The Syrian/Lebanese border was only 30mins drive from Damascus and probably the easiest border crossing of the six we’ve done thus far. We were slightly gutted to find that if you fly into Lebanon then visas are free but if you cross via land, you have to pay (contrary to our understanding and we did try arguing but its not really worth arguing with border officials!). As soon as the bus was over the border (which is in a valley), it headed up a steep mountain range, then down down down the other side with valleys and mountains either side (all green) and there was the realisation that Lebanon wasn’t a country that could be exited easily and fast if need be! We were amazed at the difference between Syria and Lebanon. The scenery down the mountains into Beirut is rather beautiful compared to Syria and the difference between the two countries extended beyond the landscape. There were flashy billboards, the houses were not so jerry-built and, from first observations, the driving was some of the most manic we’ve seen – worse than Bangkok or Saigon (which are flat) and this was on steep roads with many many hairpin bends. For every few nice houses, there was one that had been completely bombed out with bullet holes riddling the external walls and the City was pretty much the same.
Old (undamaged) house in Beirut
Slightly bombed building (check out the sandbags on the 1st floor ledge)
Downtown Beirut is mostly new and you could be in any western city (minus the tanks) but walk a few blocks and you’d come across huge bombed out buildings or others with bits smashed off riddled with bullet holes. There is a massive project underway to rebuild Downtown Beirut and they’ve redeveloped a huge area of land and have reclaimed a lot from the sea. It was didn’t bear thinking about what would happen to all the new buildings, marina and the flash Downtown shopping area if there was more international conflict.
All this is new development
The new and the old
As above
Tanks are still patrolling the streets and there are army stationed at every main intersection backed up by tanks, jeeps and personnel carriers plus this contraption that popped the cars of tyres. Shortly after we arrived at the pension an army convoy rattled past and we were woken by another convoy at 0430 the next morning. We got into the habit of checking out the news every days just in case.
Manned tank at checkpoint before Beirut
War-torn street
By contrast, Downtown Beirut
Building just up the hill from the Downtown
We’d heard Beirut is a real party city and it hasn’t disappointed thus far with bars all over the show, a huge open air concert staged the night we arrived (which might have explained the army presence?) and every night we stayed there was music until the wee hours.
The Roman ruins of Baalbek in the Bekaar Valley are 85km out of the city and we headed there for the day but before we left we treated ourselves to a coffee at one of the upmarket cafes where Euan spotted a mouse in the bread basket. One of the other girls saw it too and then the entire staff was out watching as this one chap tried to catch this mouse in a plastic bag in one hand to catch the mouse. We thought “Yeah right!” but he actually caught it!! He was so amazed that he went to show his colleagues and the damn thing jumped right out. The staff scattered, the mouse went awol and there were chaps bending double behind the coffee machines laughing too much to stand. All this in amongst a lot of well-to-do Lebanese folk chatting in French over their morning coffee. A brilliant start to the day.
The temple in Baalbek is just phenomenal and while the site isn’t that big, the ruins dwarf any others we’ve seen thus far in scale, size of the blocks and sheer engineering. Its claimed to be the most impressive Roman site outside Italy in the world and its difficult to believe that it isn’t the most impressive. Even the columns were huge (there are only six columns that remain standing – see picture below)
Big rock near the Bacchus Temple
Me sitting by the (huge) column bases (2nd from left)
Old (undamaged) house in Beirut
Slightly bombed building (check out the sandbags on the 1st floor ledge)
Downtown Beirut is mostly new and you could be in any western city (minus the tanks) but walk a few blocks and you’d come across huge bombed out buildings or others with bits smashed off riddled with bullet holes. There is a massive project underway to rebuild Downtown Beirut and they’ve redeveloped a huge area of land and have reclaimed a lot from the sea. It was didn’t bear thinking about what would happen to all the new buildings, marina and the flash Downtown shopping area if there was more international conflict.
All this is new development
The new and the old
As above
Tanks are still patrolling the streets and there are army stationed at every main intersection backed up by tanks, jeeps and personnel carriers plus this contraption that popped the cars of tyres. Shortly after we arrived at the pension an army convoy rattled past and we were woken by another convoy at 0430 the next morning. We got into the habit of checking out the news every days just in case.
Manned tank at checkpoint before Beirut
War-torn street
By contrast, Downtown Beirut
Building just up the hill from the Downtown
We’d heard Beirut is a real party city and it hasn’t disappointed thus far with bars all over the show, a huge open air concert staged the night we arrived (which might have explained the army presence?) and every night we stayed there was music until the wee hours.
