Suffice to say, we (like pretty much everyone we have ever met that has been) LOVE Lebanon! I once described Beirut to a Lebanese friend of mine as the “gold standard” of Middle Eastern humanitarian postings, to his great amusement. But, he ultimately did agree with me that it really is not a bad description. I remain pretty dark that there do not tend to be heaps of corporate lawyer jobs there.
Coming from the antipodes (and being born in the 80s), Beirut was always the stuff of war movies, spies and foreign correspondents during my childhood and it retains a vibe that one cannot quite place one’s finger on. Once referred to as the Paris of the Middle East, the old section of town was mostly demolished during the long period of fighting in the 1970s and 1980s (and particularly the early 80s). It has been rebuilt now and is (we understand) pretty much a replica of what was previously there. The city has moved on, however, and new places became cool in the meantime. From fancy restaurant complexes on the waterfront, sheesha bars overlooking the Pidgeon rocks, arty Gemmayzeh Street, the buzzing student area of Hamra, super cool Badaro street and Mar Mikhael, to the Palestinian refugee enclaves that the police will not enter, the odd bombed out building and the hillside residences just outside town, Beirut is buzzing. Add to that a steamy southern Mediterranean climate, a melting pot of ethnicities and religions, stunning blue seas all around, trademark striped sun shades covering apartment balconies and flapping in the breeze, an excellent food scene and a social scene that makes me exhausted just considering it and you get a very, very, special city. It also certainly does not hurt that Lebanese people are among the most welcoming people of anywhere we have been in the world.
This was proved when, on my first visit to Beirut, Thomas informed me that he had some friends that I needed to meet (they were awesome) and they had invited us to go camping with them in the mountains just outside of town. So, a day after arrival, I met the amazing Sandra and Shady for the first time and found myself loaded up for a camping experience like we had never witnessed before in the mountains near to Beirut where Sandra’s parents have a holiday home. Camping in New Zealand takes two typical forms. On one hand, people go away for the summer holidays to a beach location, limit their wardrobe to jandals and boardies and settle in for a break. This can last days to weeks and will typically involve boating activities, beach time and varying levels of partying. On the other hand, camping can also mean heading out into the wilderness, enjoying stunning views and the peace of nature. The Lebanese experience was much closer to the former. That said, it differed in a few key ways: (i) everyone looked stunning (Fact: ALL Lebanese people are beautiful) – Thomas and I looked like ragamuffins given our kiwi preparation for camping and the fact that we would be living out of a backpack for the next two weeks; (ii) in Lebanon it is not abnormal to bring your own karaoke machine to the camping party and blast the surrounding campers at volumes that would make ones ears bleed if not partaking. No surprises, we took part enthusiastically and woke up the next morning feeling somewhat seedy and a touch sorry for ourselves. Gamely, we decided to walk down into the valley in search of some ruins. Failed to find them. Promptly split up and all proceeded to get completely lost in various directions. It may be possible to attribute this to our seedy state, but more likely we are all just geographically challenged. At any rate, camping, karaoke and getting lost down a mountainside is clearly a good way to bond with new friends – we ended up at Sandra and Shady’s sensational wedding in Broumana a year later. More successful than our ill-fated hiking experience, we were welcomed into Sandra’s parent’s home for lunch, which continues to be the best Lebanese meal I have eaten. EVER.
Lebanon is one of those absolutely tiny countries that manages to stuff a whole lot of awesome into an impressively small package. Ancient history, beaches, mountain scenery, buzzy towns and WINE. Basically, what’s not to like?
The towns of Byblos, Tsour, Saida and Beirut appear in recorded history as far back as 3,000 B.C. and were the independent kingdom states of the Phoenicians (so called because of the purple dye they made from a mollusc and which they traded with the ancient Greeks and Romans). Each of these has a very long history and we headed first to Byblos, which has a stunning seaside old town and is just up the coast from Beirut. We also went to Saida/Saidon, which has a nice fort, an excellent souq, is known for its soap production and actually has a massive hill out the back of the town, which solely exists due the ancients needing a place to dump all the used molluscs from which they made the purple dye (side note: Thomas had me spend an hour in a car park searching through rubbish on the hillside to find these ancient shells. We did find the shells, but I was decidedly less than impressed by this somewhat questionable tourist activity).
