As the forecast was for rain, I went to Postojna caves. This was about an hour away on the bus.
I’d paid for the combined vivarium and caves ticket, as I was curious to see the Olm, which is a weird cave dwelling amphibian. I did manage to spot a couple in their aquarium, but it wasn’t possible to take a photo of them as it’s almost totally dark. Instead, here’s a model, and a photo of the display of cuddly olms:
The rest of the vivarium was kind of disappointing – largely because it turns out most other cave dwelling creatures are small insects that don’t move very much. I’m not sure whether I wasn’t looking hard enough, or whether some of the tanks were empty! Having said that, the explanations of what was (allegedly) in the tanks was well done.
The caves themselves were really spectacular. You go on a narrow gauge train for about 5km to take you to the main show-caves.
The rest of the tour was on foot. It felt rather rushed, as we were herded round a train-load at a time
The great hall, which is sometimes used for concerts
There’s a tank of Olms on the tour, so I needn’t have bothered with the vivarium.
After the tour it was a case of exit through the subterranean gift shop:
This made the being rushed round particularly galling, as they’d left plenty of time to look at the shop before the train came to take us back to the surface.
It was a good day out, but rather expensive given how long you get in the caves (~€30 without the vivarium).
When I left the caves it’d been raining quite heavily. On the way back to Ljubljana the heavens opened. Fortunately we got stuck in traffic and by the time we arrived it’d stopped raining.
That evening there was a huge thunderstorm, which I think I mentioned on the Ljubljana post. Lots of hail.
