Jul 2009

Kranj where we wake up in the morning just happens to be about half hour from Postojna Caves and an hour from Lipica so we head that direction.
Postojna Caves are a system of caves that are about 20 kilometers long and a national historic landmark. Entrance to the caves is on a cave train that goes just fast enough to make it exciting. The rock is cut just high enough to go over your head. We go about 2 km into the cave before getting out for the guided tour. The system is HUGE and the caves are so much more interesting than any I have ever been in before.

They are also home to the Human Fish or Proteus Vivarium which is a blind salamander that can live on land or water. The eyes are atrophied and the gills are red. They are very strange looking things that can be up to 12 inches long. They are in a special exhibit and you get flashlights so you can see them.

When the cave experience is finished we finish the drive to Lipica, where we were supposed to have been last night. Lipica is the home of the Lipizzaner stallion.

I first saw these horses when my dad took me to see them perform in Hershey park so they have been special to me ever since. It is amazing to be at the place where it all started.

Lipica used to breed the horses for the Spanish Riding School in Vienna but now they are bred just for Lipica which has there own riding school. Here as opposed to in Vienna you can tour the farm.

Mares and foals are kept in pastures together and it was a treat to see the foals playing together.

We didn't get to see the stables where the school horses are kept but we did see where the ones who didn't pass muster as a show horse. These are used for tourists to ride.

The signs on their stalls display their names, first name from father and second name from mother. Females only get the mothers name.

Next we see the most beautiful and oldest stables where the retired horses get to stay. These horses still get to go to pasture daily. The stud farm has about 400 horses here and they are all beautiful.
After I got my fill of horses we took off towards home where we arrived at 0230. Do we really have to go back to work now?

This was some of our morning view.

After the night dive we sleep in a little before packing up the car. The ferry doesn't return us to split until 1315 so we have a bit of time to enjoy a few more rays and have one more short lunch with Jenny. She went diving again this morning. When her group was asked where they would like to dive they said the blue hole and another location. When they actually went on the dive it was to a totally different place. Atleast we hadn't wasted any more money on that dive shop.

The inlet we had to walk around. Our hotel was on the right side and the restaurants, etc on the left.

We hit the ferry back to Split and kept driving back to Kranj and our Creina hotel. We were actually supposed to end up in Lipica but due to there being two of them in the GPS we ended up at the wrong one.

So we decided that today would probably be a better dive day because we are doing our Deep dive and a wreck dive. We ended up doing both of these in the morning. The deep dive was to about 27 meters and we did get to see some more colorful corals. There were also a few more fish swimming around including schools of sardines and these tiny bright blue fish that were quite pretty. The wreck dive was basically a sunken restaurant boat and basically looked like a bit of trash at the bottom of the ocean. We did see a lobster here though!

Divers taking a course at the front of our hotel.
The afternoon was off for us but spent running a bunch of errands like getting our ferry ticket for the return, money to pay the dive shop and doing our "homework" to get our advanced certificate.
We were going to give the Adriatic one more chance to show us something cool on a night dive. Supposedly people see rays and octopus among other things more easily at night. NOt for us however. We saw a pretty cool white fish with blue fins but Curt's flash light went out. THere were about 6 people on the night dive and 3 of the flashlights went out. Doesn't bode well for croatia divers. It was still a neat experience and not as scary as I thought it would be. We are now advanced divers so atleast if I couldn't get tons of photos of colorful fish atleast I got a certificate.

So okay....we just finished the Open Water Diver course a few weeks ago, should we really be in the Advanced Diver course??? I think not. My first dive is pretty much evidence that I shouldn't......
So 7:30 in the morning we are to be at the dive shop to start. There is lots of confusion and questions as about 8 of us assemble dive gear and wiggle our way into wet suits. The first destination is a site called the Aquarium. This is to be the AWARE dive portion of the course. AWARE means to think about and be cautious of what impact we have on the environment and also to identify fish. Sounds like a place that would have an abundance of fish, right??? Well this is the best thing we saw...

After a less than thrilling dive in which my weight belt falls off and I fail to sink requiring the instructor to put his weight plus a rock in my weight belt, we are back on the boat.
THe second dive is a "drift dive" at Smugglers cove. Sounds cool right...not so much. A drift dive is supposed to be when you get into the water you immediately start to drift and watch the fish without much effort of swimming. However there was really no drift or fish. However I had fixed my weight belt and felt much better about it.
Back at the dive shop we get lunch around the corner before our afternoon "navigation dive". This is the worst of them all because it is right in front of the hotel and the visibility when we all land on the bottom is next to zero.
Today we did meet a pretty cool british girl who I am very jealous of. She is 22 and was teaching english in Japan. Now she is taking 2 months to travel her way from Japan to England. She gets some pizza with us at a place called Alpha which is where the dive instructors usually eat. One seems to have a crush on her so we take her with us to get some ice cream. THe guy at the ice cream shop runs it like a Japanese Steakhouse and turns my cone upside down and throws one at me! Quite a show!

At 1015 this morning our ferry leaves the beautiful port of Split and heads to Vela Luka on the island of Korcula. The ferry takes about 3 hours and is a nice smooth ride. It doesn't take us long to find the hotel we have booked as part of a package with the scuba diving shop. Hotel Posejdon is a basic hotel but with a view over the inlet and the scuba shop next door.
We are not sure if we are to dive that afternoon so we go right to the shop. This is when we realize that this shop is the most chaotic and unorganized business we have ever seen. Our first hour is spent with Bobby the owner trying to convince us to do the Advanced diver course while at the same time taking care of other customers and answering the phone. Somehow he still gets us and we are set up with equipment to start our dives the next day. The afternoon is spent relaxing by the water with our books. The different part is that many beaches in Europe do not seem to have sandy areas like we do. Here there is an area of tiny pebbles but most people are laying on the cement right up against the water. Luckily we brought our chairs!
We walked to town for dinner which is actually quite a long way. Despite the walk it is nice to be away... and WARM!!