Last Monday was a holiday in Poland. Yippee! Since we had an extra long weekend, we checked into doing something extra along the lines of sightseeing. We wanted to visit a famous cave in Poland, but found out that it was booked full through the month of May (imagine the idea of a cave being full). So, Leroy found another cave we could visit instead. This one turned out to be much less touristy. It had no interior lighting, isn’t visited by tour groups, and is pretty much known only by cave enthusiasts and spelunkers. In other words, a lot cooler than the first cave we wanted to visit.
On Saturday, we drove about 200 km southwest of Minsk, where we met up with our tour guide. Some of our Polish friends had originally planned to go with us, but they canceled at the last minute, so our group consisted of Leroy, Conrad, Maria, Ria, and I.
This cave was actually a copper mine. A long time ago (I don’t remember how long ago, maybe 400 or 500 years?), some miners began enlarging the existing network of caves and smelting down the copper ore. It was a mine, and not a true cave, I guess, but it’s carved out of copper ore rock, so it’s very cave-ish. Now, the mine is no longer in use and the lower levels and shafts are filled with water. We explored the network of tunnels toward the top of the mine. It was very, very coolJ Certainly a change of pace from teaching.
Still clean! Just before we went into the cave. 
Our very energetic guide. The fact that we didn’t speak Polish very well didn’t deter him at allJ He definitely helped to make the day extra enjoyable. Here he’s explaining how the caves were formed.
Totally Awesome Mud! One place, we had to slide on our butts down a 15 ft mud embankment.
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