Fire cats and friends (January 2023)

Isa and Arne and I reunited at the next beach, which was a gathering place for campers. I enjoy these types of places from time to time, as they feel like small communities. However, I couldn’t imagine how crowded it would be during high season.

We became friends with two nice guys from Turkey. We trained with bo staffs together and had great conversations on a variety of topics. They even gifted us peppers, whisky, clay bowls, a cooling bag, and a camping table. A truly unique combination of items. And when the battery of their car had run out of power Rosinante was able to help jump start it.

There lived a beautiful and lovely cat at that spot. I didn’t know if it was a stray one or if she belonged to another camper but either way we had a good time and during one day she lived with me in Rosinante. I caught myself thinking if I could just take her with me. 

One day, I went on a hike to an old lighthouse and afterwards, I headed to a very special place: the natural fires of Mount Chimaera. It was a truly bizarre place. Flames were coming out of gaps between stones. The source of these fires was natural gas, and it was quite entertaining to blow them out and light them again with a lighter. Barbecuing there was also a lot of fun as well. I couldn’t help but imagine what it might have been like to discover these natural gas deposits in a time before human-made delivery systems for gas, fuel, and electricity existed. It would have been the perfect place to build a town in a game like Civilization.

Maybe the cats who lived there had the same idea and were planning to build their own cat civilization. They didn’t seem to be afraid of the fire ghosts that occasionally emerged from the flames, after all.

At the upper fires of Mount Chimaera, I met a nice French cyclist and we had an interesting conversation about traveling by bicycle and the differences between different forms of travel. Like me, she had already been traveling for over a year. I felt a kind of attraction between us, and when we parted ways, I thought that we might have missed something. Later, when I was inside Rosinante and searching for a place to stay for the night using my smartphone, the nice cyclist appeared out of nowhere. Although I had previously felt like we might have missed something, I felt the desire to find a place to stay on my own. And after I found a place to stay, I thought it would have been nice to continue our conversation.