CULTURAL HOLIDAY
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RICHARD HOGG
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one of our first participants talks about his experience.
His original review can be found at our Facebook page CLICK
REVIEW
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Trip to Vreiko Cave. Sept 2016 - Review
One of the things that attracted me to the cultural trip was, that it wasn’t a tango holiday but did include dancing. The 2 things particularly that were appealing were the cave trip and the boat excursion.
I didn’t know really what the Cave trip actually entailed so went along with an open mind. In my mind it may be a commercial thing with gift shop tea shirts and post cards.
We set off in the morning with Yannis in his Jeep who was our guide and local caving expert.
It took about 50 mins to get there and I noticed there were no other people or cars in the area. We parked at the side of the road in what looked like the middle of nowhere in hot barren landscape.
Yannis unpacked his gear with hard hats, head torches, rope, first aid kit and emergency lights and I am thinking this looks like proper caving. Or he is just being properly prepared.
We set off walking towards the cave in a hot dry scrub land. There was absolutely no signs of the modern world apart from the road disappearing below. The silence was amazing. A huge wild buzzard soared overhead which I thought was also amazing but no one else was impressed.
We got to the cave entrance in about 30 mins and passed through a gate and down a wooden ladder into an open pit with trees. The entrance to the cave descended from the open area and looked a little low and forbidding but not too bad. Having done some rock climbing when I was young I wasn’t too bothered but I was thinking Irene and Maria were quite brave. But they didn’t know what it would be like of course. As we descended down, the cave became quite steep and low in placesd, and of course pitch black apart from our head torches, which was pretty cool. We came to some fixed ropes that we could use for the descent as it was pretty steep here. At this point I am thinking that shorts and tea shirt were not the right kit for the job. Yannis had his orange caving boiler suit which was of course the ideal kit. Also a pair of gloves with grip to hold the ropes would have been good.
We descended down about 60 meters I think and the whole thing was about 3 or 4 hours. Maybe shorter if Maria didn’t talk quite so much. We offered the chance to go further through a whole that was just bigger than my shoulders into a cave the size of a double wardrobe and then another little hole. Having got through the first one I thought that was probably far enough. At the bottom we turned off the lights for a minute and stood in the dark and silence which was also pretty cool.
The caving trip was definitely a highlight for me but it was not a walk. In Scotland it would be graded as a rocky scramble as you need to use your hands and find foot holds but really a great trip.
If you did this cave then long sleeves and trousers with a little knee and elbow padding would be good, like work wear, and some thin gloves.
You can look over the photos to see what it is like in this cave. As I said for all of us it was a great day out. There are of course easier caves as well. Hope you find this usefull.
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See for yourself!
