The Closer Your Destination, The More You Slip Sliding Away

When I was just a lad, a depressingly large number of years ago, I discovered an ABC radio program for kids every afternoon at 4:30pm. At the time we were travelling around Australia, and fortunately you could pick up the ABC throughout a lot of the country. I was allowed to listen to it every afternoon, but there was a catch. I had to do my maths homework first. Easy peasy. So did my brother, and he had no interest in doing his homework so that I could listen to the radio. Situation normal.

Anyway, the program was called Jason And The Argonauts. You wrote in, and joined up. They send you a club name – I was Apollo123 or something. There were serials, competitions, certificates. You might even get your poetry read out for the rest of the country to cringe at.

It was all based on the fable of Jason and his band of pillaging men sailing after the Golden Fleece aboard the good ship Argo. Haven’t thought about it in years, and never thought about the historical context of the story, but here in Ljubljana we were told the outline of the story, because a number of the significant events in the fable happened here. Supposedly, after Jason stole the Golden Fleece and made his escape from somewhere up near Turkey, he had to get back to the Mediterranean, so he sailed his boat up the Danube River to the junction of the Sava, which we’ve seen in Belgrade, killing a lot of people who opposed him on the way (I guess the ABC skipped over that part). Then he sailed up the Sava to the Ljubljanica River, and on towards Ljubljana where, only a few miles from his objective, he encountered the dragon protecting the city.

Whilst the story goes that Jason eventually slew the dragon, and all young Australian lads in the back seat of their cars cheered, the city legend is that the dragon saved Ljubljana from destruction by the Argonauts, and so is known as the City of Dragons to this day. The main bridge in the city is known as the Dragon Bridge, and has four dragons protecting it.

Today we followed the river upon which Jason escaped to the Mediterranean to claim his kingdom (more cheers) for an hour or so until the river disappeared underground (hmm – plausibility issue), and created the world renowned Postojna Caves.

The tour started fairly badly, and went downhill from there. We were picked up OK, but our guide went through a barricade and two closed lane symbols into a tunnel because ‘this is where we need to go’ to find that there were roadworks and it was, in fact, closed. U-turn and hasty retreat. Then as we left the city and our guide got everybody to introduce themselves, she realised that she had picked up 2 wrong people by mistake, which of course meant that she had left 2 other people at their hotel. U-turn and hasty retreat.

After it was all sorted out back in town, the rest of the morning went well. We started by going to Lake Bled – amazing – and being punted to the only island in the country, which is in the middle of the lake. Climbed the steps to the church, and walked around the island to take in the vista. Beautiful.

Punted back to the boat, and on to Castle Bled, which was a towering presence over the lake. Had the ‘world famous Bled cream cake’, which turned out to be just a nice vanilla slice, but heck it was morning tea time anyway.

Back to Ljubljana suburbs to drop off the girls we almost didn’t pick up, then south out of the city towards the caves. This is where it went pear shaped. There was an accident on the freeway with 2 hour delays (not Sanda’s fault), so Sanda decided to take the local road. Our cave tour time was moved from 3:00 till 3:30. Then there was an accident on the local road with an hour delay (not Sanda’s fault). Our cave tour time was moved from 3:30 till 4:00. So Sanda decided to take the cow track across the paddock. A single lane dirt track across the valley floor. One she had never been on before. Trouble was, we were in a two wheel drive bus, and it had been raining for the last two days. The bus was front wheel drive, and all the weight was in the back.

Now this is where we have a divergence of perspective (how’s that for diplomatic?). Mandy thinks she was persistent and took some initiative. I think she was an idiot. We got bogged. Down to the axles bogged. Not only didn’t Sanda know where she was going, she had no idea how to drive a vehicle out of mud. Spinning the wheels in second gear with your front wheels on full lock isn’t going to cut it. Not wanting your guests to get out as their shoes may get muddy isn’t going to help. After half an hour when she gave up, the Aussies collected sticks, told here where to point the wheels, and pushed. We all climbed back in. Unfortunately she’d left the windows down while she spun the wheels. Muddy seats. ‘The boss is going to kill me’. Join the queue.

‘We’re right from here’ we were told, but I’d been tracking us on the GPS and knew better. ‘The river crossing is just up ahead’, I muttered. Lucky she wasn’t trying to get us across a croc infested NT river. Having got through that, we bumped our way across the paddock, all the time watching the cars speed by on the local road running next to us. Our cave time was now moved from 4:00 to 6:00pm, as that was the only time they could fit us in. ‘What time will we be home?’, we asked. ‘The roads are still blocked, so it depends on which way we go home’, we were told. I know one way were weren’t going to go.

To fill in time till 6pm, we went to ‘the castle in the cave’ – Predjama Cave. Quite interesting as they’ve built the original part of the castle in the cave, and then the extensions to the castle against the wall of the cliff at the cave entrance. Saw all the usual rooms, including the torture chamber. Women were cautioned not to enter the Knight’s Chamber where a number of things of interest to Knights were displayed on the walls, discretely covered by curtains.

Finally, at 6pm, on the last tour of the day, we got to enter the famous Postojna Caves. With around 19km of caves underneath the surface, it’s certainly not the biggest in the world, but renowned for having one of the most diverse sets of formations in such a confined area. The first two kilometers were experienced in open carriages pulled by a little locomotive. A bit like Disneyland without the ghosts popping out to scare you. Then we walked about 1.5 kms around and around, looking at the sights, before ending up at the train station for the return journey. Really well done, though it’s inevitable that putting trains, paths, lighting and thousands of tourists down there will have some sort of negative impact on the microclimate.

Then it was back to town. The roads had been cleared, so we voted for the highway, though it was after 9pm before we arrived back.