The Roman ruins of Baalbek in the Bekaar Valley are 85km out of the city and we headed there for the day but before we left we treated ourselves to a coffee at one of the upmarket cafes where Euan spotted a mouse in the bread basket. One of the other girls saw it too and then the entire staff was out watching as this one chap tried to catch this mouse in a plastic bag in one hand to catch the mouse. We thought “Yeah right!” but he actually caught it!! He was so amazed that he went to show his colleagues and the damn thing jumped right out. The staff scattered, the mouse went awol and there were chaps bending double behind the coffee machines laughing too much to stand. All this in amongst a lot of well-to-do Lebanese folk chatting in French over their morning coffee. A brilliant start to the day.
The temple in Baalbek is just phenomenal and while the site isn’t that big, the ruins dwarf any others we’ve seen thus far in scale, size of the blocks and sheer engineering. Its claimed to be the most impressive Roman site outside Italy in the world and its difficult to believe that it isn’t the most impressive. Even the columns were huge (there are only six columns that remain standing – see picture below)
Big rock near the Bacchus Temple
Me sitting by the (huge) column bases (2nd from left)
Check out how bıg these bases are!
The massive Temple of Bacchus
This is inside the temple of Bacchus – Euan is giving it some scale ın the bottom middle of the picture (if you can see him!)
The outer wall blocks are 30-33ft in length, 14ft high, 10ft deep and weight approx 450 tonnes each and at the entrance, there were huge granite columns (below) that had come from Aswan in Egypt.
There are three even larger stones, called the Trilithon and these weigh over 1200 tonnes each (I’m sitting on the fourth below). Apparently, this is the largest hewn stone in the world and its still joined to the quarry at its base. The temple was never finished so this mammoth stone never joined the other three at the Baalbek temple, some 500m down the road. Noone has ever actually worked out how they managed to transport the other three, let alone lift them into place.
Finding this stone wasn’t easy – sounds crazy I know. We hunted all through the site for it, then headed round the back of the temple on a small track but got shouted at by some locals from across a field. We went over to them and one chap showed Euan where to go and the others told me in broken English that it wasn’t safe to walk down where we were heading as there were “bad people”. Fair enough! We didn’t need any persuading. The Bekaar Valley is Hezbollah (Party of God) land fair and square and we didn’t realise it at the time but apparently it’s a ‘safe zone’ and the military don’t go there (we didn’t spot any army at all in the Valley). There was one decidedly dodgy character eyeing us up when we were looking at the big stone in the quarry and when we turned to go, he followed us quite quickly and I said to Euan (who wasn’t really listening) that we should get out of there quick smart and off I went. I turned around and Euan was wandering along with this chap slowly closing in and only then did he move. Needless to say I had a bit to say once we’d reached the main road. In the minibus back through the Valley a few of the locals entertained themselves trying to speak to us in English and another was happily showing us pictures on his mobile of him shooting with his M16. Shooting what we’re not sure but apparently everyone in the area owns at least one semi-auto weapon. They were characters but I wouldn’t want to cross them that’s for sure so.
On our way back from Baalbek in the minibus, we were caught in the middle of the loudest, biggest argument I’ve ever seen or heard. Arabic is just the most expressive language and the people carry out arguments with flair with body language, expressions and hand gestures to match. Its brilliant to watch (but not when you’re caught in the cross-fire!!). A lady was at the back of the minibus (a normal van), screaming at the driver in the front (she’d tried to pay him ½ the fare she should have) and there were hands waving, voices raised to the point that other passengers had their hands on their ears and were saying “hallas, hallas” (meaning “enough, enough”) and the driver definitely wasn’t looking at the hairpin bends in front of him. He ended up holding back the money she had passed him (via the rest of us passengers) but none of us were touching the damn stuff after all the shouting, no way! He ended up screwing it in a ball and biffing it back at her while on the move down the mountain. The shouting that followed reached a crescendo and there was nothing we could (or particularly wanted to) do. Even Euan (who won’t normally say boo to a goose) said to me “what if I turned round to her and said ‘Oi, you, stop taking the piss’ and to the driver ’hey, just bloody keep your eyes on the road’”. I reckoned it was best if we kept out of it.
