Skocjan Caves!

Today was my 2nd favorite day! We went to a HUGE cave called the Skocjan Cave and got a work out going up and down stairs—inside and outside of the cave! It was amazing! There is a river running through the entire cave, too—in fact it’s what made the cave! The cave is located about 40 minutes inland from the hotel, so it was a little cooler there but inside the cave it was in the 50’s and felt AMAZING!! They told us to bring a light jacket and wear pants and I can see why! The river is called the Reka River which means “river” in Slovenian—original! Hahaha! There were hundreds and hundreds of stalactites and stalagmites in this cave and some of them were 350 million years old! That’s hard for my brain to comprehend! They can tell how old they are by their size. If they are active and still growing, they are white—due to the limestone color. If they are inactive, they are red due to the iron. The river is pretty large and you can hear the water flowing rapidly through all the different chambers—it was pretty loud in some places! We crossed a bridge inside the cave that hangs about 165 feet above the river and there is another 165 feet of cave above you. It’s HUGE!! This cave system is crazy and apparently Slovenia has a lot of them—the guide called his country Swiss cheese because of all the holes! This tour was definitely worth going on and we got quite the workout! Coming up out of the cave took the longest and it was pretty uphill for a long time, with a lot of stairs! It was a warm day, so we worked up a pretty big sweat! I finally figured out (on the last day we were there) to take the paper towels from the fancy hotel bathrooms and wet them with water to wipe off after these crazy tours where we sweated so much! They are really thick and it felt so good to wipe off our face and neck with cool water after the tour! When we got back to our room we showered and got all nice and clean and cool for the Farewell dinner—which was really nice!  Headin' home tomorrow!!!  It will be a very long day!!!