Take Me Skiing In Lebanon

Thursday May 3, 2012

"Hello, how are you?" said my friend Adam as he befriended yet another Lebanese soldier.

We were walking back to our hotel after dinner in the small tourist town of Bcharre, deep in the mountains in northern Lebanon. The famous Cedars of God and the best ski fields in Lebanon are just up the slope from the town centre, and the spectacular Qadisha Valley is down the slope.

Me with Bcharre and Qadisha Valley below.

The people of Lebanon like to brag that on the same day they can go out to the beach for a swim then out to the mountains for a ski. Adam was determined to achieve that double, if not on the same day but on the same trip.

Two days earlier during lunch we had asked the restaurant owner if it was still possible to ski. He was pessimistic, "The lifts closed just last week."

But after a few minutes a lightbulb went off in his head. "You can ask the army."

What? Ask the army for what? "Ask the army if you can ski on their slope. They sometimes allow foreigners to use their lift. You can ski with the soldiers."

The closed lifts at Cedars of God - we missed it by a week!

Adam's eyes lit up! From then on we approached every soldier we could find to see if we could sweet talk ourselves onto the military snow. And soldiers are easy to find in Lebanon.

Like busy hookers we solicited as many military personnel as we could the next two days - but had no result. We had even visited the military ski training centre up at the Cedars and spoke to the guards, to no avail. But even after all that Adam had not given up hope.

On our way to dinner we had met three blokes on duty (I don't know what they were patrolling, they just seemed to be standing in the middle of an anonymous Bcharre street) and Adam spoke with them for a few minutes establishing rapport. Everyone in Lebanon seems to have a cousin in Australia, it was easy enough for us to get a conversation going.

Ski training centre for the Lebanese Army,
at Cedars of God.

After yet another filling Lebanese meal we walked back the same path and encountered the same checkpoint. Adam wanted to resume the conversation with the trio, hoping to get on that elusive slope.

"Hello, how are you? What a beautiful night!" Adam began, with the zeal of a evangelist. It was a crisp night in the mountains, and a near full moon lit the sky like an aurora.

The soldiers stared back at Adam with a strange look. They didn't seem to be as enamoured with him as earlier. Adam tried his best to keep the conversation going, but it turned out to be a very awkward five minutes.

We finally gave up, said our goodbyes to the military folk, and trudged back to our hotel. Adam sighed "Geez, that was hard. It was like as if they didn't even remember me from two hours ago. I really thought I had a chance with those guys."

I had to put Adam out of his misery. "Adam, you know they weren't the same guys as before dinner? They changed over while we were eating."

Do bears have mobile phones?

Monday June 11, 2012

I chuckled like a mad man. Australian comedians Tony Martin and Glenn Robbins were entertaining me on the car stereo. I was enjoying a drive on the windy roads through the gorgeous forests of northern California, heading to the magnificent Redwoods. I chuckled again as Martin and Robbins made fun of Kim Beazley.

While I laughed I noticed that under the din of the comedians there was a deep-throated rumbling noise. I thought "The car must be struggling going up these hills. She'll be apples soon." I then looked at the dashboard where an unfamiliar yellow warning light had come on.

Oh Christ. I was on a narrow two lane road in the middle of a forest - it took me a couple of minutes to find a shoulder big enough to park the car. I anxiously opened the glove box to refer to the manual. What could this warning light mean?!

Northern California forest, and my car.

And there it was: insufficient tyre pressure. I alighted to check out what was going on. The rear right tyre was completely flat. I had been driving metal to asphalt for the last few minutes.

What was I going to do? I picked up my phone to contact the car rental company, but there was no reception. Of course, why would there be a signal here? Do the bears have mobile phones?

I'm fine with travelling through pariah countries, places where no-one speaks English, or crime ridden cities. However I'm concerned about bears. Did you know even though they're hundreds of kilograms they can move faster than humans? How can one not worry about encountering one of those beasts!

I had to change the tyre as fast as I could. Which wouldn't be a problem if I knew how to change a tyre. Fifteen years of driving and this was my first flat. In the middle of a Californian forest.

I opened the manual and laboured my way through each of the steps. In retrospect changing a tyre is very easy. But doing it for the first time, reading from a manual, I kept thinking "If I don't do this properly I'm going to be eaten by bears."

After the longest 45 minutes of my life I had dirt and wheel grease all over me, but the temporary spare tyre was successfully installed. Phew. I didn't get attacked by a bear or raped by a trucker. One kind motorist did stop to offer assistance, but by then all was under control so I thanked him and waved him off.

I felt a masculine sense of reward for having been through that rite of passage. However the temporary can only be driven for a limited distance, at a limited speed. Now I had to somehow find a way to get a permanent replacement tyre.

It took me another thirty minutes to drive out of the forest, where I found a lonely highway diner. I asked the teenaged shop assistant if there was a telephone I could use. She pointed me to a pay phone outside.

A pay phone! Back in Australia whenever I saw a public telephone I wondered "Why is that there? Who uses a public pay phone these days? Doesn't everyone have a mobile phone?"  Now I knew who uses public phones - foreigners in trouble!

I spoke to the rental company who advised me to find the nearest tyre shop and that I'd be reimbursed for the expense upon the return of the car. Unfortunately I was in such an isolated and sparsely populated part of the United States that they could not tell me where the nearest tyre place would be. I would have to drive around on the temporary tyre until I came across one.

Another twenty minutes away a petrol station attendant was able to point me to the "local" tyre shop, another twenty minutes drive away. With the spare tyre I couldn't drive any faster than 70kph, driving the locals crazy.

Finally I reached the tiny dusty village of Redway - population 1225. I had now driven 55km on the temporary tyre, likely nearing its capacity. Fortunately the tyre shop was able to work on the car that afternoon. While the tyre was being taken care of I went next door to the Great American Hamburger restaurant for a meal.

Garberville, USA: just up the road from Redway.

At the burger place a 13 year old local girl enthusiastically commented "I like your bag!". I was carrying a satchel that I had purchased in Mongolia, featuring embroidery hand-crafted by a Kazakh nomad. It's definitely a comment-worthy bag, although perhaps the novelty may have been that there are no blokes seen with satchels around these parts. "Thanks, it's from Mongolia." I replied.

"Phwoah, I like your accent!" the girl yelped. Maybe I'd seen too many films, but alarm bells started going off in my head. A stranger in a small US town, starts talking to gaol bait, gets into a "misunderstanding", then has to fight the entire local population to escape. I'm sure I've seen a movie like that.

Fortunately my burger arrived and I was able to get away. I returned to the tyre shop where a local asked if I was from New Zealand. He was very apologetic when I corrected him although I did say "It's no insult to be called a Kiwi". I drove away with my new tyre and switched Tony Martin and Glenn Robbins back on, glad that I was able to spontaneously sample rural America off the tourist track.