About two and a half hours drive from Beirut is the beautifully situated Maronite village of Bcharre. The village is perched around the edge of the spectacular Kadisha Gorge - a narrow fissure cut into the side of the Lebanese Mountains. The Gorge has long been a place of refuge for the Maronite Christians who settled here to escape persecution - not just from the early forces of Islam but also from the Crusaders, who regarded the various monothelite and monophysite Christians as heretics.
The ridge of mountains in the background continue up to al-Arz ("The Cedars") - the ski resort at the top of the valley.