And, finally, Tsour. My absolute favorite spot. Tsour is made up of quite separate Christian and Muslim areas. The Christian area is set on a tiny peninsula and holds an old town with narrow alleyways, flower boxes, fishing boats and old men, bare chested, in captains hats sitting on the waterfront smoking pipes and drinking beer. It basically feels like you are in Southern Europe – but with sheesha. Around the corner from the old town, there are a variety of ramshackle beach bars that set up in summer over the water where you can spend the day drinking beer, smoking sheesha, eating fish lunches, getting a scorching sunburn and jumping off the decking every now and again to cool off.
The Muslim part of town houses an absolutely lovely souq that is well worth a visit with excellent falafel and ful places, sheesha joints in atmospheric alcoves and lots of friendly people. Tsour also has some quite excellent Roman ruins (should you desire to do something touristic) and we went to a Palestinian refugee camp while we were there (but where people have been displaced for so long that it just looks like any other area of the city, albeit with walls around it and men with guns at the entrances). While these places can be volatile, the day we went, everything was calm and the residents were very excited to see us walking around and wanted to hang out, invite us for tea and chat.
Separately, Tripoli, which is mostly a Muslim town (with the exception of a small bit of the port area), is also very much worth a visit – while we were there over Eid al Adha and the souq was closed, it definitely had lots of vibe and really fun great people. Some pictures pictures in evidence below.
It would not be a true holiday without us staring at a map and deciding with a complete lack of knowledge (but with great enthusiasm) that it would be a good idea to take off somewhere to do something we *think* is possible. Our visit to Lebanon was no different. We had heard that it was possible to hike the Qadisha Valley where there are various old monasteries and hermits caves built into the cliffs and excellent mountain scenery. Unfortunately, it was not entirely clear to us where to start. So, confidently, we took off from Tripoli and pitched up at Ehden. Well, it turns out that it is entirely possible to hike the length of the Qadisha Valley starting from Ehden. However, Edhen itself is actually a fair way away from the start of the real walk, which we found out a while later as we scrambled and bush bashed our way down mountainsides, wound our way up mountain roads and met a lot of Australian Lebanese home for the summer in the small towns around this area (it is kind of surreal to wander into a dot of a town on a mountainside in Lebanon and be greeted in perfect English and some of the strongest Aussie accents we have heard yet). Eventually we found the true start to the hike and descended into the gorge. The Qadisha Valley really is not to be missed. A spectacular gorge cuts through massive cliffs on the tops of which perch tiny (almost European feeling) towns whose ringing church bells echo across the valley at various times of the day. The valley itself delivered as anticipated and as evidenced in the photos.
On reaching the “end” of the valley, there is an option to walk or get transport up a road to the top of one side of the valley. Unfortunately, (typically) we wanted to go the other way and (luckily for us) we understood it was possible to reach it by a walking track. Not to be deterred by the fact that no one else seemed to know of this walking track and we could not find and signs, we took off from where maps.me suggested we wander into the bush. A half hour later, we were faced with cliffs all around and were asking ourselves as the sun set whether our confidence was perhaps somewhat misplaced. Given that we had not eaten since breakfast and had been walking for upwards of ten hours at this point, my patience for making my first attempt at free soloing up a mountainside in Lebanon was, suffice to say, limited. Thomas, seeing that his thoughts on climbing the cliff risked his wife telling him that he may consider jumping off should he reach the top, employed some quick strategic reassessment and determined that back-tracking was perhaps the best approach in this particular case. We managed to find the track just before it got dark and, eventually (read: quite a while later), we emerged over the cliff-side on the outskirts of Bcharre (a ski town in the winter and in the summer a pretty quiet hamlet). We located a hotel on the main drag quickly, agreed to the price with very limited bargaining and, after cleaning up, hotfooted it to find some food. The gentlemen in the restaurant downstairs were somewhat perplexed when we ordered about half the things on the menu and insisted that they bring the food (and beer) as quickly as possible because we were starving – read: they actually asked when we added a pizza to our already extensive order: “Are you sure?!”. Yes, we were very sure and Thomas in fact wandered off to find a chocolate bar because he could not wait. Possibly an error, because, perhaps sensing our somewhat feral state, they turned up at our table in short order with no end of nibbles to eat with the beer while waiting for our food. No surprises, we ended up eating cold pizza for breakfast.
