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A Love Affair with Lebanon Part 1: Tripoli & Qadisha Valley
Damascus University gives us a week off after every month to spend doing whatever we want to do.
I decided to use this opportunity to escape Damascus and explore a part of the Middle East I’d heard a lot of good things about: Lebanon.
I’d extended my Syrian visa by a month the week before so there would be no problems on the border, as we knew this trip wasn’t going to be easy anyway. This involved going to an office block where you’re sent back and forth for an hour and a half while the people write little notes on a piece of paper and send you to different people who send you back to those people and so on… Ridiculous process but one thing I’ve learnt while out here is that Syrians LOVE their bureaucracy: it’s all one big power trip for them.
Another reason this was going to be a difficult trip was that it involved taking several different forms of transport, mainly buses and taxis. We (David, Tim, Jenny and myself) started off at Bab Sharqi in the Old City where we caught a taxi cab up to the main bus station. From there we went into one of the many bus company shops that lined the street and bought tickets for the next bus to Homs, which left in half an hour. We then had to go and get our tickets stamped by an army official guy and we went and bought some schwarma to fill us up before our long journey to Tripoli.
The buses here are actually quite nice: air conditioned with a film and a complimentary bottle of water. The film is of course in Arabic and difficult to understand what they’re saying, but from watching the one on the way to Homs it was quite easy to work out what was happening, with an amazing montage sequence showing a guy being turned into a spy. Classic.
The bus journey went quite quickly as I entertained myself listening to music on my iPhone and watching the countryside go by and the sun go down. We arrived at Homs and we went searching for someone who could take us over the border to Tripoli, or Trabolous as they call it. This turned into a bit of a fiasco. We’d entered the place where all the bus companies were and people came up to us asking where we wanted to go, so we told them and got sent to some guy who claimed to be from the police who said he knew someone that could take us over the border for 1200SYP each, which included the charge we had to pay at the border. We had a lonely planet guide with us that told us that we should be able to get it for a lot cheaper than that, so we said we’d think about it and get back to him. We instead went off to the other bus station next door to see if we could find a cheaper price. What we found instead was that the man from the first place had followed us over and told the service that we were considering taking that it was telling us the wrong price and that it had to charge us 1500SYP… So it ended up that we had to get in this guy’s car, where he drove us to his friend’s small taxi and we were finally on our way to Tripoli.
The journey to the border was very cramped as the taxi was a little on the small side: not as bad as a smart car but not far off. We went without hindrance for several miles until we hit a police checkpoint near the border. All our papers were fine and my newly stamped passport pleased the officials, but for some reason the car had smoke or steam billowing out of its bonnet when we stopped, so we had to wait a while until it was half fixed. Meanwhile I decided to grab a cup of coffee off the coffee man at the side of the road. Bad idea. As soon as his back was turned I had to pour it away; it wasn’t like any turkish coffee I’d had before. It was ridiculously sweet and had no taste of coffee whatsoever.
A few gulps of water later we got back in the taxi and headed on our way, winding our way across the roads as so many Syrian taxi drivers like to do. Through talking to the driver we’d worked out two things: We were close to the border and his power steering fluid had gone and he couldn’t take us over the border… He did however say to us that he would find a way for us to get across.
When we arrived at the border the driver went off in search of “his friend” to take us over to Tripoli. I grabbed a can of 7up and chilled out leaning against the car. About 15 minutes later the taxi driver comes back saying he’s found someone to take us over to Tripoli and that this guy is waiting for us over the other side and he wanted his money… This was all a bit too suspicious for us so we refused to give him the money until he’d taken us to this guy he’d organised to pick us up.
He finally agreed and we set off with our bags down the road to the first check point where we filled in a form, got it stamped and went even further down the road. Then there was another building with even more passport checking and form processing. When we left the second building the Lebanese driver was there waiting for us, so we paid the money to our driver and then he left us.
