Slovenia is full of famous caves. We had been warned that Postojnska, the one we chose to visit (based on its proximity to our planned route) was the most disneyfied of the major caves, but we figured it was still worth a visit. Indeed, the rumors of disneyfication were only slightly exaggerated. It’s not like they dressed the stalagmites up in character costumes or anything.
The giant crowds, souvenir stands, and cheap restaurants around the entrance to the caves certainly gave off the air of a big tourist trap. We bought our overpriced (20 EUR) tickets and were filtered onto a giant people-mover. It inspired us to start singing “It’s a small world”; that is, until it started moving. The speed and lack of safety features made it clear we weren’t in an American theme park at all. The temptation to put one’s hands up roller-coaster-style was tempered by the fear of stalactites and occasional low ceilings.
Such massive people-moving capacity is necessary when your cave is visited by 600,000 visitors per year (it was a lot more pre-1989). Luckily the cave is absolutely massive. None of the photos we took began to capture the scale of the large caverns. The tour took us through about 4 kilometers of the more than 10-kilometer-long cave. Luckily we were allowed to walk through a good part of it so we could actually admire the scenery. And my goodness was it worthy of admiration.
If you ever want to play German tourist and visit Mallorca, there are some stunning caves of this sort on the southeast coast.
http://www.cuevasdeldrach.com/main_eng.html
Tourist-trappy, but at least you get a good guide through. The concert at the end sounded like it would be hokey, but it was actually quite beautiful. They float along in small boats playing classical music in a huge natural amphitheater.
You can tell we’re not fully assimilated in Germany yet – we’ve never vacationed in Mallorca. Perhaps someday…
Very impressive photos! I’ve never visited a cave before, and I’ve often wondered if I’d feel safe in there.
CS – the only time I started wondering about safety was when the guide was telling us how the “mountain” we were standing on was created when a gigantic chunk of ceiling fell down. But surely they have experts who know that the caves as they are now are structurally safe. Right? Maybe I don’t want to know the answer to that.