If you go deep into a cave, you may encounter monsters! Or at least, white stalactite dental work :-)
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September 2019, Duhlata Cave, Sofia, Bulgaria
Caving (Rock, Rock-Limestone, Morphology-Karst, Basic)
Budapest's Gellérthegyi Barlan (or the Gellért hill cave) is a cave turned into hermit's hideout, turned into peasant home, turned into a church, and then closed and sealed behind a concrete wall by the communists. Oh, and the communists also executed the head monk.
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August 2019, Gellért hill cave, Budapest, Hungary
Caving (Rock, Rock-Limestone, Morphology-Karst, Basic)
A sign for a cave? Intrigued. It turns out that it leads to the "Cave Bar More", one of the bar's listed in Business Insider's 50 incredible bars you should drink at in your lifetime list.
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August 2019, Cave Bar More, Dubrovnik, Croatia
Caving (Rock, Rock-Limestone, Morphology-Karst, Basic)
Korkberget is probably Finland's largest cave, with 300+ meters of tight tunnels underneath massive boulders. But, there's also a cliff... and if you climb half-way up the cliff, you will find an amazing crack that leads underground.
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August 2019, Korkbergetin halkeamaluola, Kirkkonummi, Finland
Caving (Rock, Rock-Granite, Morphology-Crack, Basic); Climbing (Rock)
Tito was hiding out on the Vis island during WW2, reportedly on small mountaintop caves. Steps lead to the caves today from the Mount Hum road, and they can be easily visited.
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August 2019, Tito's Cave, Vis, Croatia; Tito's Headquarters Cave, Vis, Croatia
Caving (Rock, Rock-Limestone, Morphology-Erosion, Man-Made)
In the summer I hiked around the Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia. It has some well known caves (more of them in another blog article) but I also run into a small cave on the path to the biggest, 78-meter waterfall, Veliki Slap.
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August 2019, Veliki Slap cave, Plitvice Lakes, Croatia
Caving (Rock, Rock-Limestone, Morphology-Karst, Basic)
The taxi drivers are a great information source. This time I asked about a hole in a cliff face, and got all the information I needed to visit it later. And it should be a safe place to go to...
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August 2019, Mali Hum Tunnels, Vis, Croatia
Caving (Man-Made); Urban-Exploration (Tunnels, Bunkers)
Having researched the locations of the Russian bunkers in Porkkala for years, I was surprised to learn the location of another bunker from Dutch tourists on their first day of visiting Finland. They pointed us to a small bunker few hundred meters from the large one we had visited earlier, based on their geocaching explorations.
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August 2019, Siuntion täytetty pikkubunkkeri, Siuntio, Finland
Urban-Exploration (Bunkers); Caving (Man-Made)
The base is not easy to find; there's a lot of tours on sale to visit the military wonders of Vis, but little actual information. I discovered the location of the base by looking at Google Maps satellite photos, but the Secret Croatia blog also helped...
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August 2019, Vis missile base, Vis, Croatia
Urban-Exploration (Bunkers); Caving (Man-Made)
Influence ... one has to be careful with that. I took my sister's twins today to their first cave. At first they were a bit scared, but soon they had helmets on, one was holding my camera and the photographing the other one going through the cave. I wonder where they learned that? :-)
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July 2019, Hiidenkiven luola, Nurmijärvi, Finland
Caving (Rock, Rock-Granite, Morphology-Boulders, Basic)
A maze of caves and underground prison cells, cages, darkness, fog, and Dracula? Sign me up please!
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July 2019, Labirintus, Budapest, Hungary
Caving (Man-Made, Rock); Urban-Exploration (Tunnels, Prisons)
I went on a long bike trip today with Jarmo, to explore the Sarfvik area in Kirkkonummi. This large area of farms, forests and seafront is blocked for public road access by the local residents. Why? You can still explore the area on foot, but the walks are long. But in the summer biking is an option.
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July 2019, Abramsbyn bunkkeri, Sarfvik, Kirkkonummi, Finland; Golfkentän pieni siirtolohkareluola, Sarfvik, Kirkkonummi, Finland
Urban-Exploration (Bunkers); Caving (Man-Made, Rock)
A vacation isn't a vacation unless one can visit another nuclear bunker!
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July 2019, Hospital in the Rock, Budapest, Hungary
Caving (Man-Made, Rock); Urban-Exploration (Bunkers)
Cave in a park in Philadelphia? Unreal...
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July 2019, Gorgas Creek Cave, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Caving (Man-Made); Urban-Exploration (Tunnels, Quarries)
My vacation started after midsummer. And the first thing one does on a vacation is to go on a beach, of course. Underground.
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June 2019, Lummelunda, Gotland, Sweden
Caving (Rock, Rock-Limestone, Morphology-Karst, Basic, Boating, Swimming); Swimming (Indoor, Water, Underground, Waterbody-Cave)
Jukka and I wanted to continue our photography experiments further up in the Lummelunda cave. The most interesting stalactites are in the Snow White Hall (Snövitsalen), beyond the half-way point in the cave. This turned out to be a very long trip, however, and one where we run out of all of our lights...
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June 2019, Lummelunda, Gotland, Sweden
Caving (Rock, Rock-Limestone, Morphology-Karst, Basic, Boating, Swimming); Swimming (Indoor, Water, Underground, Waterbody-Cave)