Sparks fly in Slovenia
After Venice, we
headed along the beautiful coast road to Trieste. We stopped a couple of
times to admire the views and, while they are stunning, they are
slightly marred by another altogether unwelcome sight – the entire coast
seems to be littered with leathery old men sunbathing in tiny trunks.
We had a nose around Trieste itself before spending the night in what has become our new low bench mark for campsites. I didn’t think those old squatty toilets with the badly placed footplates still existed in Europe but it turns out they do. Feeling not-at-all rested or refreshed we headed to the nearby Grotta Gigante which, as you’d imagine, translates as Massive Cave. So massive, in fact, that the Guinness Book Of World Records has recognised it as the “largest visitable tourist cave in the world” which, to me, sounds like one of those categories that Guinness make up when they can’t pigeon-hole something into an existing category… like the record for how many boiled eggs someone can peel with their feet while bouncing on a trampoline. If Guinness had been there on the day of our visit they could have created a category for “the largest and most annoying group of disinterested German school kids to ever visit a cave” as that was who we had to share our tour with. Anyway, it is undoubtedly a very big cave and, just to illustrate the point, they show you a video of someone base-jumping inside the cave, hurling himself off the uppermost platform and having just enough time for his parachute to unfurl before crashing into a staircase at the bottom. Thankfully it is a short film.
Then our van’s battery died. And, as I keep telling Claire, this had absolutely nothing to do with some dingbat leaving the lights on while they went off hiking through caves for the afternoon. We got a jump start and drove to Portorose (Slovenia’s answer to Las Vegas) but it kept dying and just wouldn’t recharge, so we found a garage with a very helpful English-speaking guy called Andrej who confirmed that our battery was “kaput” and who helped us fit a new, bigger, better battery. When he was fitting it though, he couldn’t get the plastic caps back on the positive and negative contacts so simply shrugged, told us we didn’t need them and chucked them in the bin. That all seemed fine to us. The engine started first time and so we happily set off to visit Piran, a quaint little fishing village about three miles down the coast. Now, in a Volkswagen T25, the battery is located directly under the driver’s seat. The underside of the driver’s seat is solid metal. What you don’t want to happen, as fate would demonstrate, is for a piece of metal to connect the two exposed contacts on your car battery. As we parked up in Piran there was a sudden crackling sound and a shower of sparks from beneath my seat, followed by some smoke and the distinct smell of burning. But I was in the middle of trying to parallel park. On a hill. With other cars waiting. So I was desperately trying to manoeuvre the van while simultaneously moving my electrified seat off of the battery and calmly urging Claire to locate the fire extinguisher with all haste. We leaped out of the cab, Claire handed me the extinguisher and I aimed a blast directly at the flames that were by now licking the underside of the seat. I managed to put the fire out but, in doing so, also managed to cover everything in the van with a layer of grey dust making it look a bit like what I imagine Pompeii must have looked like just after Vesuvius went up.
The rest of the morning was fairly uneventful in comparison. We pottered around the picturesque village of Piran as planned – but I couldn’t help but keep one eye on the horizon, just checking that there wasn’t a plume of dark smoke rising up from a burning yellow van...
Next stop was Slovenia and some more caves. These were the Skocjan Caves and, weirdly, they are even more vast than the “largest visitable tourist cave in the world” which makes no sense at all as we were clearly tourists who were clearly visiting it. Anyway, while the Grotta Gigante trades on its size alone, the Skocjan Caves go for the “absolutely breathtaking” angle and get a World Heritage Site badge for their efforts. If you like lots of stalactites, stalagmites, narrow bridges and nausea-inducing sheer drops, then Skocjan is the place for you. We went for a 3km hike through the caves and that only took in about a third of the whole thing. In your face Grotta not-quite-so-Gigante.
Then our van’s battery died. And, as I keep telling Claire, this had absolutely nothing to do with some dingbat leaving the lights on while they went off hiking through caves for the afternoon. We got a jump start and drove to Portorose (Slovenia’s answer to Las Vegas) but it kept dying and just wouldn’t recharge, so we found a garage with a very helpful English-speaking guy called Andrej who confirmed that our battery was “kaput” and who helped us fit a new, bigger, better battery. When he was fitting it though, he couldn’t get the plastic caps back on the positive and negative contacts so simply shrugged, told us we didn’t need them and chucked them in the bin. That all seemed fine to us. The engine started first time and so we happily set off to visit Piran, a quaint little fishing village about three miles down the coast. Now, in a Volkswagen T25, the battery is located directly under the driver’s seat. The underside of the driver’s seat is solid metal. What you don’t want to happen, as fate would demonstrate, is for a piece of metal to connect the two exposed contacts on your car battery. As we parked up in Piran there was a sudden crackling sound and a shower of sparks from beneath my seat, followed by some smoke and the distinct smell of burning. But I was in the middle of trying to parallel park. On a hill. With other cars waiting. So I was desperately trying to manoeuvre the van while simultaneously moving my electrified seat off of the battery and calmly urging Claire to locate the fire extinguisher with all haste. We leaped out of the cab, Claire handed me the extinguisher and I aimed a blast directly at the flames that were by now licking the underside of the seat. I managed to put the fire out but, in doing so, also managed to cover everything in the van with a layer of grey dust making it look a bit like what I imagine Pompeii must have looked like just after Vesuvius went up.
The rest of the morning was fairly uneventful in comparison. We pottered around the picturesque village of Piran as planned – but I couldn’t help but keep one eye on the horizon, just checking that there wasn’t a plume of dark smoke rising up from a burning yellow van...
Comments
Post a Comment