středa 8. července 2015

Koneprusy caves

To escape heat during the last prolonged weekend  we visited longest cave complex here in Czech republic - Konepruske jeskyne (Koneprusy caves)

It was perfect -  temperature outside was 38 degrees celsius, inside was refreshing 10 degrees. It was nice cave, and although sign on the office saying "500 stairs" was terrifying at start, it was ok - even for such a fatty as I am now...:)

Dictionary:

Stalagmite - grows from the ground
Stalaktite  - hanging from the ceiling
Stalagnate - when those two join into one

Best experience: Temperature. Someone would say Yeah, you ungrateful prick next time go to some restaurant freezer and it will be same for you.  Not that we did not enjoy the cave - its not the fault of a cave - but  its hard to impress us - we are Slovaks and some caves in Slovakia have much bigger dripstones, and we also visited Nerja cave last time we were in Spain - with that huuuge stalagnate - so for us it was just nice...

Worst experience: there is a part of cave where you have to take like 80 - 100 stairs to move through tunnelly part. And someone ahead farted and produced nasty mindnumbing sauerkraut smell. Narrow tunnel, no way to stop, I tried to hold my breath but with moving up the stairs  it just led to getting out of breath ---> i needed to breath deeper and quicker...:D I thanked all Gods that the stairs were not longer...:D But again, this also was not a cave's fault...:)

And now some pictures.

Varhany - Organ



Small tubes




Sintropad - Sinterfall

Oldest dripstones (around 150 millions years old) - calcite slowly replaced with (transformed to?) opal parent rock



Biggest stalagmite in the cave, unfortunately it was destroyed by slow recrystalization of the dripstone




another sinterfall


crystals (quartz? calcite?) (flash used)



crystals (quartz? calcite?) (without flash)



just another nice dripstone... :)


Limestone quarry - Devil's steps


úterý 7. července 2015