New room with new bed proved to be worth its weight in gold. Slept much better, which is to say I feel like I had some sleep compared to last night on the ‘you people knew this stupid bed was broken and I bet it will still be broken next month’. So be it. Someone else’s problem now and a really shitty Trip Advisor review for you guys.
We are heading to Warsaw today, but first, we are planning on heading a ways in the opposite direction to the Wieliczka Salt Mine. Located in the town of the same name, the mine has been open since the 13th century and produced table salt right up until 2007, making it one of the oldest salt mines in operation. Throughout that entire time, the royal mine was run by the Żupy krakowskie Salt Mines company.
The Wieliczka salt mine reaches a total depth of 327 meters and is over 287 kilometres long. Since the mined ceased commercial operations it has become a major tourist attraction – there are underground chapels and an enormous reception room that is used for private functions, including weddings, loads of statues and some underground brine lakes. The tourist route goes only 135m underground (which is plenty, trust me!) and follows a 3 km guided tour. To initially get down to the first levels of the tours, visitors need to go down 64m via a timber spiral staircase of some 380 steps – which, given the low ceilings and tight space is a bit like walking down a 40 storey building fire escape stairwell. There are many more sets of wooden steps so that visitors end up on the third level down at 135m and a total of approximately 800 steps down to get to that level.
Thankfully, a ridiculously claustrophobic lift returns you to the surface in an elevator that has four cars and holds 36 persons (nine per car) and takes about 45 seconds to make the trip.
Everywhere we look is salt. Salt walls, salt floors, salt ledges, nooks and crannies. The rock salt naturally occurs in various shades of grey and looks more like unpolished granite.
There are many pully systems and horse treadmills throughout the mine to assist miners in moving large amounts of the heavy product to the surface.
Throughout the mine, there are many statues carved out of salt. Some, more contemporary artworks have been carved by modern sculptors, but many have been carved by amateurs – gifted miners who worked on these sculptures during their own time.
Copernicus statue carved from salt:
The story of how the mine allegedly came into being…
“In the 13the century a young Polish prince, called Bolesław, of the Piast Dynasty, decided to get married and for his wife chose a beautiful Hungarian princess of the Arpad Dynasty, the daughter of King Bela IV, Kinga (or Kunegund, as she is sometimes called).
When Bolesław’s proposal was accepted, the loving father asked Kinga what she would like to get from him as a wedding present, what she would like to take to her husband and the new country. Kinga replied that she wanted no gold and jewels since they only brought unhappiness and tears. She wanted something that could serve the people she was going to live with. Her request surprised the king greatly – she asked for salt.
The king was determined to keep his promise. He offered Kinga the biggest and most prosperous salt deposits in Hungary* – the Marmaros salt mine. However, nobody knew what Kinga could do with the treasure.
On her way to Poland, the princess visited the mine. She kneeled to pray next to the entrance and – to everyone’s surprise – suddenly threw her engagement ring inside. She gathered a group of the best Hungarian salt miners and told them to follow her.
When the party arrived in Poland and was approaching Kraków, Kinga stopped and asked the miners to look for salt. They started digging and suddenly hit something very hard. It was a lump of salt. When they broke it, everyone saw what was hidden inside – Kinga’s engagement ring!
That is how the Hungarian princess brought salt to our country. Right now in Wieliczka, there is the most famous salt mine museum.”
*This area once was in Hungarian territory.
And the scene depicted is a diorama carved of salt.
The St Anthony’s Chapel.
Secondary crystalised salt forms on the walls and ceiling of the mine as water seeps through the rock above.
One of the most dangerous things about mining salt (indeed about mining anything this far underground) is the risk of fire. The salt mines were particularly prone to fires from gas escaping as new veins of salt were mine. Therefore one of the most dangerous jobs down the mine was to crawl down the newly created tunnels with a long flaming torch literally burning out pockets of colourless gas, which could cause explosions if the gas deposits were large enough. It was a very dangerous job but apparetly very well paid work.
The visible patterns and designs have been hand cut into the walls and floors.
There were many workhorses used in the salt mines – once down the mine, they spent their entire lives down there as it was difficult to get them in or out. So naturally, they needed stables, with feed storage and all sorts. Hay stocks would bring mice, which meant they eventually brought down cats and the whole place sounded like a bit of a menagerie. 
