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Published: September 1st 2009
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The summer weather over here hasn’t changed. Each day we are greeted with cloudless skies and before too long the temperature has climbed up into the 30’s. The best place to spend the hottest part of the day is in a river or lake and luckily we have been able to do this almost everyday for the past week.
Our travels through Austria took us to some interesting little campsites. The first was in the beautiful Salzkammergut which is famous for its lovely lakes. The tourist book claimed that there are 76 lakes in the area. Our campsite was a little lake-side farm that had been converted into a camp during summer. Our evening consisted of a swim in the lake, a game of Frisbee in the field until darkness fell and a great sleep under the apple trees.
What impressed most about the Salzkammergut area was the surprising lack of development. We were expecting ugly hotels but really found nice villages and loads of green space. The lakes are beautiful and the people in this region were really friendly. Yay Austria!
After natural wonder number one, we set off for our second sight. Our destination
was the little village of Werfen. The village was nice enough - the fortress on the hill looked interesting but our reason for visiting this area was for the Ice Caves at Eisriesenwelt.
The Ice Caves are situated up a mountain at a height of 1640 m. Apparently these are some of the largest ice caves open to the public. I had really been looking forward to seeing them and am glad to say that they didn’t come as a disappointment. The only way to visit the caves is by guided tour so past experience warned us to be there early. We were told that the first cable car up the mountain left the station at 8:30. By 8:29 we were waiting in the empty line and wondering why the café staff all looked so surprised to see us. Opps, slight communication break-down. The first cable car doesn’t leave until 9am so we spent half and hour looking like real nerds. Shame.
Not surprisingly we were in the first tour group of the day and luckily for us, there were less than 20 people in it. The caves aren’t lit up so you carry gas torches. Every now
and again the guide lights a piece of magnesium tape to illuminate a particular ice formation. It really is stunning.
The summer temperature inside the cave is a constant zero degrees so warm clothes are absolutely essential! I guess no one told a lot of the other tourists who arrived later in the day. Some of those girls must have been absolutely freezing in their hot pants and singlets!
There is no photography or filming allowed in the caves and the guide had to reinforce this one a few times. The lady behind me was determined to snap as many photos as possible and no one was going to stop her! She was unbelievable! I doubt they would have turned out without a tripod anyway.
When we had finished our tour the queues to enter the caves and board the cable cars were horrendous. I’m so glad we made the effort with the early start.
Our third natural wonder, Leitchinstein Gorge turned out to be a bit of a let down and most of this was probably because we had to visit in the busiest part of the day due to spending the morning at the
ice caves. It was pretty enough and the walkways through the rocks were impressive but the hordes of crowds made the whole thing a bit too much like hard work!
After spending the night in the Hohe Tauern we set off the next morning to see the big one: Krimmel Falls.
These certainly lived up to expectations and are recognised as the eighth most spectacular falls in the world and the biggest in Europe. Did you know that such a list exists? Well it does!
The path up to the top is a great climb - especially the last 40 minutes which is the steepest. We took a load of photos from the different viewpoints but they really don’t do the falls any justice. If you like waterfalls (go on, admit it…) then Krimmel falls should definitely be on your visit list!
After driving through miles of stunning Austrian scenery we slowly made our way towards Germany.
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