Slovenia - Postojne

---

Postojna

Monday 25th April


The caves at Postojna are one of the largest cave systems in Europe. It’s a limestone cave system with more than 20km. of spectacular caverns of stalactites and stalagmites. They are well worth a visit.
A couple of people from the hostel where I’m staying in Ljubljana have done all the work in finding out how to get there and back so I cheekily invite myself along. Getting there is actually quite easy from Ljubljana. {Getting to most places in Slovenia is quite easy – it’s a small country with good transport links}. There are regular buses from Ljubljana to Postojna. The journey takes about an hour and then it’s a 20 minute walk to the caves.
On the day that we visit the caves there are a lot of visitors. It’s Easter Monday so that may have affected the numbers – but then, every day seems to be a public holiday in Slovenia! We have to queue for a while but they seem to cope well with the large number of visitors {But they do have 20km of caves to lose them in!}

A tourist train takes us 2km into the caves. I begin to think that this would have been a good place to come later in the week to escape the Royal Wedding. From here there are guides speaking about 5 different languages walking us through about another 2 km. of caves. The formations of stalactites and stalagmites really are quite spectacular – I’ve not seen anything on this scale before. The caves are also home to over 90 species of life. These include the rather strange looking Proteus Anguinus, apparently the largest troglodytic amphibian in the world, which is unique to these caves.
We also make a visit to the Vivarium where there are several cave species kept. I have to say that after the spectacular sights in the caves I find this a bit of an anti-climax. This is more of a place for someone who wants to tell the difference between a woodlouse and a cave woodlouse.

---