16 April 2011

BEIRUT: The otherworldly caves of Jeitas grotto edged closer to becoming one of the New Seven Natural Wonders of the World this week, with the tourist attraction officially named a finalist in the competition.

This is a huge victory for us and for Lebanon that we have reached the finals, Nabil Haddad, coordinator of the National Campaign for Jeita, told The Daily Star. It is a historical moment that a Lebanese natural site is competing with the most important natural beauty locations in the world like the Grand Canyon and the Amazon Forest.

Beating off over 400 rivals including Mount Everest and Canadas Niagara Falls Jeita was selected as one of 28 hopefuls by a panel of international judges that have praised the Grotto and applauded Lebanon for the professionalism of its campaign.

Jeita is an amazing beauty sent by God, it is one of the most amazing sites that I have ever seen. What a historical and legendary place, said Albert Haddad a visitor to the Grotto in 2010 whose quote is one the few officially selected to promote the wonder.

Jeita is a compound of crystallized caves located 20 km north of Beirut in the Nahr Kalb Valley. The two giant underground vaults, which are easily accessed by tourists and attract around 400,000 visitors each year, are laden with an awe-inspiring display of stalactites and stalagmites, engrossing much of the 108-meter high chamber.

At almost 9-kilometers in length, the Grotto is home to one of the worlds biggest stalactites, measuring some 8.2 meters in height. It also harbors a rainbow-colored display of younger crystal-like formations, created by water and mineral deposits having sifted through rocks over hundreds of thousands of years.

I was truly blown away by the caves, said Ida Champion, a British tourist that visited the caves.

I felt teleported to a scene from Lord of the Rings. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. I just stood and stared mesmerized Seeing this changes your outlook on the world and makes you think about the true complexities that have gone into creating the world we live in.

Jeita provides drinking water for some 800,000 Beirut residents each day and although the water has to be treated, the grotto remains unpolluted in comparison to other underground water sources in Lebanon that are suffering as a consequence of climate change and environmental degradation. Its lower cave can only be navigated by small boats that ferry tourists down the eerie canal.

The program to preserve the Grotto is unlike anything else in the entire world, said Haddad. The cold lighting system in the Grotto preserves the [conditions in the cave] and has won international recognition and several international awards.

Jeita had to collect over one million email votes to pass to the semifinal stages which narrowed the number of contestants from 400 to just under 80. It also had to fight off strong competition from the Cedars which was also vying to be named as the official Lebanese entry.

We are convinced that the Grotto is beautiful and deserves to win, said Haddad. If Jeita wins it will be a huge profit for Lebanon, because it will become world-famous and will be great publicity for Lebanon, which will attract more tourists.

The competition is being coordinated with the Tourism Ministry, with the Interior Ministry also expected to play a larger role over the coming months.

Although no exact projections exist about the benefits of Jeita becoming one of the seven wonders, organizers hope that it will replicate the success of Petra if it wins at the end of the year. Tourism went up 60 percent after the ancient Jordanian rock city, once the capital city of the Nabataean civilization, was named one of the New Seven Man-Made Wonders of the World in 2007.

The concept behind the two parallel competitions comes from The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World which were considered the defining marvels of antiquity and include the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the giant statue of the Greek god Helios, known as Colossus of Rhodes, all of which have been destroyed by devastating earthquakes. Egypts Great Pyramids of Giza, built around 2,500 B.C., are the only wonder still visible today.

If Jeita wins, it will be immortalized and go down in history, said Haddad. It will have to be studied by geography students all over the world from the Americans to the Eskimos.

The journey ahead, however, remains long and filled with obstacles. Lebanon as a small country will have tremendous difficulty attracting sufficient amounts of votes to compete with larger countries.

A string of advertising campaigns have been planned, with a music video Jeita Grotto, the most beautiful grotto soon expected to appear on national television screens. But if Jeita is to stand a chance, help will be needed from all Lebanese expatriates, in addition to fellow Arab countries.

We are asking all Lebanese friends and Arab countries to vote [over the coming months] It is not political, it is a competition in beauty which unites the hearts of everyone, said Haddad.

Jeita faces tough competition from sites including one of the worlds largest waterfalls, the Iguazu Falls, which straddle the Argentina/Brazil border and the Great Barrier Reef, the world largest coral system consisting of 3,000 individual reefs stretching across 900 islands and 2,600 kilometers of Australias coastline.

The iconic Grand Canyon that reaches heights of 1,600 meters and was dug out by the Colorado River over a period of 6 million years, following its banks for 446 kilometers roughly the entire length of Lebanon is considered a firm favorite for the final seven.

Jeita is beautiful, but it is nothing compared to the Grand Canyon, said Jelena Manojlovic, a Slovenian tourist that visited the grotto. The vastness of the place and the feeling of facing something that much larger than yourself cannot be matched by Jeita, no matter how beautiful it is. Additional reporting by Reem Harb

Copyright The Daily Star 2011.