Sunday 13^th June

So after all the problems around the fleet with ‘Syrian Tummy’, poor Lesley has developed ‘Beirut Bum’ which has all the same symptoms! However, this did not keep her back from setting off with Trevor and the crew of Rumpus for a second day of touring by car.

Sarah decided to do the big food shopping trip that was needed and set off on foot to the nearest supermarket, however in contrast to what she had been told, everywhere was closed so in order to get to the other supermarket she made her way up to the main road to hail a taxi and found instead a bus waiting. She tried to check that this was going to the right place, but the answers were fairly vague, nevertheless she hopped on board and was dropped off fairly close to her destination, but still needed to walk back to an exit point before she could make her way finally to the store after one and three quarters hours of travelling, most of which had been on foot. She managed to do most of the shopping here as planned and in her first bit of luck of the day was able to hitch a ride back to the marina on the rally’s tour bus that was passing by.

The town that we are based in here is called Jounieh and was a sleepy fishing village until the 1970’s and the height of the civil war in Beirut, when tens of thousands of Christians moved out here to avoid the bloodshed.

T & L headed into Beirut and visited the National Museum before driving to Tripoli (the one in Lebanon!) where they discovered rather more poverty than had been in evidence elsewhere. But like us the main topic of conversation was the driving experience where they witnessed a three lane carriageway with 6 lanes of traffic squeezed in!

Had to endure a bit of friendly banter from the Aussies who beat England at rugby last night and the less said about the football team the better. This left me with a dilemma as to who to support in the Germany v. Australia football tonight!

Quite a few boats are leaving the rally here for various reasons as well as some of the crews so a few sad farewells have been said prior to tomorrow’s trip south.

But the big shock news has been hearing through a third party that Demokan, who was the owner/manager of Yacht Marine, the marina in Marmaris, was shot dead last night in Fethiye, Turkey. We have no further information although the rumour mill has swung into full action! This was the marina where we kept Serafina last year and most of us who spent any time there would have had a friendly chat with him at some time.

In yesterday’s log I failed to mention about the range of buildings in Beirut city. Certainly there are the extensive new building projects that are transforming the city, but you do not have to look far to see buildings and statues even, bearing the scars of war riddled with bullet holes and of course there was the recent car bombing here in 2005 which was the assassination of the former Prime Minister, Rafiq Hariri. This has left two huge shells of former hotels astride the main road with a memorial to mark the site of the bomb. The Syrians were blamed for this and they were forced to reluctantly withdraw all their troops from the country as a direct result. Israel last invaded Lebanon in 2006 in retaliation for an attack and kidnappings by Hezbollah and pounded the Lebanon for 33 days from the air. Right now though the country is still sitting on something of a knife edge with Hezbollah in open war with Israel and the Lebanese government somewhere in the middle.