Grotte di Castellana, Apulia

The Hole

To get the kids enthusiastic (and cooperative) about anything, you know after a few years as a parent that you have to resort to guile if coersion doesn't work. Telling the kids that they were going to walk for 2 hours (around 3km) in a cave probably wouldn't get us anywhere (if you have seen kids dragging their feet and whinging at the same time), so I mentioned Stig of the Dump. I do not like to lie if I could help it so I never did exactly say that we would find Stig there. I just said that we would be visiting a cave like Stig's and let them jump to their own conclusions...

I like caves and have visited a few from Australia to Malaysia to France and can't remember where else now. Apulia has the Grottoes of Castellana which are said to be among the deepest in the world. The complete 2-hour visit also leads to the White Cave - referred to as the "whitest in the world" because of the whiteness of its concretions.

Best to check the website before you go for the visiting hours as all visits have to be guided. And bring cash as you can't pay for the tickets with a card. At the time of our visit, it was 15 euros per person for the complete visit. And we chose to follow the English/German tour as the group was much smaller than the Italian one.

As we were walking down the stairs leading into the cave, Baby Boy said that Stig must be down there. Funny enough, the first part of the caves used to be a rubbish dump - like Stig's cave. The caves were actually discovered by Professor Franco Anelli in 1938 as part of a mission to discover spots in Apulia suitable for touristic exploitation. He entered this hole in the ground that nobody dared to enter before and found a rubbish dump in the middle of spectacular concretions. People dumped rubbish or commited suicide in the hole. The rubbish decomposed sending out gas and this created superstitions and fear vis-à-vis the hole. Set me thinking about the vampire-found-in-Venice story. So I digress.

First cave

So they cleaned up the caves, explored further and made a tourist site out of them. There is also a Speleological Museum and Astronomical Observatory but we didn't visit them. Would be too much to ask of the Babies especially once they would discover that Stig's not at home. Photos are not allowed beyond the first cave - due to copyright laws.

I must admit that they were beautiful : stalactites, stalagmites, drapings and columns. The caves are mostly limestone with some iron so the predominant colour is white followed by some red. However many parts are also black or green - no thanks to the dust and spores that visitors bring in as they visit.

I found it fascinating knowing that beyond what we have seen there could be other caves. Since the use of dynamite etc is regulated in modern times, they couldn't try to dynamite their way past existing cave walls to see if there were other caves beyond.

The children did very well and were quite interested in the visit. As usual I seemed to be the only person asking questions and Hub said I was being a pain as towards the end, in my attempt to make social talk, I asked the guide (who has been doing her job for the past 12 years) if she had visited other caves elsewhere. Don't you think that if you had been doing this for more than a decade you would want to visit other caves in order to compare and learn?

Anyway, the White Cave was indeed beautiful. Very much worth the walk. And it's not a difficult walk as the caves have been installed with footpaths, bars to hold on to, lighting etc. It was just a little slippery at times and you may perspire as the humidity increases to almost 90% the further in you go.

Grotte di Castellana (Bari)

http://www.grottedicastellana.it/