On our second day we visited the Jeita Grotto. We weren’t allowed to take photos and the grotto is difficult to describe but it is very very impressive. It stretches for about 750m into the mountain and is just a huge cavern filled with the most enormous stalactites and stalagmites that we’d ever seen. Many of them had fused and, over millions of years, had formed entire walls that looked like massive cathedral organs. It was simply stunning. There is an upper grotto that you can walk in and, 119m below is the lower grotto, which you have to travel through by boat. In some parts of the upper canyon you can see down to the lower canyon – it looked like another mystical world way way down below.
Later that day we just walked through Beirut. We walked for over 4 hours and saw some really interesting stuff and passed through very different neighbourhoods. Strangely enough, we came across a chap who’d travelled across the border with us in the same bus. He was quite astounded to see us and was almost speechless. He didn’t speak English but we had a bit of a natter (its amazing how much you can convey without understand a word each other is saying) and about five minutes after we met him, we heard someone running up behind us and he’d followed us to bring us bottles of orange juice. His grin was nearly as big as our eyes. We couldn’t believe that someone would do that!
We came across the main shopping street that had clearly seen some action. These women were just checking out the shoes in the window but we were more interested in the bullet holes in the glass than the shoes.
Women checking out the latest shoe fashions
...not minding the multiple bullet holes in the window from the shooting a few weeks earlier
Something that made this place stand out from others in Syria, Turkey, Israel or Jordan was the extremely genuine welcoming manner and politeness from the people on a daily basis. There were a few isolated incidents that stood out but on the whole, it continued throughout every day we were there. It didn’t seem to matter who – we were treated the same throughout Beirut. Even the policemen were polite. We were resting on a wall and while we’d just walked through a police checkpoint and there were the usual barricades up, this police officer walks over and very politely says “excuse me and sorry to trouble you but you are sitting in a military zone. Could you kindly move on please”. We just looked at him. I mean, the whole city is a military zone and the wall looked no different to anything else. We moved on anyhow, he was so nice about it and was carrying an M16 (a friend in NZ used to collect automatic weapons as a hobby).
We went back to the Bekaar Valley the next day to visit one of Lebanons famous vineyards, Chateau Ksara. A friend who is a great wine-buff had recommended Chateau Musar and that was the preference but it was just too tricky to get to and they only took visitors by appointment. It was going to be difficult for us to turn up at a particular time as we were very much at the mercy of the minibuses and the very random drivers who had a habit of passing passengers from bus to bus at random. Chateau Ksara was a Monastery and the monks planted some vineyards and by chance, some years later, discovered that the Monastery was positioned over a series of caves (about 2km) that proved to be excellent wine cellars and this is now where all the wine is stored (how lucky is that?). The vineyard is now privately owned by four Lebanese businessmen and we highly recommend a visit if you’re ever in Lebanon. Even though there were only two of us, we were welcomed, shown every hospitality, given an extremely generous wine tasting session and even got to tour the factory (not normally done for visitors but I was curious). We also got to sample the Arak (aniseed liquor) straight from the vat which just about blew our doors off as it hasn’t yet had the water added! We joined another couple for the wine tasting. He was Irish and in Lebanon for the last six years with the Irish Army working with the UN on the Lebanese/Syrian border. An interesting chap to talk to with some interesting stories but was a bit incredulous when he found out we were travelling everywhere on local transport. When he found out where we’d been (Israel, Syria etc) he said “hell, there aren’t many that would do the journey you guys have done at this time” and we both wondered “what do you know that we don’t??! The visit to Chateau Ksara was a highlight and we decided to add a few kilos to our packs in the form of fine red wine was a small sacrifice
After a rather uneventful journey (by comparison) back to Beirut we visited the Museum and we were the only two people there. Museums are quite spooky when they’re virtually empty. I was still upset as I’d left the bottoms to my zip-off pants on the mini-bus and there were tears (strange what you value isn’t it?). I had to walk back through the City with shorts on and in a grump, lagged behind but doing so allowed me to take the sneaky pic below. The soldier manning the tank was hidden in a tree so didn’t see me take the picture.
After being in Beirut for four days, we’ve come to the definite conclusion that the driving is worse, far worse than anywhere else we’ve travelled. Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh or Delhi to name a few. There are no road rules and it’s the combination of that along with high speed that makes it so dangerous. Overtaking, undertaking, sideways round corners, going the wrong way down the road, u-turns on main highways, you name it, the Lebanese do it. Crossing a road is dicing with death – I’m not kidding. After leaping out of the way of a car, I made the comment to Euan that anyone remotely nervy wouldn’t last here for more than 10 mins. The combination of tanks rumbling the streets, sirens sounding, people shouting and the traffic would finish nerves off. There are cops directing the traffic but even when they reprimand a driver for driving the wrong way down a dual carriage way they seem to do it half-heartedly then stand their shaking their head as the driver carries on. We guess they’ve bigger problems to deal with.
