Baalbek and Bcharre

We pulled into Baalbek, amidst a tiny military presence and all sorts of Hezbollah propaghanda, and were promptly struck up by a enterprising fellow to purchase a Hezbollah t-shirt. I thought this a tiny ironic! We wandered the town with our cameras and shot a few pics 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 grant 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 almost 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 large 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 pics (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 big 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 tiny 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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Baalbek and Bcharre | Travel Blog
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Baalbek and Bcharre

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