Punkva Cave

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R July 4 – Our original plan for yesterday was to visit the Punkva cave, but my guide book said that this tour can sell out weeks in advance in the summer, and that we should call ahead. Luckily Yvonne had a friend who could do just that, and found out that it was sold out for yesterday but we could reserve tickets for today, so we did. We took an early train to Blankso and then found that there was no bus going to the caves at that time, so we looked for a taxi. There were no taxis nearby, so we went back to the train station to ask about it and luckily the man spoke English and called a cab for us. So nice. Once we arrived, we picked up our tickets and walked the 15 minutes to the cave entrance. The cave tour took about an hour and was very good. It was also in Czech, so instead I took pictures and “translated” for Yvonne from a mix of what I remembered about caves and what the pamphlet we had said. The caves were beautiful though. The tour ended with a boat ride out on the underground river, with another stop to see one more area along the way. It was great, and not at all cheesy like I feared. At this point we grabbed some potato pancakes, then walked 2km uphill to see the top of the Macocha Abyss which forms a 140m deep sinkhole that we had seen from the bottom at the caves. We also had lunch up there and then decided to hike back the 9.5 km to Blankso, which took us a little more than two hours. We stopped for groceries on the way home and then changed our mind about what we would cook once we got home. We ended up making frittatas in a muffin pan, which turned out to be quite cute and delciious. Frittatas are my new go to food. Yesterday we watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory and tonight I introduced Yvonne to True Blood. Now she’s hooked.

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