We’re leaving Beirut, very reluctantly, to travel to Tripoli. We could have stayed here for weeks.
The massive Temple of Bacchus
This is inside the temple of Bacchus – Euan is giving it some scale ın the bottom middle of the picture (if you can see him!)
The outer wall blocks are 30-33ft in length, 14ft high, 10ft deep and weight approx 450 tonnes each and at the entrance, there were huge granite columns (below) that had come from Aswan in Egypt.
There are three even larger stones, called the Trilithon and these weigh over 1200 tonnes each (I’m sitting on the fourth below). Apparently, this is the largest hewn stone in the world and its still joined to the quarry at its base. The temple was never finished so this mammoth stone never joined the other three at the Baalbek temple, some 500m down the road. Noone has ever actually worked out how they managed to transport the other three, let alone lift them into place.
Finding this stone wasn’t easy – sounds crazy I know. We hunted all through the site for it, then headed round the back of the temple on a small track but got shouted at by some locals from across a field. We went over to them and one chap showed Euan where to go and the others told me in broken English that it wasn’t safe to walk down where we were heading as there were “bad people”. Fair enough! We didn’t need any persuading. The Bekaar Valley is Hezbollah (Party of God) land fair and square and we didn’t realise it at the time but apparently it’s a ‘safe zone’ and the military don’t go there (we didn’t spot any army at all in the Valley). There was one decidedly dodgy character eyeing us up when we were looking at the big stone in the quarry and when we turned to go, he followed us quite quickly and I said to Euan (who wasn’t really listening) that we should get out of there quick smart and off I went. I turned around and Euan was wandering along with this chap slowly closing in and only then did he move. Needless to say I had a bit to say once we’d reached the main road. In the minibus back through the Valley a few of the locals entertained themselves trying to speak to us in English and another was happily showing us pictures on his mobile of him shooting with his M16. Shooting what we’re not sure but apparently everyone in the area owns at least one semi-auto weapon. They were characters but I wouldn’t want to cross them that’s for sure so.
On our way back from Baalbek in the minibus, we were caught in the middle of the loudest, biggest argument I’ve ever seen or heard. Arabic is just the most expressive language and the people carry out arguments with flair with body language, expressions and hand gestures to match. Its brilliant to watch (but not when you’re caught in the cross-fire!!). A lady was at the back of the minibus (a normal van), screaming at the driver in the front (she’d tried to pay him ½ the fare she should have) and there were hands waving, voices raised to the point that other passengers had their hands on their ears and were saying “hallas, hallas” (meaning “enough, enough”) and the driver definitely wasn’t looking at the hairpin bends in front of him. He ended up holding back the money she had passed him (via the rest of us passengers) but none of us were touching the damn stuff after all the shouting, no way! He ended up screwing it in a ball and biffing it back at her while on the move down the mountain. The shouting that followed reached a crescendo and there was nothing we could (or particularly wanted to) do. Even Euan (who won’t normally say boo to a goose) said to me “what if I turned round to her and said ‘Oi, you, stop taking the piss’ and to the driver ’hey, just bloody keep your eyes on the road’”. I reckoned it was best if we kept out of it.
On our second day we visited the Jeita Grotto. We weren’t allowed to take photos and the grotto is difficult to describe but it is very very impressive. It stretches for about 750m into the mountain and is just a huge cavern filled with the most enormous stalactites and stalagmites that we’d ever seen. Many of them had fused and, over millions of years, had formed entire walls that looked like massive cathedral organs. It was simply stunning. There is an upper grotto that you can walk in and, 119m below is the lower grotto, which you have to travel through by boat. In some parts of the upper canyon you can see down to the lower canyon – it looked like another mystical world way way down below.
Later that day we just walked through Beirut. We walked for over 4 hours and saw some really interesting stuff and passed through very different neighbourhoods. Strangely enough, we came across a chap who’d travelled across the border with us in the same bus. He was quite astounded to see us and was almost speechless. He didn’t speak English but we had a bit of a natter (its amazing how much you can convey without understand a word each other is saying) and about five minutes after we met him, we heard someone running up behind us and he’d followed us to bring us bottles of orange juice. His grin was nearly as big as our eyes. We couldn’t believe that someone would do that!
