Caving

Yesterday, I went with a group of fellow students on a guided cave tour. Budapest has a deep, extensive cave network, and it was really an adventure to explore them. Navigating through the caves can be difficult. At several points, we had to army crawl through tight spaces and maneuver ourselves around awkward gaps. However, there were also spacious rooms in the caves. The irregular shapes of the caves are intriguing.

The caves have a strange beauty to them. It's fairly warm, and the moisture on the rocks has a glitter to it. Mostly though, it's the sense of exploration that I enjoyed. Without a guide, it would be easy to get lost.

At one point, everyone turned off their helmet lights. The cave is of course completely dark. This might not seem special, but when you think about it, in daily life there's very rarely ever complete darkness; there always seems to be a little bit light after your eyes adjust. According to our guide, after a couple of hours in complete darkness, your brain hallucinates and starts seeing things.

Thin layers of clay surround some of the rocks, so we were all quite dirty when we finished, not to mention a bit sweaty from army crawling. We were in the caves for about two and a half hours. We all enjoyed a refreshing drink afterwards at the nearby bar.

Of course, I tried to take a few pictures, but the lighting from people's lights is too wonky for good pictures. It was a real adventure, and I only regret that there are no caves in Minnesota.

Without the helmet, you would definitely get a concussion navigating the small spaces! Not to mention falling rocks.

Besides the helmet light, everything was dark.