An amazing day trip out of Beirut. My Lovely Driver* and I drove up over 3,300 ft over the mountains. We stopped in a Druze village and saw the oldest mosque in Lebanon, the Fakhreddine Mosque in Deir el Qamar (Monastary of the Moon), built in 16th C. There’s also a very old synagogue here – 17thC, but I couldn’t find it. There are mostly Druze and Maronite Christians in the mountains here. Even when the Ottomans built the old mosque its been a very mixed community.

Here’s a short study in magnets of Lebanon’s most famous foods. 🙂

We drove to the other side of the valley to see the Beit ed-Dine Palace which was lovely and then drove up even higher up the mountains into the famous cedar forests. There is exactly zero health and safety in this area so the roads are really rough, one lane, steep gorges. Lots of reversing up banks to avoid on coming trucks, although once you’re in the cedars there’s no traffic. I didn’t see any other people but there was a lot of gunfire. It wasn’t machine gun fire, just rifles. Lovely Driver thought they were probably ‘hunting’ although fuck knows what for in 46 degrees on a mountain top. Lizards? Anyway I didn’t like it. It made me feel like spewing. And I couldn’t tell if I was walking towards it or away from it.

Here’s some cheerful, deserty mountain flowers.

We drove down the other side of the mountains towards Syria into the Bekaa Valley, which has a bad reputation, but is OK. Hezbollah militia control most of the border regions as the Lebanese Army proxy.

I spent a couple of hours at an amazing Umayyad ruin site built in the 8th C. Its a whole city that been used by Armenian refugees and the Syrian army but is still surprisingly intact considering there’s no funding (other than from UNESCO) to protect these kinds of places. Its very beautiful but bleak and distressingly hot.

There was a camel but Lovely Driver just rolled his eyes and said it was just there for tourists. I was the only tourist so I gave it a little pat. And it blew snot at me and tried to bite my arm. Because its a camel.

Its right on the Syrian border so theres a lot of makeshift housing around. Although theres some kind of arrangement for workers to come across the border everyday here to work on the farms. So theres truck loads of Syrians coming backwards and forwards rather than staying here as refugees. Its confusing.

Wild figs everywhere.

We had lunch at a weird trippy very Arab place and I don’t want to think about it because I’m so sick today. Look at the photos on Instagram @icysees. I can’t be thinking about any food today. Heres a Druze man with marvelous handlebar mustachio pouring coffee.

And then I went to Chateau Ksara, the most famous winery in Lebanon. I’ve tried some really nice wine from them before, but the ‘tour’ they do is very cheesey and underwhelming. There were a bunch of drunk Lebanese-Australians from Melbourne there. Need I say more.

*Lovely Driver is simply a lovely driver. He is 24 and Sunni and in love with a Shi’ite girl and they plan to get married and move to Canada. He spent approx 9 hours on the phone to her telling her he loved her. It was very sweet.