WLE Day 7 (08-14-2011): Aqoura – Afqa – Hrejil - Kfardibian

WLE Day 7 (08-14-2011): Aqoura – Afqa – Hrejil - Kfardibian

Length: Aprox 28 km, 7 hrs

Difficulty Level: Medium to Difficult

Of course just as I had said that the laundry dries up so perfectly, today it didn’t! Actually, it was all quite wet in the morning. Chamoun as usual was the first to get dressed and he left Samer and I trying to figure out what to do with our laundry debacle while he went to find a ride from Aqoura, which is at the bottom of the valley to the top of the mountain where we would start our hike.

Carrying heavy hiking bags filled with wet clothes, Samer and I grabbed a quick breakfast sandwich, closed the apartment and headed down to meet Chamoun, who we found waiting for us with a Wrangler Jeep and a plump half-asleep driver. We were soon whisked up the mountain to the Afqa cave, which brought back happy memories to Samer from his IC school days. To me it brought a fresh supply of deliciously freezing cold water. With the little I have seen, I could write a book about Lebanon’s water wells, their taste, coolness, abundance … I was telling a friend of Samer’s today that this is the only place in the world that I have seen water flow UPWARDS! Water is so abundant that the water pressure coming down from the upper slopes creates a momentum so strong that it almost defies gravity. The Lebanese farmers know this and you see water canals both descending and ascending to the whim of the landscape. Quite a sight …

So we started our hike upwards- and Samer wondering if there is a hike that ever starts easier. He was right in wondering because during the day, we went from 1400 meters up to about 1700 down to 1300 up to 1900 then down to 1200 … Fortunately the ascent and descent was not steep, but it was long, arduous, and the foot trail unused enough to have grown long bothersome prickly shrubs. The views especially of the Ibrahim Valley were spectacular though, and made it very much worth it.

On the way we met several shepherds, one of whom was a smiley 16-year old called Wassim. He was vibrant and full of stories about his young shepherd life. One of his stories was of him being stuck on a steep sheer and unable to move for three entire days. “If I moved forward or back, I knew I would have died,” he said, “So I stayed put. Finally the army came to my rescue after my parents realized that I had gone missing. That was close,” he smiled. Wassim goes to school but seemed resigned but not unhappy about his shepherd future. He showed us the way and wished us well. “Be careful,” he shouted after us.

On this trail we came across a Phoneician temple close to the Afqa cave, which unfortunately had fallen to disrepair and had bee hive boxes on its grounds. We also saw some Roman signs on rocks that are meant to point the traveller in the right direction and forbid him from cutting down certain kinds of trees. ‘It’s time the country updated these signs, don’t you think?’ I thought.

The farmers around these parts seemed more camera shy than those we had met before. “Some of them are squatters and don’t want their pictures taken,” Chamoun explained. In one farm we passed, there were tomatoes on the ground. As they had exited the farm’s perimeter, Chamoun felt no inhibition and offered me two. I pocketed them and enjoyed sharing them with another local shepherd later on in our journey by a water well.

I have figured out that the mind plays funny tricks when hiking. Or perhaps it is the eternal optimist in every human. Quite simply everything seems closer than it actually is. Perhaps this is a necessary evil to force us to take that very first step. For if we knew how distant something really is, perhaps it would be too daunting to take the first step! At any rate the mountains on this hike always seemed closer than they actually were, and we had to round three of them over the 7 or so hiking hours. The first took us to the left and around the first mountain overlooking Qahmaz. The second took us to the right as we turned this very mountain while ascending. Once we reached the peak it was foggy and cold and I had to put on my wind-breaker. The third took us again to the right, the time on a descent towards Hrejil and the bottom part of Kfardibian. And yet for all the walking and tired feet, as we were passed by some four-wheel mountain bikes, I could not but think, ‘I would not trade what I am doing for a million of these bikes.”

When we finally reached the bottom of the valley to Hrejil and the bottom part of Kfardibian, we were all tired. Samer especially looked spent and eager to head to our hostel in Kfardibian to see his friends Johnny and Salim who were visiting us later that afternoon. So we grabbed a car and hitched a ride to the upper part of Kfardibian.

It didn’t take long for Samer’s friends to arrive to the hostel. We all decided to get a bite. To our pleasant surprise, our cousin Ghadah and her family also showed up to say a quick hello …