Lebanon Mountain Trail

On Sunday I awoke early to join a local hiking group for a hike on the first section of the Lebanon Mountain Trail (LMT). As I mentioned in a previous post, the LMT is a long-distance hiking trail that provides visitors with a scenic place to hike, and provides a bit of ecotourism revenue for the local villages along its route.
 
On Sunday we hiked the northernmost section of the trail, up near the northern border with Syria. The trailhead was a three-hour bus ride from Beirut. I had never been north of Beirut before, and thoroughly enjoyed the drive up the coast. We drove through the city of Tripoli, its buildings riddled with even more bullet holes than Beirut's, and through lots of little towns and villages. As luck would have it, Sunday was the day before the start of Eid al Adha, or the Muslim festival of sacrifice. As we got farther outside the city, I started noticing pens of sheep oddly placed in the center of the little towns we drove through. They seemed remarkably docile, and looked very, well, innocent. I then started to notice flayed sheep carcasses hanging from hooks outside little shops all along the way, with little kids and old people alike trimming the fat from the flesh and hosing the blood and fleece into the road. A tangle of traffic stopped us in one little town square just in time for me to witness a sheep getting its throat cut. I must have looked like a visitor on a Denali tour bus watching a grizzly bear--I'm sure my eyes were as big as saucers.
 
We stopped to pick up our local guide at the Mar Challita Monastery in the northern village of Akkar al-Atiqa. The monastery itself was lovely, built with huge blocks that had previously been used in a Roman temple. It honors the patron saint of shepherds, and I couldn't help but think of all the sheep being sacrificed at that moment.
 
We drove a few moments more, and then the bus dropped us off at the trailhead. It was a cool, sunny day, perfect for hiking. The terrain reminded me of the countryside I'd seen in the south on my previous hike: lots of terraced hillsides with crops of different sorts growing on them, and the occasional donkey wandering around. The views were lovely, and we could see Syria, seemingly only a stone's throw away. We hiked past farms, stands of cedar trees, and some interesting rock formations. One profile-shaped rock reminded me of New Hampshire's late Old Man of the Mountain. We even passed a carcass of what looked like a red fox, which are native to Lebanon.
 
We neared the end of our hike just as dusk began to descend around 4:30. A lovely sunset lit up the western sky, and despite the day's warmth, I noticed a dusting of snow on the mountains in the distance. The last stretch of trail took us past what first appeared to be another empty pasture. As we got closer, I spotted...a ferris wheel! Sure enough, a modest little amusement park lay there, abandoned and surreal in this isolated rural outpost. A sign proclaimed that we were strolling past "City Land." What else would one name an amusement park so far from any city!
 
It was just getting dark by the time we reached the bus. As we rolled through the darkness, each village that we passed seemed to have at least one well-lit barbershop where men were getting shaved and trimmed for the holiday. Some sheep carcasses still hung silently from their hooks, though the frantic activity in the villages had ceased. I slept most of the way back to Beirut, which seemed even bigger and more cosmopolitan after my glimpse of the northern villages...and "City Land," of course!