Feb 20, 2006 →
By
WALEG
→
Filed Under:
Europe
Looking for a true adventure? As a young boy of thirteen, I lived near Adana, Turkey. The year was 1967 and my favorite place in the entire world back then was Silifke, a small town on the Mediterranean Sea that boasted not one, but two Crusader castles. One commanded a shore position between two white sand beaches; the second was perched atop a small island off-shore. We spent as much as a week at a time camped on the beach in our trusty Volkswagen camper. Dad relaxed, Mom made sure we had food, and my brothers and I explored the castle by the sea.
I remember there being two large pits in the rocky landscape we called "Heaven and Hell". The larger of the two (Heaven) was probably 200 feet deep, accessed by a trail that wound to the bottom and led to a cave where there were ruins of some ancient people. More ancient ruins ran along the rim of Heaven. The pit (Hell) was much smaller, maybe a hundred yards across, and led up to the straight walled pit which had no bottom access. We were told there was a path cut into the stone where the Romans sent early Christians to their deaths by plunging to the bottom of the pit
If you are an adventurer, I challenge you to find this place and send word here so that we might know if my memory tells the truth, or whether it was all just the figment of a young boy's imagination. Good hunting.
By guest writer Kathleen A.
oh yeah ive been to silifke too when i studied in turkey. it is a really nice place actually these are the times that ill never forget with my friends!
My dad is from Silifke and we go there very often. Your memory tells the truth. The ruins inside the "Heaven" include a 5th century cave church, or more appropriately a cave chapel.
This cave (Heaven) leads to an underground stream of cold water. Last summer I couldn't see the water but could listen to this underground river when I put my ears on the rock walls. It sounded really strong. It was this river which ancient people called the Styx, and believed to flow through the underworld of the dead.
As for the "Hell": Mythology relates that when
Zeus defeated the hundred headed monster Typhon, he imprisoned it here.
And more importantly, they found out a third cave (Wishing and Asthma Cave) nearby which probably wasn't discovered by 1967. This one has really interesting calcite crystals.
I lived in Turkey from 1991 - 1992 and got to take two trips to Heaven and Hell. I took some beautiful pictures. The pictures of Hell didn't do it justice. You can not tell how deep it really is by the picture. I went there with my Archeaology class the first time. Our teacher told us the Zeus story. I wish I had known about the third cavern while I was there. Maybe someday I will get to return.
heh. Actually am just trying to hitch there. Wasn't sure how far east of Silifke the caves were, but getting a fair idea its no much more than twenty (am in somewhere near Anumur, t'will be a nice day hitching along the coast).