Golden Hour

They call it the golden hour; the hour when the sun is about to set, and casts a golden glow all over the land. I learned that in my photography course. The golden hour is one of the best moments of the day to take pictures, because all pictures look good when the light is good. It’s one of my favorite time of the day as well. I happened to be hiking at that hour above Hamana, in an attempt to reach the top part of a waterfall.

It had rained all that day and the previous night so the ground was all wet and soggy. In order to get to the top of the waterfall we should have set out at 8 in the morning, but before you get everyone convinced of the meaning/purpose of a hike and subsequently organized, you’re some six hours further in my household. And then, in the end, you still end up going with only one guy.

So we never made it to the top of the waterfall. This river comes straight out of the mountain, fed by one of the many aquifers in Lebanon. It then runs all the way through a valley and ends (if I have my topography right) up next to the Forum of Beirut in some sort of a sewer canal, which goes by the name of Beirut River.

Over Christmas, an American climber fell to his death in a part of these mountains, the Sanine Mountains. That’s quite unusual, you don’t hear of many climbers here falling to their death. First of all because not many people do any serious climbing. And secondly, it hardly is the Alps over here. How on Earth do you manage to fall to your death here? You have to be really unlucky. But then again, luck does not always run your way. (More info here)