Now this is where I explain about Lebanese cars. This isn’t completely true in Beirut, but in Tripoli and most of the rest of Lebanon all the cars are old, beaten-up Mercedes. Supposedly Mercedes has stopped making replacement parts for all of these cars but because everyone uses them so much all of the mechanics in Lebanon make spare Mercedes parts. The car that we were in was a pretty old saloon-type Mercedes with extreme suspension on all the seats for some reason: whenever we slowed down or hit a bump the seats bounced up and down in rhythm with the car.
The drive to Tripoli only took around an hour and a half but given that it was dark we were unable to see much of the Lebanese countryside. We did however notice a lot more trees and vegetation than over the border in Syria. We arrived in Tripoli just before 11pm and quickly found our hostel to drop our stuff off before we went out and got something to eat before our curfew at midnight. Luckily there was still a Western Union exchange open for me to exchange the US dollars I’d brought into Lebanese Lira, then we popped down the road to a street with lots of fast food places on it where we all grabbed a bite to eat.
Hotel Koura, the hostel we were staying in, was pretty good value for money: $40 for a double room and breakfast per night. The man who looked after the hotel was pretty decrepit with a crackly voice from smoking too many cigarettes. Occasionally at night you would hear him go out onto his balcony, talk to himself a bit, clear his throat and lungs and then spit out onto the road below. I don’t think he spoke any English, his Arabic was incomprehensible and his French wasn’t much better either. He was however a nice man and he gave us good rooms and breakfast wasn’t bad either: chocolate croissants, apricot jam, flat bread and tea.
After a nice long sleep in our beds we woke up at 8am for breakfast and a shower. We left the hostel and went to the citadel in the old city of Tripoli where our hotel was. It didn’t really look like a tourist site when we got there: for some reason there was a large army contingent stationed there. However, we were allowed in and we had a nice quick look around, and as the citadel was on the top of a hill it offered some stunning views of the city.
From the citadel we headed towards the coastal part of town by foot. We stopped off in a really nice cafe that had a huge variety of Arabic sweets like baklava, so we stopped off for a bit and tried them. Then we were walking up the main road through the city when we noticed a shopping centre, so we popped in and had a look around, inevitably ending up with us finding an Internet cafe and updating our electronic selves for a while.
We left the Internet cafe and headed towards the International Fair, where construction was halted in 1975 when the Lebanese civil war started. It’s a pretty beautiful place but from what we could see you can’t actually get into it. It is properly maintained though and it does look like it would actually make a really nice park one day in the future. For now however it does look like a part of the city’s history they’ve forgotten about.
From there we headed towards the sea which was a welcome sight after such a long time without seeing any water mass bigger than a stream. The air smelt amazing and I was ready to embrace the sea… until I got too close and saw what lay washed up on the shore: mountains and mountains of rubbish, just chucked away carelessly by people. This is something I’ve notice a lot in both Syria and Lebanon: people really don’t seem to care about chucking rubbish onto the floor and what it does to their cities.
We continued to walk round the sea front until we spotted a restaurant that was recommended in the Lonely Planet guide book called “‘46”, supposedly after the date it was opened. Unfortunately this was closed so instead we went next door to a place called “Silver Shore” which was quite a posh looking restaurant with a lack of clientele. The three men of our group snatched at the opportunity to have what might be a decent steak, and Jen, the only girl in our group, had fish which she picked from a selection in the kitchen.
One thing I found strange about Tripoli was how deserted it felt: it felt like it was either waiting for something or it was living on in memory of a better time. Maybe it was due to the season that the streets weren’t packed and we didn’t see holidaying couples hand in hand walking along the Cornishe in front of the sparkling sea. It was almost like a ghost town in a way. We past only a few people in the streets and all the taxis seemed empty.
