Day 7: Caving and Kayaking

The weather today was so hot but it’s been great to have beautiful days for all our activities!

This morning’s activity was caving which I have to admit I didn’t really enjoy. We were underprepared as we’d not been told what to expect (i.e. I would have worn hiking shoes, not runners!). Slovenia is home to many, many caves (over 11,500!), so we drove down to the base of a hill and parked. We then had a 1 hour near vertical ascent up to the mouth of the cave which was very steep and covered in loose rocks! It was very hot by the time we had climbed 300 metres altitude up the slope! The cave itself while having some beautiful parts was definitely nothing special, compared to the beautiful caves I’ve been lucky enough to see in Australia. It was very, very muddy and slippery with a large proportion of the stalactites having been broken off by past tourists. We were only in the cave for 45 minutes before we then had the steep climb back down the hill. Not my best experience so far.

After a rest back at the hotel I decided to rent a kayak down on the lake. They don’t seem

to have much concern for what safety in Slovenia as they teased me when I asked to borrow a lifejacket (they are meant to be only for non-swimmers which I’m definitely not) and then just let you take off without checking if you can actually paddle! Since I could paddle, I went out to the island in the middle which has a church on it and although I didn’t get out, I paddled around the island which was really nice. I then came closer to the shore to look at the chalet houses along the edge of the lake. Getting back to return the kayak was a bit of a challenge as I was paddling straight into the wind.

I then went back to the hotel and had a rest before I met up with the rest of the group for a picnic dinner down by the water. We had a whole selection of cheese, meats, bread, fruit and sweet pastries as well as Sangria made by our Spanish trip leader. After dinner we headed back to the hotel where were relaxing until we heard fireworks at about 9:55pm so Karen, Kalen, Alex and myself all sprinted down to

the lake to see if we could see them but when we were 30 metres away they stopped which was a shame. So we walked back up to the hotel and went to bed.