Day 9 October 24

Early this morning we woke up, we had some spare time after breakfast and relaxed. The weather was almost 70 degrees now, nice for being outside!

Natural Environment

Today we went to Yanar Dag. Yanar Dag is a big mountain that is ON FIRE!! We drove out about 45 min. from our hotel to see this mountain.   We could see giant pillars of fire that went about 9 feet (about 3 meters) into the air. The Absheron Peninsula is known as the land of fire because of Yanar Dag and the different fires on the hill sides. Yanar Dag even translates to "burning mountain", this mountain is a continuous natural gas fire! This fire has been burning steadily for many years! A local story says that the fire as accidental lit by a shepherd in the 1950's. Most of these fire mountains are in Azerbaijan, and even the streams around it can be lit on fire!

Before that we went shopping in the downtown area of Baku, inside of the Park Bulvar Mall.  There were a wide range of stores, from a Nike shop to a Debenhams, which was like a Sears.  It was nice to be able to gain small trinkets and postcards to send home for our families.  I sent a great little postcard home showing the flame towers, I will talk more on that later! The stores there are quite similar to some back at home, though they had plenty of local stores as well. 

 

Some science behind the burning mountain, it is hydrocarbon gasses are seeping through the ground and reaching the surface and then becoming lit, and burning for a long time.  This is possible because the mountain sits on a large deposit of hydrocarbon gasses. These natural gases are everywhere and can be dangerous sometimes if you are not careful. 

 We were up there for a little while before we began to feel light headed because of the gases that were coming from the mountain. These flames are almost impossible to extinguish, even when we poured cold water on it, but the water was evaporated almost instantly! We decided to light some more gas that was coming out of the ground with a match to see what would happen, and it stayed lit for a long time. The fire stayed alight because of a ton of natural gas constantly coming up from beneath the ground. We stuck together when it began to get dark, and were rewarded with an awesome sight! The fires lit up the mountain in an amazing spectacle that proved visiting Azerbaijan was a great choice!