6/6/23
Day 13
Budapest
Hello everyone and welcome back. Strap in and prepare yourself for quite the adventure.
Today was our first full day in Budapest, unfortunately it was raining all day. We slept in and made breakfast before getting ready for our outing today. Our outing for today was cave diving in the Pal-volgyi Caves of Budapest. We didn’t completely know what we had signed up for, only that it consisted of going into some caves and checking it out.
Now I don’t consider myself to be claustrophobic, and neither do Aydan, Luke, and Nathan. But lemme tell you… talking about something is a whole lot easier than being in the actual position. You can say you are not afraid of heights, but when you find yourself at the top of a cliff, there is a small voice in your head saying “no thanks, makes me feel weird and a lil nervous.” I heard that little voice many times today and had to tell it to SHUT UP PLEASE.
It was a 3 hour long excursion, so we got some sandwiches to fill up on beforehand. A taxi picked us up and took us up just to the edge of the city, near the mountains. It was raining much harder at the higher evelation. We checked in and ate our sammys, not knowing what was next.
After meeting the people in our group we went to get geared up. Our guide, a small woman named Melinda, then gave us a safety talk and some instructions about what we would be doing and what to do. Basically she just told us to listen to her and to communicate with the group if anything happened that she would need to know. There was 11 of us total including Melinda, and it seemed like it was going to be a good group. This is us getting our gear on and walking down to the entrance. At this point we are still young and naive.
Our guide opened up the door and said the brave people may go in. (Somehow that was us) we made our way in and immediately I realized my mistake. I had signed us up to go into small spaces. If you know me, you might have observed that I am of above average size, this attribute makes things… interesting when going into a cave. I bonked my head walking in the main hallway, but it was fine because we all have helmets on. We sat down at the end of the hallway and had one more debriefing from our guide. She asked if we wanted to do the easy way or the hard way, if we wanted to be very adventurous or just chill and check out the caves. The group all agreed on adventure, my second miscalculation was agreeing to this.
We started by going down a 7 meter later. From there, things began. We started crawling deeper into the cave. In the beginning it was fairly open rooms with tunnels leading to another open corridor or room. These tunnels were only 3-4 feet long and big enough to crawl on your hands and knees. So they were fairly short and wide tunnels that then opened up to a big room. I squeezed into these tunnels while I silently cursed myself for booking this tour. It was very fun and I was already enjoying it but my brain couldn’t figure out why willingly put my large body in a small space.
The caves we were in were formed in an rare way. They were not caused by running water, rather they were caused by plate tectonics shifting to create cracks in the surface. Water would run down these cracks and fill up the pockets of air. This water eventually had a build up of carbon dioxide bubbles that rose to the surface, these bubbles ate away at the limestone and eventually these two factors formed the caves as we know them today.
Below are pictures of us going though and then stopping to hear a bit of history about the cave and behind the different rooms.
So far so good. right? That’s what I was telling myself. There was a couple of tunnels that were kinda tight to crawl through. Sometimes I had to drop to my belly or my back because I couldn’t go on my knees or butt.
At this point the guide asked us how we were feeling. Everyone was feeling good. She asked us once again if we wanted to go the hard way or the easy way. We collectively said the hard way… she said okay, let’s go and went down a hole.
To put this part in perspective, I had been taking pictures and videos of every room and tunnel we were in. For this portion, I only have one video before the tunnel and one photo while in it. This means I was very focused on not freaking out, not on photography.
The hole that our guide went into was initially no different than the others. But after entering into it, there is a portion where you have to swing around headfirst on your stomach. This is where things get interesting. The tunnel was long and tight. Our total time in this one was about 8 minutes… 8 minutes is a very long time.
I screenshot the video of us entering the hole and then entering the portion where you go in head first. Then there is the only photo I took in the tunnel.
We came out of the tunnel into a larger room, and I have never been more happy to move my limbs about freely. Melinda had been taking out a map every time we got to a large room and asked us where we thought we were on the map. I had been paying attention and was able to figure out where we were every time. After this time the guide looked at me with a confused face and said “we are lost, can you take us here?” And pointed at the map, handing it to me… I looked at the map for a while and then lead the group down a hole, hoping it was the correct one. After a few more decisions, we got to the destination. She then asked if I could take us to a different spot and pointed at the map. I somehow was able to figure it out and got us there.
This new location was a large slanting room with a tunnel at the top. We all sat at the top of the slant, and the guide asked if we would want to turn our lights off while in this room we all said yes, and collectively turned off our headlamps. Total and complete darkness.
Your brain doesn’t really know how to process having no light, so it will start to make up things and imagine seeing them. For example, if you held your hand up in front of your eyes, you couldn’t actually see it but your mind would try and for trade would’ve thought your hand look like in front of your face. I would also try to construct the image of the walls and ceiling around you, based off of your last memories of it. But what you are seeing in the dark is completely made up and not actually in the correct place. Very trippy. Here is a selfie of Nathan and I in the room.
While everyone was sitting in total darkness, Nathan decided to pass the time by slowly scraping at the clay floor and walls of the cave. He began to form a small clay ball. He nudged me and told me to hold out my hand, plopping a grape sized piece of clay into it. We both picked at the tough floor of the cave, eventually combining our efforts to form a clay ball a little bigger than a golf ball.
The guide asked if we would want to do part of the tunnels with no light and somehow everybody agreed yes. This part of the tunnel was big enough that you could somewhat lift your head up but small enough that you had to be on your belly and so one at a time we squeezed through the tunnel in complete darkness. Lots of laughs, lots of mind games, very fun.
The guide had gone down the tunnel first and I followed in behind her. Upon exiting the tunnel, she told me “Stay all the way to the right, do not go to the left. Pass it on to the person behind you.” We are still in the dark and at this point I’m thinking, if I go to the left, I die. Nathan was behind me and I informed him that he needed to stay right like his life depends on it, and to pass it on. We got out of the tunnel and hugged the wall on the right, scooting down as more of us made it out and into the mystery room. Nathan looked at me (I’m assuming he looked at me, it was complete darkness) and said, “Dude I lost the clay ball. It fell out of my pocket in the tunnel.” Luke overheard Nathans comment and said “Don’t worry boys, guess what I found while crawling in the tunnel.” He passed the clay ball down the line of people, reuniting the boy and his clay.
We turned on the lights and then got to a stopping point in the guide again asked us if we wanted to go back the easy way or the hard way, we said the hard way. She said she knew of a part of the caves that were not marked on the map we had. She had been there before and said it was a difficult tunnel, but was confident we can do it. This portion of the cave was called the Sandwich of Death. That is because you are the meat of the sandwich and the rock is the bread.
This was by far the most difficult and stressful part of the day. There was 2 parts where I legitimately thought that I was stuck while going through this section. I will let the photos speak for themselves.
After the Sandwich of Death, things were smooth sailing. We made our way to the exit and went back up the latter to daylight. A very nice feeling.
After getting home we wanted some food and found a good burger place. I ordered the ‘hells fire’ burger, thinking yum spicy. The employee warned me and said it’s “very very very hot.” I said “oh that’s fine.” This was my third mistake of the day. I sat down at our table and began to think to myself, she said “very” three times, that is a lot of times. The warning was justified, this was the hottest burger I have ever had. I think they were trying to poison me with pepper. The flavor was actually pretty good but it was difficult to appreciate when your mouth is melting.
Regardless, I shed a few tears and ate the rest of the burger. We went down the street to get some gelato in an attempt to cool my mouth down. It didn’t quite work with the first cone. I decided to get a second one just in case. The boys also got another lol.
