Baalbek and Bcharre

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We pulled into Baalbek, amidst a little military presence and all sorts of Hezbollah propaghanda, and were promptly struck up by a enterprising fellow to buy a Hezbollah t-shirt. I thought this a little ironic! We wandered the town with our cameras and shot a few photos of interesting sights. After a few minutes, I was stopped by a guy (that was driving a bus full of children!) and he demanded to see my pictures. I showed him, and he seemed to be comfortable with the delapidated buildings and random people I had photographed to allow me on my merry way... Other than that, this was any other middle eastern town! The ruins in Baalbek were very well preserved, and had 6 of the tallest (granite) columns I have seen yet and some very intricate carvings fro the Romans...

To get to Bcharre from Baalbek, we decided to try and avoid a $60 cab ride west over the mountain range and hailed a short ride to the next town at the base of the mountains. From here, we spent nearly an hour trying to flag down passing motorists to bum a ride, when we finally stopped a van full of Lebanese Army gents, who were happy to give us a lift. We chatted with them, debated who was going to win the World Cup and had quite a few good laughs! Once we reached the summit (~3300m), we started down into the Qadisha valley, which I have yet to see an equivalent to! I huge cirque valley at the top (complete with 2.5m snowbanks remaining from the winter and Lebanon's biggest ski hill, The Cedars) slopes down into a rather steep sided canyon with many villages perched above. It has a significant Christian influence, which was quite a contrast to the Hezbollah town on the other side of the range! We wandered around quite a bit, shot lots of photos (Felipe is a travel journalist in Portugal, www.almadeviajante.com for those of you who want to try reading Portuguese or see some pretty pictures) and hiked down into the valley to a 4th century monastery built into the cliffs. We also visited one of the last remaining cedar groves in Lebanon (guarded by tanks and guys with massive guns), a Unesco World Heritage site. Simply a gorgeous valley, I highly suggest checking it out on your next trip to Lebanon! 😊

After being up in the mountains (which were a little chilly at 10-15 degrees), we decided to get some nice ocean air in and headed down the valley and into the small fishing town of Byblos (aka: Jbail)...

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Comments

[Barb Howard]

Felipe
I would think that Felipe, being a travel journalist, would make a very interesting travel companion.