3 November ’04, Wednesday. Yep, we heard… Yesterday we spent about 35 minutes on the road and found ourselves pitching camp in one of the smallest villages yet… Cirali. I doubt it very much if you can find it on your map. We are camped right in the middle of an orchard with a pension at the back. It is located right across the road from a long and wonderful beach. At one end of the beach is Olympos, an ancient Lycian city dating from the 2nd Century BC. The Olympians worshipped Valcan, the god of fire. Tonight, we walked up the mountain to Chimaera, where there are flames coming out of the mountain. There just happens to be some mysterious gases coming out of some cracks in the mountain which ignites as soon as it hits air. The whole area that flames came out of the ground covered about 20 square yards. We started our walk just before dark, and by the time we reached the flames, it was totally in darkness. Quite a site… Now back to Olympos…. Olympos sits on two mountain sides that are separated by a river. Both mountains boarder the Mediterranean Sea. As you walk down the beach from our campsite, you immediately see the ruins on the hills in front of you. As we walked around the first mountain side, we started to see more and more of the ruins. It gave us the feeling of “Indiana Jones”. The ruins were in heavy (and sometimes thick) trees and vines. As we started to explore, we were just blown away by what we found. It was really exciting. The Valcan empire didn’t last long, but the Romans were happy to come in and take over in the 1st Century BC until the 3rd Century AD it was ravished by pirate attacks. Olympos was finally abandoned in the 15th Century. As of today, this was the most fascinating site I have been to. Back to Chimaera… Mythology has it that Chimaera was the son of Typhon, himself the fierce and monstrous son of Gaia, the earth goddess. He was so frightening that Zeus set him on fire and buried him alive under Mt. Etna, thereby creating the volcano. Typhon’s offspring, the Chimaera was killed and buried here, where the flames are still visible today. Now in between visits to these two sites today, we spent a few hours just basking in the sun on the great beach here in Cirali. The water temperature is “perfect”, the sunshine is “perfect”, and we are “perfect…what else can I tell you…it was a “PERFECT DAY”… Tomorrow…maybe more beach time