We came across the main shopping street that had clearly seen some action. These women were just checking out the shoes in the window but we were more interested in the bullet holes in the glass than the shoes.
Women checking out the latest shoe fashions
...not minding the multiple bullet holes in the window from the shooting a few weeks earlier
Something that made this place stand out from others in Syria, Turkey, Israel or Jordan was the extremely genuine welcoming manner and politeness from the people on a daily basis. There were a few isolated incidents that stood out but on the whole, it continued throughout every day we were there. It didn’t seem to matter who – we were treated the same throughout Beirut. Even the policemen were polite. We were resting on a wall and while we’d just walked through a police checkpoint and there were the usual barricades up, this police officer walks over and very politely says “excuse me and sorry to trouble you but you are sitting in a military zone. Could you kindly move on please”. We just looked at him. I mean, the whole city is a military zone and the wall looked no different to anything else. We moved on anyhow, he was so nice about it and was carrying an M16 (a friend in NZ used to collect automatic weapons as a hobby).
We went back to the Bekaar Valley the next day to visit one of Lebanons famous vineyards, Chateau Ksara. A friend who is a great wine-buff had recommended Chateau Musar and that was the preference but it was just too tricky to get to and they only took visitors by appointment. It was going to be difficult for us to turn up at a particular time as we were very much at the mercy of the minibuses and the very random drivers who had a habit of passing passengers from bus to bus at random. Chateau Ksara was a Monastery and the monks planted some vineyards and by chance, some years later, discovered that the Monastery was positioned over a series of caves (about 2km) that proved to be excellent wine cellars and this is now where all the wine is stored (how lucky is that?). The vineyard is now privately owned by four Lebanese businessmen and we highly recommend a visit if you’re ever in Lebanon. Even though there were only two of us, we were welcomed, shown every hospitality, given an extremely generous wine tasting session and even got to tour the factory (not normally done for visitors but I was curious). We also got to sample the Arak (aniseed liquor) straight from the vat which just about blew our doors off as it hasn’t yet had the water added! We joined another couple for the wine tasting. He was Irish and in Lebanon for the last six years with the Irish Army working with the UN on the Lebanese/Syrian border. An interesting chap to talk to with some interesting stories but was a bit incredulous when he found out we were travelling everywhere on local transport. When he found out where we’d been (Israel, Syria etc) he said “hell, there aren’t many that would do the journey you guys have done at this time” and we both wondered “what do you know that we don’t??! The visit to Chateau Ksara was a highlight and we decided to add a few kilos to our packs in the form of fine red wine was a small sacrifice
After a rather uneventful journey (by comparison) back to Beirut we visited the Museum and we were the only two people there. Museums are quite spooky when they’re virtually empty. I was still upset as I’d left the bottoms to my zip-off pants on the mini-bus and there were tears (strange what you value isn’t it?). I had to walk back through the City with shorts on and in a grump, lagged behind but doing so allowed me to take the sneaky pic below. The soldier manning the tank was hidden in a tree so didn’t see me take the picture.
After being in Beirut for four days, we’ve come to the definite conclusion that the driving is worse, far worse than anywhere else we’ve travelled. Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh or Delhi to name a few. There are no road rules and it’s the combination of that along with high speed that makes it so dangerous. Overtaking, undertaking, sideways round corners, going the wrong way down the road, u-turns on main highways, you name it, the Lebanese do it. Crossing a road is dicing with death – I’m not kidding. After leaping out of the way of a car, I made the comment to Euan that anyone remotely nervy wouldn’t last here for more than 10 mins. The combination of tanks rumbling the streets, sirens sounding, people shouting and the traffic would finish nerves off. There are cops directing the traffic but even when they reprimand a driver for driving the wrong way down a dual carriage way they seem to do it half-heartedly then stand their shaking their head as the driver carries on. We guess they’ve bigger problems to deal with.
We’re leaving Beirut, very reluctantly, to travel to Tripoli. We could have stayed here for weeks.
2 comments:
Hey guys, am loving reading about your escapades, keep up the writing and photos if you can take them safely Kate!! It really does sound like you are having a great adventure.
Love Fi
Am loving this, you had me in stitches. am still giggling about Euan's reaction to the argument in the bus.
With regards to Driving, the worst I have ever seen is in Buenos Aires, am looking forward to knowing what you guys make of that.
take care
Ladi
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