KRAKOW V (salt mine)

The second excursion we made was to the Wieliczka Salt Mine. The tour started at 4:00 PM so we had to bring a snack in the backpack and snacks because we only had twenty minutes of rest between one excursion (Auswich) and the other (salt mine). We got soaked because we did not have umbrellas and when we got back we were quite drained so we went to the mall that is less than five minutes walk from the departure and arrival point of the bus, and went to the bathrooms to use the dryer to dry our clothes.

Once we entered the temperature and bought a hot chocolate so that the heat was also internal, we returned to the bus. There the same process was repeated again as in the excursion to the concentration camps: count of people, distribution of identification stickers and some instructions on the trip. The journey takes approximately 45 min, depending on the traffic in the city because you have to cross it, the mine is 10 km from the center of Krakow. If you want to go by urban bus the number 304 will take you there.

In the salt mine of Wieliczka it is not cold, nor do you have to carry umbrellas (obviously) but go warm also in summer because there are areas that have less temperature (from 14 to 16 degrees is constant temperature independently of the seasons), it also has good footwear because the walk is quite long, almost three kilometers walking and going down stairs. If I can give you some advice, go to the bathroom before entering because until after 45 minutes of walking there is no bathroom and leaving there is impossible if you do not want to climb thirty floors of stairs.

The hours for free visits are from 7. 30 to 19. 30 except for some holidays. Individual tourists do not need to book the visit but tourist groups do and they should always carry a guide.

Then I will tell you a little about the mine. This mine is an underground city which extends nine underground levels, a place of more than two thousand cameras linked by galleries that reach 240 km of which only we traveled three in the excursion. This mine was built in 1978 as a World Heritage Site and since then receives more than one million tourists a year.

More than 125 m underground we can find really amazing things like for example a church, a four star hotel, a restaurant that organizes banquets... Besides this they are also organized concerts, conferences, dances, business meetings. The truth impresses that after more than ten minutes downstairs (see the depth in the previous photo) there are so many things and that are so safe.

The special microclimate available to the Mine is used for the treatment of, for example, respiratory diseases, asthma and various allergies. The healing stays in the Therapeutic Station, 135 meters underground, help to recover health and relax.

After going down more than four hundred steps we reached the mine itself but if those were not few, another four hundred were still waiting for us throughout the visit. During the visit we could see excavations with amazing views: brine lakes, incredible cameras like the one in the photo, salt sculptures... In addition we also saw different types of machines that they used to take out the salt and see how the machinery was changing with the passage of time. One of the things that surprised us the most was the use of horses at so many meters as it seems impossible to lower them there, as a curious fact we know that the last horse of the mine was removed in 2003. Another curious data with which we found is that formerly the route could be done in a boat but this was stopped when a group of people died because they were drunk and they overturned the boat, having such a large salinity (more than the Dead Sea) the passengers were trapped under the boat and drowned.

Before leaving we went through a bar that surprisingly had Wi-Fi and also a souvenir shop where there were postcards and e-mail. The lady tried to rip me off with the stamps so I could not send any. Finally we climbed on an elevator that looked like an amusement park attraction because it was climbing at an incredible speed. We asked the guide if we could go up the stairs but he would not let us go and he told us that once the light went out in the mine and when the elevator did not work, the visitors had to go around the route and go up all those steps from the beginning.

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