We arrived to Cedars at around 10 in the morning. Our driver had picked us from the hotel early and after a two hour drive we were finally there. The last maybe a kilometer was a little tough for our minibus with summer tires on. But our driver made it, all though he was a little afraid that the car will slide down the hill.
The first impression when we arrived to the resort was something else than what I had in mind back at our hotel in Beirut. Everyone had said that Cedars is the place in Lebanon for skiing, but when I saw it the first time my mind got blown away. There were half finished buildings everywhere. It almost reminded me of Dubai as another mad man’s dream, of course in smaller scale thought. It looked like someone have had an amazing idea to build a huge resort, but ended up having a lot of difficulties with the money. It truly has a lot of potential with the mountain range spreading approximately as much as 25 kilometers wide to from the resorts down station. It just needs the money.
Our hotel in the other hand was amazing. It actually reminded me more of a refuge than a hotel. It had wood paneling all over the place and the owner, he truly was a quite a character. He kind of reminds more of a fugitive on a longer holiday from jail rather than the owner and manager of a hotel. But the atmosphere in the hotel was amazing. A lot of free riders and randonnée-people seemed to be gathering here for a stay and some runs. At the door step we met some French and Belgian riders on their way for a randonnée to the other side of the mountain.
As it was sunny, we hurried with our stuff and actually left them lying on the floor in to a corner, so that we could get faster to the lifts. We went to talk with the manager about the tickets as usual and then the huge wall rise in front of us. They had decided to keep the top lifts closed due to that it was Friday and they were expecting a lot of people coming on the Saturday. Yeah, they wanted to save the lift for tomorrow. Well, luckily there was an army operated lift to which the nice manager guided us to. The lift truly was operated by the army of Lebanon and with a 90 000 pounds slid to the guys hand at the gate we got the permission to use it, sweet. The lift went all the way from the upper village to the top and it was a one man chair lift. It was the really scary kind too without any safety bars or anything to keep you from dropping a hundred meters to the ground. Anyway the lift worked just fine and even with the super scary looking guy at the mid station it did its job.
After a super cool 700 meters of vertical last run from the top to bottom, we were stoked. The snow wasn’t the greatest, but still it was a lot of fun. When we got to the hotel things changed. At the time you’re reading this, you probably have heard about the avalanche occurred in Lebanon. It happened in Cedars. Actually the French and Belgian guys I mentioned earlier where the same that got into this mayhem of nature. The atmosphere was sad and there were police and military personnel running everywhere. Later the evening the news finally came and they were bad. There had been ten people in the group and from them 4 got hit by the avalanche killing one and badly injuring two of them. We drank a bottle of wine and talked about everything related to avalanches and shared our own experiences from them. Finally it was time to go to bed and charge batteries for the second day in Cedars.
The morning came and I woke up at seven to have a nice long time to eat my breakfast and do some writing before the guys will get up. Well, I have to say that it was my first time in a hotel that I am the first one to be awake. Even if you count all the hotel management in, I was the first. The whole place was sleeping and I was sitting alone in a cold dark tea room. I got my writing done in peace, so a guess it was worth it to wake up early.
At around nine the light began to come and the weather was a lot worse than we thought it to be. The forecast had promised partly cloudy, but it was raining cats and dogs out there. So as the hotel people were finally up, we got our breakfast and ended up having it the long way. It was at around 1 o’clock when our driver came to pick us up. We called him, because there really wasn’t any reason to stay in Cedars because of the bad weather.
So we arrived at our hotel in Beirut at around 3 o’clock and the evening kind of slipped by walking in the city, taking some photos in the rain and trying to find a place to eat. The next day we had some filming to do and we visited a new mall uptown trying to find a new pair of jeans for Blumi. Later the evening we had something more fun to do.
There was a gig of “Who killed Bruce Lee”, the very same band I told you about in my earlier post from Beirut and they were playing next to our hotel. The bar practically was just under our hotel. We had an interview with Wassim, who is the vocalist in the band, about the music scene in Lebanon and specially Beirut. Afterwards he invited us to come see their gig, so why should we have said no. Once again they were killing it. Wassim is an amazing guitar player and when accompanied with his bassist, keyboard player and unbelievable drummer they form an amazing set-up. Hopefully one day we will see this band in Helsinki and after that playing for the big crowds all over the world. They play an excellent music with an excellent touch and feel in it. It was totally a shame that we had to leave in the middle of the gig to catch our transport to the airport.
Ou yeah, we were changing the country again, and now it was time to have a kebap or two. See you in Turkey.
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