As Ljubljana - although cute - wasn't the biggest of capital cities we had seen, we had decided to use its central location within Slovenia as a base for a day trip. We had heard about Škocjan Cave in the southwest, so we decided since we hasn't seen anything like that it would be worth checking out.

As almost always is the case, we left the hostel a little later than normal, but fortunately not too late. We had to catch a train to a little town called Divača, located pretty close to the border with Italy (it turned out we caught a bus because of works on the train line). From there it was an hour's walk from the station, using a basic as hell map we obtained from the train attendant. It didn't involve the use of too many actual walking paths, but anyway we made it to the cave site eventually.

At this point it seemed like we'd gone to a fair bit if effort finding the cave, but once we finally got there we realised it was definitely worth it. I have visited a few caves before (hurr hurr) but this one was definitely the most epic one I've seen. Apparently about 150 years ago the residents of Trieste (Italy) were a bit short on water. A few locals - ones who must have been packing some serious stones - volunteered to follow a nearby river to find a new source, and ended up finding and exploring the cave.

We had to take a tour through the main parts of the cave, which was fine except they didn't let us take photos, so we had to sneak a few non-flash ones on the phone (we weren't the only ones). It was too cool a place not to! After heading through a smaller section of the cave where the roof had collapsed about 12,000 years ago, we came out into the highlight of the cave: an enormous central room (200m high and a s***load wider) through which the aforementioned river still flowed. This place was incredible, it reminded me of something you'd see in Lord of the Rings or in a video game or some s*** like that. About 50m above the river there was a bridge which we crossed which only added to that impression. It was awesome. Some old stairs (carved into the rock soon after discovery) added to the effect as well - it's not often human interference actually improves a place like a cave, but I think it was the case this time.

After the tour finished we had a chance to explore another part of the cave system, although a lot of it was no longer underground. It still had plenty of beauty, with waterfalls and smaller underground parts, though it was not as impressive as the first part.

After finishing up at the caves, we had to walk for about an hour again back to Divača, as we had missed the last connecting bus. We took a slightly more scenic route this time, but got slightly lost just outside of Divača. Nevertheless we found it soon enough, and didn't have any problems getting back to Ljubljana and our hostel.