Bekah Valley & Baalbek Excursion

On Sunday 21 November, 4 Americans from NEST traveled by car to the Bekah Valley to visit 2 wineries, the Roman temple ruins at Baalbek, a cedars preserve in the Chouf Mountains, and the heart of the Druze community in Lebanon.


Our driver was Jad Bauckhan, a semi-retired medical technician who now works as a guide. He drove us from Beirut to the Bekah Valley (Lebanon's agricultural region) to first visit Chateau Ksara, the oldest winery in Lebanon and the Middle East. 


Established in the 19th century by Jesuit priests, Chateau Ksara is built over a series of underground Roman tunnels where the wine is aged in casks. Now owned by four business partners, the winery remained open and in production during all the years of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1989). 


We next traveled to Baalbek, an enormous temple complex built to impress the inhabitants of the eastern Roman empire. As the name suggests, the original temple on this site was dedicated to Baal, and there is some evidence that human sacrifice may have occurred here before the coming of the Romans. Using a massive army of slaves (about 125,000) and a building project spanning hundreds of years, the Romans built a temple complex here larger than the Parthenon in Rome and the Pantheon in Athens. The ruins still contain massive temple columns and pillars. Baalbek is located in the southern part of the Bekah Valley where many residents are Shia Muslims & the so-called Party of God (Hizbullah) originated in the late 20th century. As we came out of the ruins, vendors were selling Hizbullah T-shirts and camel rides.


Our next stop were the vineyards of Chateau Kefraya in an area largely populated by Orthodox Christians. We had a wonderful al fresco lunch where families had gathered after services of worship. 


Then Jad drove us up winding roads with hair pin turns into the Chouf mountains to look across a ridge almost into northern Israel. After we reached the peaks, we drove down to a cedar preserve forest that happened to be above a cloud bank that afternoon. After we hiked a bit in the preserve, we rode down into the heart of the Druze country and visited a very old Maronite church in a village where Jad has his second apartment.


It was dark by the time we returned to Hamra in Beirut. This trip was my favorite excursion during my four months in Lebanon for we experienced the variety and beauty of Lebanon's typography and multiple communities of faith and culture all in one beautiful fall day.