One of the Middle East’s greatest natural wonders, the astonishing nine kilometers long cave of Jeita Grotto has some splendid and stunning rock formations and is filled with beautiful stalactites and stalagmites.
It is a system of two separate, but interconnected, karstic limestone caves spanning an overall length of nearly 9 kilometres, which extends around 6km into the mountains 18km, northeast of Beirut. The caves are situated in the Nahr al-Kalb valley within the locality of Jeita, 18 kilometres north of the Lebanese capital Beirut.
The simply extraordinary upper cavern, accessed via a cable car from the ticket office, has strategically positioned coloured lights that showcase the stalactites and stalagmites in all their crystalline glory. The flooded lower caves, reached via a tacky toy train, are explored by rowing boat and are closed when the flood levels rise too high. It can only be visited by boat since it channels an underground river that provides fresh drinking water to more than a million Lebanese.