An old winch system:
This photo is unfortunately not very clear, but these were 14th century stairs that miners would use to descend the mine, carved into the salt.
Looking down to the second level:
Gnomes start to appear dotted around the place, carved out of very clear white rock salt.
Where we just came from:
A brine creek directed to a bowl. Our guide kept telling us to lick the walls or taste the water – it’s so salty that no bacteria can survive on the surface, and even though the mine has over 1.2 million visitors a year, she assures us that no one ever gets sick from licking the walls. I kinda believe her, but didn’t feel the need to try it. The water however was extremely salty.
A recreated foreman’s office off a mine tunnel:
A vignette of many gnomes doing various mine jobs:
Another small chapel space to the virgin Mary:
Love the salt floor ’tiles’… 
Some of the chambers have been reinforced with timber, which miners kept painted white. They had no electric lighting down here and had small tallow lamps or torches only. The white allowed for the light to be reflected around more easily and create better lit conditions.
A chandelier made of salt rock crystals:
Another small chapel. Mining is serious business that needs a lot of praying.
So then we enter the King’s Chapel – a chamber which has the world’s largest underground church. 
Lit by five enormous rock salt chandeliers, a huge wooden staircase bring visitors to the salt floor which is 64m underground now.
Lining the walls are carvings of various artistic execution done by miners:
I love the floor!
The salt rock crystal chandeliers are over two meters in drop:
The King’s Chapel.
Salt rock statues, salt rock columns, salt rock candlesticks, salt rock altar, salt rock kneelers, pews, salt rock tabernacle…
Even the bollards to keep the tourists in line are carved out of salt.
Further down the mine there are some enormous salt water lakes. 
The largest salt rock crystal chandelier in the complex – over 3 m long, hangs in a chamber near an enormous timber structure that was used to move salt up through the mine. Carpentry was another important job here. 
Goethe:
Looking down towars the third level of the tourist route:
Apparently tourists used to be moved about using ferry boat rides here through some of the smaller tunnels of the mine until a tragic drowning incident occurred in the Jozef Pilsudski Chamber.
A ferry boat capsized and five people were trapped underneath it. In theory it should be impossible to drown in water this salty as everyone is so bouyant, but the boat was so heavy that the people couldn’t get out from under it, so they suffocated. That is why there is now a statue of St. John Nepomuk, the patron saint of the drowning.
This is the tallest chamber in the tourist route – at 36m high. It is also the location of the World Record Deepest Underground Bungee jump. 
Reception centre for weddings etc.
There are multiple gift shops mostly selling gifts made from – you guessed it – salt. None of which would last very long in a humid tropical environment like Brisbane. 
Another small chapel on the way out of the mine.
All up it was a very slick tourist operation that takes you on a visit through the mine. Our guide was interesting and informative and she only made one joke about us being nice to her because she was the only person in the group who knew the way out. It is a veritable labyrinth of tunnels and chambers and you could see how easily you could get lost.
After our mine visit, it was time to hit the road and head to Warsaw. Thankfully we had a trusty hire car for this segment of the journey and we were not going to find ourselves standing around for two hours on a train platform in yet another shitty transit.
Polish drivers are mad bastards though – dashing in and out of traffic without indicating. Speed limit signs appear to be ‘suggestions’ only, and the route from one major city to another kept changing from fantastically fast dual carriageway to windy little back streets through small villages.
Amazingly dodgy servo lunch:
High speed landscape photography of the Polish countryside.
Beautiful though 🙂 
Again we got to experience the feeling of standing still while going 130kmph as crazy Audi and BMW drivers went flying past us weaving in and out of traffic… to be honest, I was kinda glad that out little Corolla wasn’t capable of it, or perhaps yale would have put his foot down even more. Amazingly we only saw one small car accident…
We arrived in Warsaw and went to the place that Booking.com said our accommodation was booked at – only to be met in a carpark by a woman who led us to a different location about two blocks away, and to what appeared to be a private apartment. I was seriously unimpressed to discover the apartment (while having all the amenities of what we had booked) was nothing like what we had actually booked… for a start, we could not get our luggage all the way to the apartment without taking a very dodgy old lift up 15 stories and then going up through a maze of not very well kept corridors and two flights of stairs.
