I am currently on a 12-day trip through Syria with "Crazy Puffin Adventures". Today was sadly the second-last day - this country is simply amazing and the syrian people are all very happy to receive tourists again. No day went past without dozens of people saying the words "Welcome to Syria" to us with smiles on their faces 😄. I would have loved to have seen Palmyra before ISIS destroyed so much here, but there's luckily still much that survived here and it's planned to rebuild the Temple of Bel and the Temple of Bel-Shamin with the rocks that survived. Even though many people don't think so, Syria is now pretty much completely safe in the areas controlled by Assad. I didn't feel unsafe during any part of the trip. Actually, Palmyra was the only place where I didn't feel 100% safe, because even though I was told that the Army has removed all Mines, I couldn't help thinking that maybe they forgot some 😅. In places like Damascus, Homs, Aleppo, we often went out walking at night which is also totally safe here, other than in many other cities of the world. We could really see, why this country was such a tourist-magnet before the war and I hope that it will soon be one again :)

I had contacted the Owner of this Cache in advance and asked if I can replace the Cache in case it's gone. He agreed and so I came here with a film canister and a Logsheet. I didn't have high hopes of finding the original Cache as almost the whole Temple was destroyed, but when I came to the coordinates, I could see that the wall from the spoiler picture was still completely intact. I could not find the Geocache at the place of the spoiler picture though so I replaced it. It is now a few centimeters away, because at the original hiding place it felt like it could easily fall out. I will attach new spoiler pictures for the next cachers 👍. Coordinates don't need to be updated because it's in the same wall piece, centimeters away.

Here is a spoiler Video for the new hiding place: https://youtu.be/nBSWpDRVOho

By the way: a few hundred meters away, I could find the ORIGINAL container of the Geocache "Bel Shamin" (GC20797), even though ISIS blew up a Temple only 40 Meters away from it as well! It was still in a very good shape and I was the first one in the logbook since 2011. What an experience! Maybe the 3rd Geocache in Palmyra "Zenobia's Reward" (GC15MTE) is also still there - I sadly didn't have enough time to look for it, but after the find of Bel Shamin today, I think it is really possible!

Thank you for hiding this Cache and Greetings from Frankfurt/Germany 🇩🇪
Feluko

Dieser Cache ist seit mehr als 12 Monaten „momentan nicht verfügbar“; daher wird er automatisch archiviert. Er kann vom Besitzer jederzeit instand gesetzt und reaktiviert werden.

Back, when ISIS has gone...