Greetings from Lebanon! I’ve left the relative calm oasis of Jordan and landed in loud, fast paced, chaotic Beirut. The very first thing I noticed about this place is that the Lebanese are hands down the most insane drivers in the world. No joke! The taxi ride from the airport to my hotel was absolutely terrifying. It’s gas all the way to the floor or brake all the way to the floor, weaving around everyone and everything, and three times I had to yell at the driver to stop because we were about to slam into the traffic ahead of us while he was turned around talking to people in the back seat. And it turns out this is the norm. The good news is, Lebanon sits on the eastern edge of the Levantine Sea (or eastern Mediterranean depending on who you ask) and you can take a nice relaxing seaside walk in the evenings to calm your nerves if you need to.

Lebanon’s had a pretty rocky recent history. They had a very brutal civil war that started in 1975, was further complicated by the involvement of their only two neighbors, Syria and Israel, and lasted roughly fifteen years. Now with Syria having a civil war of their own and ongoing tensions with Israel, Lebanon is in a precarious position and while relatively safe, it could become otherwise at any moment. Still, Lebanon is very much a country on the mend. Very little survived the war, so there are lots of new shiny buildings and construction that are going up everywhere, but it’s also extremely easy to find buildings riddled with bullet holes and shrapnel scars because there’s at least a couple on every block. (below: Just a few of the hundreds of examples of the remnants of war)

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Martyrs Square is pretty much the center of the city. The statue in the middle was a tribute to the martyrs of Ottoman occupation. During the civil war this area was known as the green line, which divided the city between the fighting Maronite and Muslim forces. I saw an old photo of this area taken in the late 60’s in a restaurant and it looks a lot different now, but they’re keeping the statue, bullet holes and all. Zoom in to see the damage.

It’s not all war and bullets here, though. Historically speaking, this is the land of the Phoenicians. Interestingly, despite being at such a significant point on every major trade route, the Phoenicians were never really conquered by any of the empires of the time, nor were they an empire themselves. They were actually just a collection of independent city states. Their big contribution to history is the invention of the linear alphabet used by most of the languages on earth, including English. Just the same, there are a smattering of Roman and Byzantine ruins in Beirut. They also have a fantastic national museum with artifacts spanning all of history, a great archeological myseum at the American University (the middle easts most expensive and prestigious school), and piles of ruins from all eras in history underneath St Georges cathedral (unearthed after it was bombed in the 1980’s). The story of how they saved all the artifacts and rebuilt the National Museum after the war is pretty amazing too.

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Here’s a funny Beirut story. Two brothers inherited some land from their father in 1954, but it was so oddly shaped that they couldn’t agree on how to divide it. One brother ended up with the choice piece and the other brother got the odd shaped scraps. To get even, he built an apartment building on one little sliver of his portion, effectively blocking his brother’s sea view, causing his property value to plummet. Ha! The building is called the Grudge. It’s 13ft wide at the widest part and only 2ft wide at the narrowest. It’s abandoned now, but people actually lived in it and during the war it was used as a brothel.

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All my pics from Beirut are here

Beirut is actually a pretty cool city, once you get past the initial shock. That didn’t stop me from venturing out though. The Bekaa Valley has some incredible ruins in the towns of Anjar and Baalbek nestled up next to the Syrian border. I was warned that It’s not safe to go there without a guide, however. Baalbek is home to the administrative headquarters for Hezbollah, and there’s a large drug trade in the valley. So I hired Muhammad in Beirut and off we went. First, Anjar had the ruins of an 8th century Ummayad city. For a city, it was pretty small, but the remains of the palace and the tetrapylon at the town crossroads were pretty impressive.

Baalbek was a much bigger site. In Roman times it was called Heliopolis and it’s mainly comprised of three temples, considered by most to be the biggest and best preserved Roman temples outside of Rome itself. The Venus temple was relatively small, but most of it was still standing.

The Jupiter Temple is mostly gone, but the courtyard outside is really well preserved and huge.

The Bacchus Temple was the most intact. All four walls still standing with most of the columns, lots of intact carvings on the outside, a cool carving of all the Roman gods on the alter. It’s hard to tell from the pics, but it’s pretty massive.

All the pics from Baalbek and Anjar are right here

One last little side trip out of Beirut was to the Baatara Gorge waterfall. It’s basically just a gigantic sink hole and the waterfall is apparently a spring time phenomenon (it was just a trickle for my visit), but it’s still the biggest sink hole I’ve ever seen.

Pics from Baatara Gorge can be found here

That’s gonna wrap it up for Beirut for now, but we’re not quite finished yet. I’m heading up to the mountains for a couple of days of hiking and then I’ll be back. Stay tuned…