On our trip to Beirut, Julie and I visited Jeita Grotto, Lebanon's most visited tourist attraction. The caves were a finalist in the New Seven Wonders of the World competition (though they did not win the coveted "Wonder" title. They will have to settle for "Mild Awe"). As a photographer, I hate when places charge me $20 to enter and then tell me I can't take any photos. I do understand that sometimes flash can be damaging, but in cave? And if that is the concern, make people turn off their flashes. So we enter the cave after being damn near patted down for cameras and even mobile phones. We then follow a raised concrete platform that takes us about a kilometer into the cave. About every hundred feet, stationed very strategically, are photo cops. It is their only job, and they seemed quite adept at spotting the distant glow of a mobile LCD. They sent person after person, including me, back to the start of the cave to lock up their illegal devices. OK, fine, I knew I was breaking the rules. But as we continued walking, people in front of us would hang on thousand year old stalagmites, throw gum wrappers on the ground, and the kicker, featured in the photo I managed to take, throw copious amounts of coins and even paper money into the cave pools. Not a word from the cave staff! I was livid, and Julie quickly grew tired of my rantings about injustice and hypocrisy. Fair enough, but these arbitrary rules are, unfortunately for my temperament, extremely common in the Middle East. The irony of the no photos in the cave rule is that it works against the agenda of the Ministry of Tourism, who I was told was responsible for the rule. Their overriding agenda is to increase tourism to a country that doesn't have the best image to most Westerners. If people were allowed to take pictures, they would end up on social media sites, like Facebook, Photobucket, blogs, etc. Lebanon has essentially shunned free advertising to make a few extra bucks on postcard sales, and for that stupidity, I will blog!
No comments:
Post a Comment