Akkar wildflower hike

One of the best hikes yet; outstanding for the remoteness and nonstop lovely scenery, lush and green, packed with blooming wildflowers. We hiked (slowly) for 5 hours and didn't see a house or cultivated field or even a flock of sheep or goats.

We were just one hill from the Syrian border, in the far north of Lebanon and quite a ways inland. A far drive from Beirut at almost three hours (counting the obligatory stop for made-to-order baked snacks). The hike was billed as a wildflower hike, and we had with us the authors of the Wildflower Guide of Lebanon, a very nice married couple of professors who had been cataloguing flowers for several years. Their two kids were very patient hikers. Here is the lady, Nisrine Machaka Houri, at left, using a GPS to catalog a find, and her husband, Dr. Ahmad Houri, below, taking a photo of a plant.

Below, you can see them on the flower-filled trail.

They told us that there are something like 2600 species of flowers in Lebanon. Their two guidebooks (we bought one and they signed it for us) list something like 400 of them. She is doing her doctorate on orchids and was delighted to find a new one on this hike.

More pix of flowers, T with the only livestock we saw on the way (some guys were cutting up a dead tree in the forest), and K with teacher Sharon and trip leader Sabina.

Leaving the area, which was around 1300 m (4000 feet), we decended along hairpin turns (I think I have seen a guardrail in Lebanon, once) toward the coast, we pass fields of rich brown earth, and pass through simple, poor-looking towns, the sea gleaming in the distance. At the coast we turn south. Down the highway nearing Beirut we pass the Casino du Liban, which we recently read wused to be The hot spot in world entertainment--acts would open here to great fanfare, play a few weeks, and then head to Vegas!