From Lefkara on Monday we drove back to Larnaca airport to drop the rental car and catch a short Cyprus Airways flight to Beirut. We had a great late afternoon view of the city as we came in to land.
We took a taxi through the awful Beirut traffic to our hotel, not far from the corniche. My first excursion out was to change money; in some ways the terrible inflation situation in Lebanon seems to dominate everything, or at least an awful lot of daily life. Officially the rate is pegged at $1 USD equals 15,000 Lebanese pounds, but in actuality I received 80,000 Lebanese pounds for each USD. The black market rate fluctuates constantly, but is always significantly better than the official rate. Another factor is that the largest bill is 100,000 pounds, so four million pounds (just a single $50 USD bill) ends up turning into a wad of 40 bills!
With our pockets bulging with cash, we had drinks and dinner before turning in. This morning we had arranged to join a tour out of Beirut and over the mountains to the Bekaa Valley which lies between the mountains and the border with Syria. The tour is fairly expensive ($95 USD each), but was an easy way to see this part of the country (and we could pay with credit card, a rarity in Lebanon right now, and so that lets us conserve cash). We were picked up at 8:00, picked up another tourist on the way out of the city and headed up into the suburban hills over Beirut and through the mountain pass. I was surprised how much snow there was in the mountains. Our driver pointed out that at some times of year you can ski and swim at the beach in the same day in Lebanon!
We picked up our guide (an Armenian Christian--ethnicity/religion are super important in Lebanon), under an overpass in the town of Chtoura, which means "crossroads."
From Chtoura we drove north about another hour to the city of Baalbek. We passed through several towns and villages and checkpoints along the way, as well as small Syrian refugee camps.
Our first stop in Baalbek was an old Roman quarry. Look at the size of that stone that was mostly-excavated but abandoned in situ!
From there it was a couple more minutes down the road to the Baalbek ruins.
Our guide is an archaeologist in the region, so knows the site well. It is an incredible place, with ruins from the ancient Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and European Christian crusaders, and so on, more or less all on top of each other.
Originally the site was developed as a Phoenician temple for Baal (hence the name Baalbek), but it is the Roman Jupiter Temple that was built over top that is really remarkable and incredibly massive--it was the largest temple the Romans ever built! Later, the temple was largely destroyed, mostly intentionally, by Muslims and Christians, but locals also converted parts of it into a fortress. These are all photos from around the Jupiter temple complex.
These six columns have been standing since they were first erected--the only standing columns at the site that have not been reconstructed. The columns at this site were the largest in the classical world in terms of height and diameter.
By the way, the quarry we had stopped at at first was where the large foundation stones came from. The temple complex is raised seven metres, and some of the foundation stones are among the heaviest ever used in history.
Next to the Jupiter temple is the temple to Bacchus, which is mostly still intact because Christians converted it into a church rather than trying to destroy it.
As far as ancient Roman temple ruins go, the site at Baalbek is by far the most incredible I have ever visited. Its sheer size is mindboggling, but it is also very well preserved and visitor-friendly.
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