Poland - Zakopane (High Tatras Part I)

Day 193 - Thursday, August 2

I headed a few hours south of Krakow to Zakopane, on the southern border of Poland. It's a resort town that, due to its location at the foot of the Hight Tatras, is home to a number of ski resorts in the winter and some amazing hiking trails in the summer.

I didn't get checked into the Good Bye Lenin hostel until about 1pm. It was a pretty neat rustic cabin on the side of the mountain, just outside of town:

From High Tatras

I wanted to try to get some hiking in while I was there, because I was moving to a different hostel just across the border the next day. After talking to the receptionist, she suggested hiking up to Kasprowy Wierch, which sits along the ridge that creates the Poland Slovakia border. She said it would take about 3 hours to get up there and that I should be able to make it back by sunset. I left a little before 2 and started up the mountain. A few pics from the way up:

From High Tatras

making use of the waterproof camera:

From High Tatras

From High Tatras

When I got up to the top of that hike a little after 4pm, I saw that there was a peak a good bit higher along the ridge that was supposedly 2 hours away. Thinking I could make it a little quicker than that and that the sun didn't set until 830/9, I decided to head up that way towards Svinica 

From High Tatras

The views all along the ridge and on the way up to Svinica were amazing. I took way too many pictures. Here's a couple:

From High Tatras

From High Tatras

From High Tatras

It soon became clear that there was no one behind me, which made me think trying to get to the summit and get down before sunset was not the best decision I ever made, but I forged ahead. The last section of the hike, heading up to the summit was the least safe I've ever felt while hiking. I haven't hiked too much, but one guy said it was the least safe he'd felt and he'd been climbing mountains for 20 years. There were quite a few situations where the only way to get up a shear rock face was by using chains to pull yourself up. One slip of a hand likely meant instant death, and not all the chain anchors were totally secure.

From High Tatras

Though hard to capture in a photo, the part in the photo below was particularly ridiculous, and my initial thought was: you can't be serious with this.

From High Tatras

Time for a bit of an aside....  I left a story out of my Estonia blog. One of the days after Mere left, I decided to get a much needed haircut. I had intentionally avoided a haircut in Asia because I was worried about the language barrier. In Estonia everyone seemed to speak English, so no worries on that front, or so I thought. But somehow I managed to find the only person in Estonia under the age of 40 whose employment requires interaction with customers who didn't speak English. I figured it would be okay because it's not like I'm asking for anything complicated. Well, apparently, when I said "not too short," she thought I said "I want to look like I'm in the Russian military." A common mistake, probably. I actually have no idea what sort of haircuts they get in the Russian military, but I decided that I kind of looked Russian and that I also kind of looked like I was a newbie in the military.  After not getting a haircut since February in New Zealand, I'm pretty sure my hair went from being as long as it had been in 15 years, to the shortest it had been since I was an infant. You could definitely see my scalp - something I didn't really realize until after she was done and I turned my head to the side. Now, obviously, it would be an injustice to my loyal readers to relay such a story and not have any pictures, and while I wanted to take a picture just afterwards for your benefit, I couldn't bring myself to voluntarily allow such a picture to end up online. So I didn't include the haircut story in the earlier blog. But on the way up the mountain I did take a few a photos of myself, including pulling myself up with the chains, and thus, you can see what the crazy Estonian lady (or perhaps she was Russian) did to my head:

From High Tatras

Of course, this was after it had grown out for 2 weeks. You'll have to use your imagination as to what I looked like before that. At the time, the 3-day stubble on my face was longer than the hair on the side of my head. So I've been wearing hats a lot more frequently since then:

From High Tatras

Anyway...when I got to the top of the mountain, the sun was already quite low in the sky and I started to get worried, but at least there were two other people up there, so that made me feel a little better timewise, but it turned out they were staying in a hut on the mountain. I took some pictures and then started heading down:

From High Tatras

I also took a not-quite-360-degree video at the top, which if you're really curious you can see here. By the time I was heading down the trail, it was so empty and so late in the day, the animals had apparently assumed they had the place to themselves:

From High Tatras

Hey wait, don't run away, I'm friendly...

From High Tatras

Wait, are you guys friendly?... 

From High Tatras

My camera doesn't exactly have much zoom ability so these guys were pretty close at this point and I suddenly had flashbacks from watching When Animals Attack, many years ago, but luckily they didn't try to attack (or mate with) me. A few minutes later, I came across another group of chamois making their way up the path. This time they didn't have as much space to run away, and wandered over to the edge while keeping a close eye on me:

From High Tatras

From High Tatras

I eventually made it back to the hostel a little before 10pm, at which point I was in desperate need of: a shower, food, a cold beer, a comfy place to sit, and ibuprofen -- not necessarily in that order.