Ballouh Baatura,
or The Three Bridges Chasm in Balaa
The motorist driving from Laqlouq to Tannourine passes
by the little village of Balaa, nestling between terraced
apple-orchards to the right and a majestic mountain
massif on the left. A long time ago there was a blue
road sign there, riddled with bullet holes and twisted
by the vagaries of the weather, on which was written
Gouffre des Trois Ponts, The Three Bridges Chasm.
Glancing both right and left, one sees nothing, nothing
to indicate that one has only to go down for some
five minutes into the valley below on the left to
find oneself stopped, with bated breath, before the
fantastic panorama presenting itself to one's eyes:
three natural bridges, rising one above the other
over a height of one hundred metres and overhanging
the enormous mouth of a chasm plunging 250 metres
deep into the bowels of Mount Lebanon! During the
months of March and April, when the snows are melting,
one sees a mighty 100-metre cascade which thunders
and roars behind the three bridges before being swallowed
up in the earth.
The cave was explored for the first time in 1962,
by Lebanese speleologists or potholers, who halted
250 metres down at the level of a lake in a great
terminal hall. In 1988 a test with florescent dye
showed that the waters that disappeared in this gulf
emerged at the spring of Dalleh in Mgharet al-Ghaouaghir,
level with Kfar Hilda (Bsetine al-Assi).
Text: Dr. Hani Abdul-Nour
- Ballouh Baatura, or The Three Bridges Chasm in Balaa:
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- Ballouh Baatura, or The Three Bridges Chasm in Balaa:
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