After the strange woman showed us to our weird accommdations, we immediately went in search of quick food not too far away. yale opted for massive loaded hotdogs and I had a swiss cheese and mushroom burger at a place called The Brooklyn Bar.
I was not actually sure the owner/designer had ever been to Brooklyn or to a bar in Brooklyn in the last decade – but the food was mostly edible, the loud hip-hop was totally dreadful, but the cheap shots of vodka made the whole thing bearable.
Back to the apartment and yale carried everything up the flights of stairs after taking the scary antique lift to the 15ht floor. 
Back in the apartment – bedroom is up a flight of narrow twisty stairs to a low ceilinged loft, that I was going to have to navigate coming down first thing in the morning when my back is at it’s absolute worst and walking is sometimes problematic let alone weird odd height staircases. I mean, it was a nice enough space, but I would not have booked it had these been the pictures on the booking website.
We laughed about most of it – especially the tiny pokey shower cubicle – the vodkas over dinner helped. yale for scale:
Oh well, we are supposed to be staying here again in a few days time – but have decided to cancel and find something that 1) has no stairs to bed and 2) has a decent chance of a shower that yale can fit it! Another interesting review coming up for these guys too!
First stop was a quick photo opp at Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon. The canyon is about 100m deep and 2kms long having been cut in the last Ice Age by the Fjaðrá River that flows through it.
It would be amazing to go walk through the canyon but alas, we have only so much time and so many things to do today.
Unrelated, but directly adjacent to the canyon, we found the first of a bunch of ‘No Pooping’ signs on the side of the road… Why the fuck do people need to be told not to take a dump at a car park on the side of the road at the beginning of a nature hike? People suck.
We were heading back a bit to Vik this morning and with the sun out, everything looked completely different to last night in the dark and rain.
The gorgeous views just go on for miles – and around every corner some other truly beautiful vista greets you.
Snow over the lava fields.
A small selling point for some – the walls of the glacier are ‘The Wall’ in the Game of Thrones tv show. Film crews came out here in the winter to film sections of the glacier wall to use as a model/basis. Stefan informed us that ‘They film these wall, and then the rest is they make in the computer.
So not sorry that there are so many pictures being added to this post – everywhere we looked was beautiful vistas, stunning ice formations and interesting light.
The ice caves change every year as the warmth of summer brings rapid erosion, and the frosts of winter stabilize newly formed caverns and tunnels. So every season the spaces that people can safely access are altered.
These ice caves are among the most extraordinary and mesmerizing wonders of nature. They are some of the most breath-taking sights I have ever experienced and this is just a little taste of what the ice caves offer – some of the most impressive ice caves you can visit in Iceland are not open until the full winter season due to their unpredictability. Just a few weeks ago, the ice cave known as the Crystal Cathedral (a large underground ice cavern) collapsed under the weight of the moving ice. 
We are literally standing inside a glacier, it’s all around us. It feels really solid and safe, but in the back of your mind is the fact that glaciers are moving natural phenomena, all around us the ice is slowly moving and creaking its way down the mountainside.. which in this case is an enormous live volcano.
The ice walls covered in volcanic ash make for a very dramatic backdrop.
Stefan, our guide who repeatedly claimed it was his first day with a drivers license and then continued to drive that monster truck like a maniac for our (and possibly his) amusement, explains to some American tourists that Katla is overdue to erupt and when this happens, ‘All Iceland is probably fucked.’
The next part of today’s adventure was taking us to Vatnajökull National Park to see the famous Svartifoss waterfall. Svartifoss (literally, black waterfall) is part of the Skaftafell wilderness area in Vatnajökull. It is surrounded by dark lava columns made of basalt similar to those that are seen at places like Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, the Devil’s Tower in Wyoming and the Island of Staffa and Fingal Caves in Scotland. There are also similar basalt column formations on Reynisdrangar beach which we visited yesterday.
I took these photos on the way back – on the way there I was using all my energy to focus on keeping my head down (it reduces the clicking and grinding feelings that I get in my neck when going up inclines and steps) and reminding myself not to hold my breath. 