From Bcharre, we went to see the famed Lebanese cedars (quite a good tree if you are into that sort of thing) and caught a lift with some soldiers onwards to the Beqaa valley. Yet another ride where I was concerned that our driver was attempting to practice his drifting skills around the switchback corners. We did get a selfie though. Side note: other than the somewhat questionable driving practices of certain Lebanese drivers, hitching is an excellent and easy way to get around in Lebanon (one driver actually insisted we visit his favorite restaurant with him and treated us to lunch).
As we descended into the Beqaa Valley, we started passing police/military posts and also lots of weed farms next to such posts. This is a pretty big cash crop in Lebanon and generally accepted in the Beqaa. The Beqaa Valley is also a Hezbollah stronghold and there was lots of paraphernalia around town (you can buy the t-shirt). Other than weed farms and Hezbollah, the Beqaa is worth going to for two main reasons: (i) there are some fantastic ruins at Baalbeck and Anjar; and (ii) WINE! The ancient Roman ruins at Baalbeck are probably the most impressive we have been to largely just due to the monumental scale (as shown in the pictures). Anjar has some excellent Umayyad period ruins, which do somewhat pale in comparison to the awesomeness of Balbeck, but are themselves really rather sensational.
Most importantly, wine! Lebanon produces a fair amount of wine in the Beqaa Valley and quite a lot of it is very good. Ksara and Kefraya are the two most well-known wineries and both are well organized and offer tours and tastings. There are also a variety of smaller places dotted around the valley that may or may not be open when you pass through. We, of course, tasted and bought some wine. Thomas, of course, got to carry said wine in his backpack.
Hezbollah are also very prominent in the south (in Tsour there are headquarters and flags throughout town) and they operate a memorial/museum/landmark near the village of Mleeta which memorializes the conflict in southern Lebanon. We hitched up to the site and found it to be, indeed, quite impressive in size and very well maintained. There was also a quite excellent restaurant (and seemingly plans for a fun park?!).
The mountain towns of Deir El Qamar, Broumana and Kefar Dibiene are all quite lovely. Dier El Qamar is a tourist centre (cute old town and mosque, lovely old square with restaurants under the trees), Broumana is a very chic getaway for Beirutis on the weekend (think pumping music in mountain scenery, beautiful people, fancy whisky and cigar bars and an impressive array of restaurants) and Kfar Dibiane is more local and idyllic.
Broumana and Kfar Dibiane we visited as part of the section I would like to entitle: A big fat Lebanese wedding. As already noted, we went back to Lebanon in 2019 for the wedding of our friends. There are many reasons why this was amazing (not least getting to be part of the sensational big day of two really special people), but I will focus here on the absolute craziness/amazingness of the event itself. Having lived in the Middle East a while, on heading to this wedding, we were not strangers to the fact that weddings in this region are generally a much bigger deal and production than the New Zealand equivalent. We also knew that a Lebanese wedding was considered to be somewhat of a high water mark in this regard. That said, we really could not have dreamed up this event. Suffice to say, following the pre-party and the ceremony, the reception involved two professional dance troupes, several rounds of fireworks (including all around the happy couple during the first dance), a cake cutting that involved a sabre (and more fireworks), dancing until the wee hours of the morning, a constant supply of alcohol and shots, and one of the most insane buffets I have yet to see (and after living in Abu Dhabi, this is saying something). We left our hotel at midday and got back at 3am. In true Lebanese fashion, notwithstanding that we really knew about four people in the place, we were welcomed as family and encouraged to participate in all parts of the day – so, no surprises, we absolutely got amongst it. Thomas even danced (although, the constant stream of drinks probably assisted with this incredibly rare occurrence).