Time for a nice quiet day without too much driving for once: it was going to be good to take a break from the Style Climate's car seats. So. What else was on the cards?... during an earlier 'what the hell are we gonna do in Austria' interwebs planning phase, Matt had seen some interesting-looking caves and mines that he had wanted to check out. Perfect for a relaxing 'no mountains' day.
The Dachstein Ice Cave is in the Salzkammergut area ... Salzkammergut literally translates as the "Estate of the Salt Chamber." The name is derived from the Imperial Salt Chamber, the authority charged with running the precious salt mines of the Habsburg Monarchy. Salt has been mined for 7,000 years in this area! Damn, that's some history, eh.
Sigh. The drive was supposed to only take a couple of hours but ended up taking about five (this seems to be a recurring theme for us) - we were looking forward to getting back to cook dinner in the light for the first time in a while, but some crazy Austrian-blind-corner-passing had sadly caught up with someone and we were stuck in a --beautifully scenic-- traffic jam for three hours while the rescue services cut someone out and helicoptered them off. Matt had wanted to visit both the ice cave and salt mine, however, we only ended up having time to see the ice cave.
The drive was full of stunning Austrian scenery as usual, including the 'fairytale' village of Halstatt (which tourism markets to Muslims as being geographically 'like Janna (heaven)' and so the village has a very high ratio of Muslim tourists compared to anywhere else in the country, and possibly Europe).
(Halstatt village from the far side - a view no tourists get to see... we went slightly off the beaten track to get here, and ended up in a weird dead-end where we could barely turn the car around!)
The ice cave was, as expected, a bit touristic (and cold: rarely above zero!), but still really interesting to see all the crazy ice sculptures, gigantic curtains of ice and impressively huge icicles formed by water which seeps down from the Dachstein plateau into the cave through small cracks in the limestone. The outside temperature can be above freezing, but the caves still contain very cold air (there are thick steel doors to keep in the cold air), so the water still freezes and forms amazing ice shapes - ice plains, ice waterfalls, ice holes and ice lakes...
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