After the strenuous yesterday, we slept like logs on the side of the highway and woke early when traffic started to get heavy around seven o'clock. The sun was back in full force and we headed to Presov for a visit. We parked the Gastropod on the Tesco Supermarket parking lot and explored this charming small city. The main street is lined with beautiful turn-of-the-century houses and churches painted in yellow, blue, and rose pastel colors. Like elsewhere the most beautiful and best restored buildings belonging to the banks. We had breakfast in a coffeehouse which had opened its doors in the late 19th century and still has all the charm of that time. It was impossible, even after breakfast, to resist the fresh cream pastry which was just being laid out for display by the pastry chef.

We had intended to drive only a short distance to Lipovce where, according to my map, there was supposed to be a camping and spend a quiet day catching up with this journal. We did eventually find Lipovce but no camping. Instead, a ways out of the village on a dead-end trail we saw a few cars parked and a sign pointing into the woods saying `Jaskyna Zla Diera'? A group of people were just coming back and we managed to find out that this was a cave which could be visited. Nicole and I trekked the twenty minutes into the forest (all uphill again) and found a

camp site where two young ladies in coveralls inquired if we had come to see the cave? Once we had confirmed our intent we were given a helmet and carbide lanterns and told to wear our rain coats. A small tail zigzagged down the hill to a small opening in the mountain. When Nicole realized that the entrance was smaller than her she preferred to go back to the camp for a cup of tea!! This left Katerina (the guide) and me to enter the cave. I just loved it. After having visited the Postonja Cave in Slovenia with it's grand illumination and gentle sloping trail, this was real spelunking. The gas lanterns provided just enough light to negotiate the steep and sometimes slippery trail where concrete steps alternated with homemade ladders and hanging on to hemp ropes. Like all Karst caves, Zla Diera had many stalactites and stalagmites, albeit much smaller than Postonja. Katerina explained in broken English that this cave had been inhabited already three thousand years ago and I was able to actually touch and hold pottery shards left behind by them. Nowadays the only residents are a colony of bats hibernating there.

We had made our provisions in Presov this morning and we were both looking forward to a leisurely evening and a good 'home cooked' meal. Nicole marinated the chicken thighs and we grilled them to perfection on our new charcoal grill on a secluded hilltop meadow with one of those views of the sunsets over the Tatras which want you to stay for weeks.