After our wonderful meal in Silver Shore we headed back to the hostel. Unfortunately I’d managed to pick up some rather nasty blisters from walking around which wasn’t great fun, but I got over it quite quickly as I saw a Burger King looming in the distance, much to Tim’s disgust. I know I’d had lunch only an hour before but I knew I had to find out if the burgers here were like the burgers back home… so in we went into this massive Burger King with hardly anyone in it and we ordered drinks and I got a burger. I was the same, but you never know until you properly try!
Properly filled by the burger and drinks we headed back on our way, Tim having to drag me away from a MacDonalds we saw on the way too (don’t worry I did get to try it later on, albeit in Beirut, and once again it was the same). I’d also managed to accidentally leave my towel behind in Damascus so I managed to find a shop and buy a big bright pink towel…
Back at the hostel we collapsed in our rooms and had a quick nap for a while before we went out and looked around the old city a bit more. We found what’s supposed to be a really old mosque then we found a pool club down one of the side streets and went in with all the locals staring at us. Eventually we realised that they weren’t really staring at us, more at Jen, who must have been the only girl ever to go in there. We played a few games of pool with a largish crowd of locals watching us, slightly weird considering we were all rubbish, but when we went to pay the man told us that we didn’t have to pay which was nice of him.
The rest of the evening was uneventful: we had a chicken schwarma dinner and then headed off to bed to get ready for a day of walking.
We woke again at 8am to breakfast laid out on tables for us in the main room which we feasted on before we headed for the door and for the Qadisha Valley. I didn’t really know much about this place: I knew there was a nature reserve there and a few villages but I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. We grabbed a taxi to Bacharre for 5,000 lira each, the equivalent of around 1.50GBP, and headed into the mountains.
The sights were absolutely breathtaking. I am never usually impressed by the geography of a place but the landscape of this valley was absolutely amazing: a photographer’s dream. We arrived in Bacharre and headed up to the Jibran museum where Khalil Jibran’s work is displayed and where he is buried. The museum wasn’t that great: a few nice paintings but it was mostly unexplained and unimpressive. The view from the museum of the valley however was quite good.
After reading Lonely Planet we decided to try and find the Qadisha Grotto which is supposed to be quite impressive, albeit not as good as Jeita Grotto which is near Beirut. The taxi to the grotto cost us 3,000 each, which we thought at first was a rip off but when we finally arrived near the grotto it seemed like a good idea as it would have been a long walk! We arranged for the taxi driver to come back and walked along a path which we hoped was eventually going to lead us to the grotto. It was a great path for a view of the valley as well and our trip to the grotto took longer than it should have due to constant picture taking.
The grotto itself was beautiful inside with lots of stalactites and stalagmites and lots of clear water running through it. There were also quite a few couples who passed through while we were there which surprised me, I mean, going to a grotto isn’t exactly the most romantic thing you can do now is it?
All grottoed out we took the taxi back down into Bacharre where we looked for somewhere for lunch as we were starving. Once again we consulted Lonely Planet and then headed for a pizzeria place just down the road, next to a waterfall, where once again the men had steak and Jen had some sort of chicken. We then left to find a taxi home as it was getting towards late afternoon, however this seemed harder than usual…
We walked back into the centre of Bacharre and to where all the taxis are and we inquired as to where to catch a service taxi back to Tripoli. The drivers responses informed us that there were no services that went through Bacharre and that we would have to go to Ehden to get a taxi back down to Tripoli and that the taxi to Ehden would be around 3700 lira each, so we thought we didn’t have much choice as otherwise it would cost us a ridiculous amount to get back to Tripoli if we couldn’t get a service taxi.
So off we went to Ehden along a long and windy mountainous road which we nearly went off the side of on several occasions. Somehow by the grace of God we managed to get to Ehden and our taxi driver sped off. We soon realised why… When we asked where the services went from we were informed that there were none…
No services and no way back down to Tripoli from the valley we were forced to take a taxi which set us back 10,000 lira each… which admittedly is only around 3GBP each but given that we’d gone up to the valley for half of that it was rather steep. However we did get back safely and we had a nice quite evening with a bit of pool before our trip to Beirut the next day.
