to return
after already being stamped out of Libya, which is
what happened to us and another vehicle we saw.
Outside of the
town of Musaad, you have to drive along 2 stretches
of ragged road before you
reach a checkpoint. Stop before this checkpoint and
get your Libyan carnet stamped to export the car.
Go through the
checkpoint and the immigration kiosks will be obvious
ahead of you (choose any, but it's worth getting
out and asking at one of the kiosks in order to avoid
getting stuck behind a taxi of numerous people).
Get your passports stamped here and then go through
the checkpoint where you'll need to produce evidence
of your plates being returned (aforementioned slip
of paper) and your passport. There is a second checkpoint
after the 'Duty Free Shop on the right. Passports
again.
Then you're through, into a short stretch of No-Man's
Land before the Egyptian checkpoint (Sallum).
For Egypt click here
Desert
pistes
The main area of interest is the fabulous Fezzan
in the southwest, and particularly the amazing Akakus
mountains east of Ghat (rock paintings). The engravings
of the Wadi Mathendous are also worth a visit. The
piste over to the mosquito-ridden crater at Waw el
Namus is also popular as is a visit to the dune lakes
in the Erg between Ubari and Idri.
The
piste to Madama in Niger from El Gatrun was closed to
tourists in 2006 although tarmacing commenced
at this time too.
Eastern
Libya is a bit more off the
map, less scenically interesting and in places with
a risk of landmines. Jebel Uweinat on the Egyptian/Sudanese
borders is the focal point
March
2008