Underground action
Leaving the foggy Bled behind
We started our third day in Slovenia by waking up way too early for our taste and catching a bus to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. Inna is always hungry in the morning so she decided to risk it and ran to the bakery nearby to buy some breakfast for us before the bus left. Luckily she was fast enough and we got to the bus in time! Our mission for the day was to visit the famous Škocjan caves that are also on the UNESCO world heritage list.
In Ljubljana we didn't have much time to spare so we just bought tickets to Divača and hopped on the fully packed bus. On the way Inna talked with a local guy who spoke fluent Russian, but I didn't understand much of it and concentrated on eating the goods Inna had bought earlier in the bakery. About four hours after leaving Bled we arrived in the small town of Divača, which is the closest reasonably sized place to the Škocjan caves. As we got out from the bus a local man approached us and offered us a taxi ride to the caves, which are located roughly four kilometers from the Divača bus station. The weather was really poor so we agreed to ride with him and pay the ten euros he wanted.
It's not allowed to enter the cave system on your own, so we had to wait for a bit less than two hours for the guided tour to start at 13:00. Fortunately there was a small waiting room with a couple of benches where we were able to spend the time watching some series on the laptop. We've only done it a couple of times so far but it really is a great way to spend a couple of extra hours if you happen to carry a laptop around. Just be sure to have enough movies or episodes for all the long waits you might encounter!
The guided tours to the caves are rather expensive at either 15 or 20 euros per person. For fifteen euros you get to walk through the underground canyon and for twenty you get to follow the Reka river underground. Unfortunately the longer and more expensive tours weren't available in March so we had to take the shorter one. The whole group of tourists was split into two smaller groups depending on the language. One group got to listen to the guide in Slovenian and English and the other one in Italian and German. The guide did his job pretty well, but it really wasn't the most important part of the tour because the cave itself was so magnificent!
This photo certainly doesn't show the real beauty of the cave.
The cave system is huge and hundreds of thousands of years old. The biggest "rooms" we saw were hundreds of meters long and over a hundred meters high. At times I expected to see Balrog coming for us. It wasn't allowed to take photos inside the cave, but I got to admit that I tried to take a couple in one place. My camera wasn't really up to the task though, so you just got to go and see this place for yourself! Almost in the end of the tour there's a beautiful bridge where you can admire the Reka river flowing perhaps 50 meters below you. I can only imagine how amazing it must have been for the first explorers in the beginning of the 20th century to discover something like this! The entrance fee is pretty high and in a way it sucks that you can't go there on your own, but I would still recommend the place without a doubt!
After getting out from the caves we visited a nice viewpoint on the hill and took a free shuttle bus back to Divaĉa and a normal bus from there to Ljubljana. Rain didn't give us any break during the whole day so in the evening we didn't do anything special except for a short stroll around the central Ljubljana.
The natural entrance to the cave
Above the entrance
Nature sometimes makes us feel so small.
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