The tuk-tuk dropped me off right in front of the van’s door. I hopped onto the latter after making one step on the intervening ground between the two vehicles. And no sooner than I was in, we began driving south along the scenic coastal highway.
A short while later, just before entering the town of Batroun, I requested a stop at a random spot on the roadside. It was the closest point to the accommodation I had booked last evening, to which I now had to walk for 4 km. The first half of the way was downhill, breezy, and quiet. The second half was uphill, breezeless, and irritatingly noisy because a convoy of military helicopters flew low to the coast and back for no apparent reason.
My Airbnb was in an outlying residential district atop a hill surrounded by fields. The owner, who was still at work, had sent me directions with pictures. But that helped little because the area was a cluster of all but identical houses.
In the end, I found the correct one with the aid of Captain the Pit Bull, whom the listing’s description mentioned. A pure-black, robust beauty of a dog, as soon as he noticed me looking around, he poked his head over the fence and burst out in an uproarious barking spree. All it took was approaching and giving him a pat on the head to make our acquaintance and become friends. He shut up, gave my hand a lick, and retreated to his shady corner.
This story is an excerpt from my book "Backpacking Lebanon", wherein I recount my one-month journey around this fascinating country. Check it out if you like what you're reading.
Granted Captain’s permission, I pushed the yard door open and entered. The house was spacious and cozy. The yard looked out to the sea and had a comfy hanging egg chair. To my joy, there even was a guitar. While I waited for the owner to return and prepare my bedroom, I hung out in the living room with a Jordanian dude who was my co-tenant. We had some interesting conversations while smoking pot. Since graduating from a business school, he had lived in Saudi Arabia and devoted all his time to developing a booking platform. He recently sold it for a good sum of money and was now traveling at whim and enjoying freedom.
In the afternoon, showered and rested, I called a tuk-tuk and headed to town. Batroun was Lebanon’s holiday capital. Most of its picturesque stone houses hosted either a hotel, bar, restaurant, or tour agency. People jammed the narrow cobbled streets: tanned vacationers in swimwear, tourism workers in white shirts, and the odd veiled Muslim lady. As if walking among the crowd wasn’t already hard enough, vehicles, too, were allowed to cut through. Most of them were tuk-tuks and tourist carts resembling elongated golf carts. The latter were available for rental all over the place and were mainly rented by groups of drunk teenagers. Older, teenage-brained men also inched through in huge American jeeps for the sole purpose of showing off.
After a long walk and a drink at an appealing garden cafe, I ended up at a small historical church on the settlement’s westernmost point. The little terrace that adjoined it offered the best sunset view in town. A broad rock shelf below ended at the Phoenician Wall: an actual thick wall the Phoenicians erected millennia ago to protect their city from storms and marauders. Eroded by centuries’ worth of weather, it nowadays resembles a bizarre geological formation more than a manmade structure. Beyond it, the wide Mediterranean Sea extended toward the horizon, wherein a tangerine sun was about to plunge. A lot of other people had assembled on the terrace, staring at either the magnificent scene or their phone cameras for endless selfies. Meanwhile, a newlywed couple was having a photoshoot down by the wall. Passengers of consecutive tour boats cheered them upon their passage.
When the twilight took over, Karelle arrived on the spot for our appointment. She was a local girl who had replied to a Couchsurfing post I made before starting this trip. We arranged to meet for a walk now that I was visiting her hometown. She was a painter and got by freelancing as a graphic designer. We talked a lot about religion and theology. She had attended a Maronite girls’ school run by nuns. She regarded that as an abhorrent, traumatic experience. Regardless, it had ingrained in her a radical faith that no reason could shake off.
Batroun was getting livelier the darker it became. The holiday-makers had changed their casual beach attires for gaudy night costumes and dresses, and the clubs were overfilling with partyers. To satisfy my request for getting some food without blowing a fortune in the center’s fancy restaurants, Karelle led us to a peripheral road lined-up with food trucks for a quick kebab. The money I saved on food I spent on dessert. There was that waffle place I had earlier set sight on. Their looks tantalized me so much that I didn’t even bother to ask about the price before ordering one with three ice-cream scoops. A little poorer but satiated, I caught a tuk-tuk home and crashed.
Next day, I had big exploration plans. But they went to shambles because of my morning mishap… As I got up, put on my shorts, and went to the toilet, a draft blew through the house and pushed my room door shut. Even though the bang wasn’t that strong, the lock broke, and I couldn’t get back in to all my stuff. To make matters worse, as I was trying to force it open, the metallic handle snapped inside my hand, and the sharp edge cut a good few millimeters through my flesh. It took a copious amount of kitchen roll to stop the bleeding.
There was no one around, but I fortunately had my phone in my pocket with a couple percent battery. It just sufficed to call the host and ask for help. He was far away, but he dispatched a dude who showed up with a toolbox. I don’t know what he needed that for, since the only thing he used was a common plastic card he kept driving through the gap, attempting to release the latchbolt.
I left him sweating in the now-draftless corridor, made a coffee, and pulled out to the airy living room to busy myself with the guitar. Hours passed to no avail. I had little faith in his method and just kept postponing the moment I go tell him it’s about time we kick it in. But then he appeared around the corner, bathed in perspiration, crumpled card in hand, and heralded the good news with a grin of relief.
The day was wasted by then. Anyhow, I got dressed, packed my bag, and headed to town for an afternoon stroll. A bit later, I met Karelle again for a beer at a beach bar and a grab in the food-truck street. The kebabeur refused at first to accept my dollar bill because it was too old for his liking. Since I didn’t carry another one with me, I offered to pay in local currency. He wasn’t fond of that either and accepted only at a very unfavorable to me conversion rate for his dollar-denominated prices. After I told him that “no problem, I’ll go to someone else,” he snatched the original bill eagerly and made my kebab. Skipping my dessert for tonight, I returned home and got ready to leave in the morning.
Photos
View (and if you want use) all my photographs from Batroun.
Accommodation and Activities in Lebanon
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Stay22 is a handy tool that lets you search for and compare stays and experiences across multiple platforms on the same neat, interactive map. Hover over the listings to see the details. Click on the top-right settings icon to adjust your preferences; switch between hotels, experiences, or restaurants; and activate clever map overlays displaying information like transit lines or concentrations of sights. Click on the Show List button for the listings to appear in a list format. Booking via this map, I will be earning a small cut of the platform's profit without you being charged any extra penny. You will be thus greatly helping me to maintain and keep enriching this website. Thanks!
