Monday, March 15, 2010

The Bakaa Valley

Early in the trip, Alex put me in touch with an American lawyer living in Beirut who is running the Palestinian Civil Rights Campaign (see his article http://www.counterpunch.org/lamb09142007.html).
Last weekend he invited us along as he took another American writer on a tour of the Bakaa valley. The valley is know as a Hezbollah stronghold and for producing enormous amounts of marijuana ("red leb") and heroin .... it is also an incredibly fertile valley filled with farms and wineries and was once considered a “bread basket” of the Roman empire.

Almond orchards in full bloom

Josh climbing “the largest quarried stone in the world” in the old Roman quarry

the ruins of the Baalbek temples

Hezbollah flags on the streets of Baalbek

Josh walking down the street in Baalbek

a horse farm, tucked in the fertile Bakaa valley, with the snowy hills that harbor Hezbollah training camps in the background

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