No such luck – but the rain (constant all day) didn’t affect us very much at all as we decided to visit one of Slovenia’s highlights – the Postojna Cave system. Although we’ve been in caves in many countries, its one of the most impressive we’ve ever seen, & only Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico come anywhere close. It was nice to see a different area of Slovenia on the way there - many tiled roofs with rocks on then instead of the chalet-type houses near Bled.


Virtually every tourist & school party in the region also chose to visit it today (you can hear the discussion: its raining, let’s go to a cave) so it was very busy, but to be honest the inside is so stunning it really didn’t matter. You ride a little Pleasure Beach type train in for 2 kms, have a guided tour for 1.5kms on foot then return on the train, and every inch is stunning – the train goes through tunnels & caverns which are worth the money in themselves, but the walk was just amazing. We didn’t even notice just how steep some of the paths were, (and they really WERE steep, virtually 45°), which speaks for itself.

There is every type of stalag: -mite, -tite, straws, veils, columns, combinations of all and in white, yellow, orange & black. The slopes are pretty steep as you go up then down, but the caverns are huge and just filled with formations - the largest cavern would hold 10,000 people. I took 98 pictures of rock formations......but you’ll be relieved to know I have put only a very small selection on here!

One of the incredible things we learned about today was the Proteus or cave salamander. It is completely colourless (as are all things that exist in caves due to lack of light) but is incredible because these cave ones produced eggs in Jan & the first baby was born 10 days ago – this is the first time scientists have ever seen live births in a cave. They are kept under tightly controlled conditions in a large protected tank, but in the Proteus cave next door you can actually see them. The pic is a scientific one as mine was merely pale pixels against dark ones :)


There are several exhibitions on site as well, so of course we looked at those, then drove 9km up the road to see Predjama Castle, also part of our ticket. This whole area is riddled with caves and Predjama is the largest cave castle in the world. It dates from the 1200s, and some of the interior has been restored showing life in the castle through the ages, including its torture chamber (with very unrealistic wax figure!).


Some of the interior walls were constructed, but several are part of the natural cave walls as the earliest part of the castle was built completely within the cave.Its most famous owner was Erazem Lueger, a Robin Hood kind of guy from the 1400s who withstood a siege for a year and a day by sneaking out of a secret tunnel to replenish his supplies & pelted his besiegers with cherries, then was killed by a cannonball whilst sitting on the privy! Make of that what you will....