Photography prohibited

We bought our tickets and now we were dumped in the middle of nowhere we had no choice but to pay the overpriced takeaway food. Fortunately it was good nosh so couldn't really complain. Our tour began at 3pm when a very large group of tourists was joined by two guides, who between them spoke Slovenian, English and Italian. We were in the English group, which went first. We were led inside through a metal door and immediately the temperature dropped and humidity rose. Very shortly we were in amongst the stalagmites and stalactites but we were told three times that photography was prohibited by law. And that was as a shame because it's very difficult to explain just how beautiful and vast this case system was. The first cave, the silent cave, was filled with enormous stalagmites and stalactites up to 30 metres high and over 500,000 years in the making. The colours, all kept as natural as possible with very subtle lighting, unlike the tourist cave, which looked like Disney in th photos, were beautiful even for my poor colour vision. But the best was yet to come when we were led into the murmuring cave, which descended another 100 metres. Within this cave was a canyon, the bottom if which was a fast flowing foaming river and rapids. It was as though you had taken the Cheddar Gorge and inserted it into a cave. It was just as big. The main chamber is supposed to be the tallest in Europe. Together with their subtle lighting and bridges that could be seen along the cave wall and criss-crossing for a kilometre ahead the scene was something reminiscent of Lord of the Rings. It was mind blowing. But we have no pictures.