Hiking & Bees ~ Slovenia Day 3

At 6am, the alarm went off and by 7:30am we were on the road to our intended - yes "intended" - hike: Savica Waterfall. It was about an hour drive, and when we arrived, we paid 5€ to park. We donned minimal hiking gear (we knew it would be a short walk) and arrived at the entrance where there was a 4€/per person fee. However......the falls were dry - no water was running as it is late in the season - so why didn't the parking person tell us when we drove in? 😡 What really bothered us was the wasted time to get there - one needs to be to the trailhead early - both get a parking spot and walk in the cooler temperatures.

We wasted about 30 minutes getting on our gear and walking to the "entrance." Suzanne demanded our 5€ parking fee back (got it - and more on principle than 5€) and we drove to an area called the Seven Lakes Region in Triglav National Park that Brad found the day before. It was another hour there, so we arrived about 10am. We hadn't done much research, so luckily for us there were maps and a nice group of three women from The Netherlands who shared their knowledge with us as we all embarked on our hike.

The hike started quite steep and in the trees....

There was a lot of rock-scrambling ~ we were too busy climbing/hiking to think to take out of phones for photos - oops.

Eventually we arrived at a cattle gate....

...and the cows....

 

Continuing on, it wasn't quite as steep at this point....

At 11am we arrived at Planini Pro Jezeru...

We decided to keep hiking to Planina Visevnik, which was beyond steep. Not sure pictures can do it justice.....it was rock after rock.....

Thirty-five minutes later we arrived at Planina Visevnik ~ it wasn't really much...

We hadn't prepared for a long hike today, so did not have a lot of food with us. Therefore, we decided to head back to our car going back to Planini Pro Jezeru a different way and arrived at noon. One other reason we headed back? They had a kitchen with great smelling food when we were there an hour prior. 😋 We ordered two different soups....they were good and hearty!

 

We passed the most organized clothesline we've seen so far......

We started heading back to our car at about 1 pm and again arrived again at the cows, but this time they were hanging out on the trail. 

In Switzerland, the cows were MEAN and would charge you, so we were hesitant to get too close to these guys. While waiting for the cows to move along, we met Lucjita and Franz, two Slovenians, and we hiked back with them to our cars chatting the entire time. They asked us a lot of questions about the US and we got a lot of our Slovenian questions answered!  😀

On the way back, it started misting. Then raining Then pouring. We were soaked by the time we got to our cars, and just as we arrived, a huge hailstorm came in and we were pelted! We literally jumped into the car to get our of the hail (they hurt!) and waited for it to pass.  We were soaked. 

(Yeah, Brad pretty much looks the same - dry or wet.😂)

We headed back to our Airbnb, showered, had leftover pizza for dinner, and then headed out to the Kralov Med Beehive Farm. (Med means honey.)

We put on our beekeeper hats....

...and enjoyed an hour+ demonstration/education about Slovenian beekeeping. We learned tons, such as:

• It is tradition for Slovenian beekeepers to paint the outside of their beehives.
• The queen lives for about five years. Three days after she is born, she leaves the beehive for five days where she repeatedly mates with multiple drone bees, then she heads back to the hive. She spends the rest of her life depositing eggs - some to be the worker bees (the females, of course - who live only a couple months since they do all the work and it is exhausting), some drones (the males, who basically only are there to fertilize the queen, do nothing, and live about five months) and occasionally another to-be queen. 
• Slovenia has a population of 2 million people, of which 12,000 are registered beekeepers. The Slovenian government will pay for beekeeping school (nearly a year-long, three days a week, 3-4 hours a day) and upon graduation, will give each graduate 1,000€ to start beekeeping.
• Most important! If you get stung by a bee, you do not want to grab and pull our the stinger - doing that forces more venom into to you body. Instead, flick the stinger and the venom sac away - or push it off - do not squeeze!

These are some of her beehives...

Inside the beehive....

We sampled three different types of honey, some cookies made with honey, and some alcohol made with honey. It really was super interesting, and cost 15€ per person. 

(Now Brad wants clotheslines and bees! 😂)