Many of you probably already know that I am a chronic pain sufferer and I kinda anticipated the energy required to do the ice-caving walk and planned to walk around a glacier lake this afternoon, but this ‘hike’, I had not anticipated. Which meant from about 200m in, it was a struggle. I was ramping up my neck/back pain, my Kyoto knee was not happy with me (I stepped oddly off a bus in Kyoto in 2015 and did something weird to my knee and its never forgiven me), I literally stopped about six times because I was going to throw up – not because I am unfit, though I am, but because the clicking and grinding in my neck drags against my oesophagus causing a gag reflex to induce feelings of impending vomiting. Yes, me and steep slopes/steps simply do not mix and have not since 2007. The other big problem with pain is fighting the urge to hold your breath – you know that thing you do when you kick your toe hard into a piece of furniture and you go ‘Shit!’ and then hop around holding your breath until the pain subsides to stop yourself from exclaiming more? Yeah that. When my pain levels are amped right up to 11, I have a tendency to hold my breath, which is not ideal when hiking unless passing out is your goal.
I looked at these paths on the way back and simply could not believe I walked up them. They were very steep and about 1.2km of the 1.8km walk was all like this. Eventually, we got to a viewing platform where we could see the falls in the distance and I could also see the track in front of me – straight down for about 300m. I looked at it and thought I can not go down there because I have to come back up. But after a few minutes rest and some water to get the peristalsis moving back in a downwards direction, I got to the ‘Fuck it, I’ve come this far, I’m not missing out on seeing this damn waterfall.’
So, after basically getting there on pure pigheadedness, I managed to see the Svartifoss waterfall.
It really is a unique natural formation with the tall black basalt columns and the broken pieces of columns all scattered around below the falls. It was late afternoon, so the light could have been better but still, just beautiful.
After I hobbled back to the car (and yes, hobbling was seen as my back was just screaming at me and all the drugs were in the car), we then continued our journey towards Höfn and at every turn, we were marvelling at the scenery. You literally drive another five minutes and are greeted with completely different landscapes. It’s incredible. The impulse to keep taking photographs is overwhelming and the ever-changing landscape boggles the mind wiith its diversity.
I’m in the car as we drive along, queuing up some 80s tunes to try and take my mind off the ill-advised hike to the waterfall. We were heading toHöfn for the evening and on the way is the Jökulsárlón glacier lake (Jökulsárlón literally means, ‘glacial river lagoon’) which is on the edge of Vatnajökull National Park. The lagoon has formed at the base of the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier which used to just spill into the Atlantic, but developed into a lake as the glacier has receded from the sea, as glaciers are wont to do. This is the stunning result of this incredibly unusual naturally formed glacial lagoon:
The lake is constantly changing size and shape depending on the varying melting rate of the glacier. Currently, the lake is about 1.5 km from the ocean and is about 18 km2 in size. In 2009 it was surveyed and is reportedly the deepest lake in Iceland, at over 248m deep! As the glacier continues to retreat the size of the lake continues to increase and has quadrupled in size since the 1970s. 
I haven’t included it in any of these photos, but on the other side of the lake, there are small buildings that house the many tour operators that you can book through to go out in a zodiac and explore the lake, its icebergs and wildlife (mostly birds and seals). I discovered fairly quickly that the buildings immediately gave you a frame of reference for the size of everything – from the size of the glacier face to the distances across the lake, to the estimated size of the icebergs.
I am pleasantly surprised to see that I can still be amazed at the size and beauty of the icebergs – in spite of having seen many of them in both Alaska and Antarctica. Maybe I am not as travel weary and jaded as I think I am – mind you, it probably really helped that there were no hordes of other tourists here while I was admiring their beauty and enjoying the serenity…
Iceland Tourism considers Lake Jökulsárlón to be one natural wonders of Iceland – gotta say, they won’t get any argument from us!
It was early evening by the time we left the glacier lake, and totally dark by the time we arrived in Höfn. As we checked into the House On The Hill Guesthouse, I was elated by the beautiful places I had seen today but also completely regretful of my ridiculous stubborn streak that saw me march into Svartifoss like a healthy person. I am in so much pain I can’t describe it. Tomorrow is going to be a real struggle… I hope I get some decent sleep tonight.
