May 22 Side trip to Slovenia

Thanks to an invitation from Metka Kuhar, a colleague at the University of Ljubljana, I had a chance to take a side trip to another part of the world I had never visited. The lecture, on metaphor, of course, went well, and was a lot of fun. Having a very long lunch with some of Metkas colleagues was also quite interesting. After that one day of work, the rest of the weekend, Friday through Sunday, was open for some sight-seeing. Renting a car was not a very good option, since I had to be at the airport Monday morning before the rental agencies open, and the ones downtown are not open on Sunday. That left me to deal with train and bus information.
Metka proviided me with the URL for the bus company's on-line information service, along with a stack of brochures and printouts about interesting things to see and do in Slovenia. I began by leafing through the brochures and ruling out the things not served by public transportation, hikes above the spring snow line, and things far enough away that they would take more than a two or three hour bus or train ride to reach. Then I started looking up schedules and figuring out what I could reasonably hope to do. I immediately ran into one source of recurrent frustration: The university's quarters for visitors, part of graduate residence, has wireless set up in such a way that you need not only the key but also an account name and password, and if you haven't actually transmitted anything for about 5 minutes, it automatically logs you out so you have to log in again. While trying to figure out bus timetables, etc., it is easy to be apparently inactive for five minutes - especially Slovenian schedules, which are set up in such a way that you have to scroll through every town in the country for both your origin and your destination. So deciding on what to visit and working out when to leave to get there turned out to be quite frustrating and time-consuming. However, I finally decided on trips for Friday and Saturday - I decided I would have to work Sunday out after I got home on Friday or Saturday.
On Friday I got up early and walked to the bus station, about a 2 block walk. After an hour and a half ride, I reached the little village of Divaca, near Skocjan Cave. The information in the tourist information, both on-line and in the printed brochures, was confusing; it said that there was a 45 minute walk through the woods to the cave entrance, and in the spring tours are given at 10 and 1:30. Since the bus arrives at 9:30, there is an obvious problem. I and two others on the bus who were headed for the cave asked 2 or 3 people how to get there and they all said the shuttle-bus, which leaves at 10! None of them seemed to see why that was a problem. Turns out they wait the tour for the shuttle-bus, so the tour doesn't actually start at 10, it starts about 10:10.
I was disappointed - the rules include no photography inside the cave. Other members of the group ignored that inconvenient rule, and had I brought the camera that is better in low light I probably also would have. That was the only aspect of the visit that was at all disappointing. Skocjan Cave is incredible. The main attraction is reached via a series of chambers that would be quite spectacular in themselves, with stalactites and stalagmites but also many other interesting formations, including thin little calcium curtains and several flat, thin slabs of rock that were perched on other, sometimes smaller rocks. As water dripped on them, calcite built up into a mound, and stalactites had formed around the edges so that they looked like huge porcini mushrooms.
After walking through several of these chambers, we began to hear the roar of a river, the waterfall we had been promised, echoing through the passages. As we passed though yet another domed chamber (100 feet and more above our heads), the water grew louder and louder - but nothing prepared us for the actuality of the underground river. In addition to its huge domed chambers, the cave has a gorge running through the center, a split in the rock that is over 100 meters deep, and perhaps 15 or 20 meters wide, with absolutely vertical walls into which the park service has cut paths and stairs (in many cases they have instead built walkways projecting out over the chasm). The waterfall was visible as a silvery glow near one end of the chasm, which curves around so that it enters toward you and exits to your left. The deep narrow gorge complete with waterfall and rapids would be enough in themselves, but there is much more to this part of the cave. The cave periodically floods, and about once in 100 years it fills to the top with rushing, churning water. Where the water turns the sharp bend in the chasm, it forms vortexes around the stalactites and stalagmites, and the circular rush of water erodes them both into spirals and into other very unusual shapes.
The path crosses a bridge over the chasm, winds around the far side, and finally turns upward along a side passage toward the exit, which passes through a huge chamber that has been opened by a collapse to leave a doorway like the entry to some magnificent palace. Beyond the doorway is a huge sink-hole, the remains of a very large collapsed chamber that has several other chambers opening into it - later, on a hike around this sink hole I was able to see and photograph several of them. In the summer there is a great-looking path that leads off around and up the side of this sink-hole, but it is blocked off in winter and spring (probably for safety reasons. The path we took leads along the sheer side of the sink hole, across another opening into the cave, through which water (apparently the same stream) emerges, to a funicular that takes visitors to the top.
There is another, bigger but more touristy, cave nearby that I had thought to visit, but the bus I expected did not come and I ended up waiting an hour and a half for another bus, which I just took back into town. Even though all I did was visit the one cave and walk through the woods back to Divaca, it was a great day. I capped it off by going to a restaurant beside the river downtown and having pork tenderloins with morels.
This morning I got up early again, and took a bus to the lakeside town of Bled. All week the forecast has been saying the weekend would be sunny and mid 70s - but this morning it said chance of rain, and indeed as we neared Bled there was obvious heavy rain in the foothills above the town, and the streets were wet from recent rain. I began the day by setting out for Vintgar Gorge, 2.5 km away. In Bled, the signs were not very good and I had a hard time finding the way out of town, but as soon as you reach the outskirts, the signs are abundant and clear. It is a nice walk through suburbs and farmland, with views of the spectacular mountains and so-green forests and fields all around. Slovenia is entirely mountainous, only 10% is cultivated, and the rest is lush forest. It is quite lovely.
I reached the parking lot at the entrance to the National Park just behind a tour bus, so followed at least 30 people through the ticket booth and entry gate. I hurried to get past them and on down the trail beyond the sound of their gabbing, had to stop to put the rain fly on my day pack when the light drip turned to light rain, then began to simply enjoy the walk. The gorge is like many I've seen in the U.S., but extreme in its narrowness, steep walls, and general impassability. The Slovenia Park Service (or somebody) has dealt with the impassability by building a combination of board walks and cantilevered walkways the full length of the narrow part of the gorge, which affords the opportunity to experience the gorge (it could not possibly be done on foot otherwise - the water is too deep and swift even to think of wading. A really good whitewater kayaker could probably negotiate it, but my sense was that it is rather narrow in several passages for a raft. It would be an exciting ride.) When I reached the end, I turned around and walked back, much slower than I had walked down in the first place, soaking in the enchantment of the place. Fortunately pictures were allowed here and I have uploaded a sampling.
Back in Bled I stopped for lunch, then set out to walk the 7 km. trail around the lake. The lake is noted for several features, principally the castle atop a sheer-sided promontory near the center of town and a church built on a small island near the far end of the lake. I was able to get several really nice pictures of bot of these, and also, as the clouds finally began to lift, a few pictures of the mountains in the background. To get a sense of what Bled is like, think of McCall Idaho with the White Clouds in the background and a castle on the shore. It was a great outing and a really nice day.