Human chatter awoke us at dawn. I went out to inspect. Its source unseeable, it came from within the bordering orchard upslope. White spurts of pesticide jetted above the treeline. We got ready and were off before the fierce morning sunlight reached us.Now we had to climb 400 steep meters until the ridge to rejoin our trail. We started early to avoid doing this in the extreme … [Read more...]
Afqa to Aaqoura: Trekking the Lebanon Mountain Trail
The daybreak was approaching, warming the nightly frigid interior of the cave and encouraging me to quit the sleeping bag. I went out to witness a wonderful view of the now-visible gorge. The bats had gone to sleep, and gobs of little birds, who nested in the speckling of holes on the cave’s ceiling that was a trypophobic’s nightmare, were now fluttering all around, producing a … [Read more...]
Faraya to Afqa: Trekking the Lebanon Mountain Trail
We were up at dawn. Before the sun crested the ridge, we were packed and gone.As agreed last evening, we stopped by Emilio’s hotel to have breakfast together. The place seemed forsaken. The open door led us past a vacant reception desk and a lobby in-the-works out to a backyard. A man was there, meditating over a running hose rather than watering the flowers. After we found a … [Read more...]
Three Days in Beirut
It was bang on midnight, and the airport corridors weren’t that busy. Still, given the insufficient number of clerks, a long queue had formed before the foreign-passports immigration control booths. Peeping around at people and their documents to while away the wait, I noticed the queue principally consisted of whom I call party Gulfers: affluent Gulf Arabs in Western garments … [Read more...]
Baskinta to Faraya: Trekking the Lebanon Mountain Trail
An owl’s persistent, mellow and melodious hooting preceded the alarm and aroused us before the crack of dawn. We snoozed on while the twilight infiltrated the tent and replaced the absolute darkness. When we could see enough, we got up and began preparing for the first day of our trekking adventure.The aptly named Lebanon Mountain Trail is a 470 km long-distance hiking trail … [Read more...]
From Beirut to Baskinta
Our immediate destination was a village called Baskinta, at an elevation of 1200 meters on the western slope of Mount Lebanon, a 45 km drive northeast of Beirut. With Tarek’s help, we found a direct bus that was scheduled to depart at 10:50 from a roundabout in the city’s eastern suburbs. Two hours ahead, we had our heavy backpacks strapped-on and were striding along the … [Read more...]
