The Highest I’ve Been…

Day: 44

Hiking the entire surrounding area was the plan for the day. After a huge breakfast made for me by the woman who runs the place I’m staying I headed across town to get a lift on one of the local cable trains to the top of one of the smaller peaks (Hrebienok) in the area. My first hike was only downhill about a mile and a half through some of the windswept area of the Tatra region. It was quite bleak, but it still smelled wonderful. When I got back to Stary Smokovec, I hit the market to get a bottle of water and pack myself a lunch for later today. The next section of my days hiking was 9 kilometers into the next town of Tatraska Lomnica, I saw all kind of cool stuff on the way there, like more trees and a ski jumping practice area, where I ate lunch of some dried apricots, bread, smoked cheese and water.

When I got to Tatraska Lomnica it was still early so I decided to take the cable cars to Lomnicky Stit (2634 meters/8692 feet), the highest peak in the Carpathians mountains, and the highest point in central Europe. It took two separate cable cars to get to the top, while I was sitting in the first one I realized something smelled, I couldn’t figure out what it was (my pants aren’t exactly clean, but I didn’t shit in them), I look down and guess what? Yeap, Robs stuck in a 15 minute cable car ride with crap on his shoe. I was just glad I was alone in there and no one else had to smell me.

When I got the midpoint, I was told I had a 45 minute wait until the next cable car goes to the summit, so I just settled in with a beer and took in the view (this is of course after I drug my shoe through the snow to get the shit off of it). This by far has been the most expensive thing I have done so far in Slovakia, 650 skk ($22), but when I got into the second cable car which took us to the top I realized why, The car had no suspension towers just cable going into the clouds for a 1000 meter climb. I was slightly freaky, I just wish my dad was there with me so we could have swung the car while hanging over a 1000 meter drop. At the top the views were impressive, although it was slightly cloudy and cold, I was still stunned by the sheer drops that I was on top of. We (the 7 of us in my group) spent about half an hour on top and then loaded back into the cable cars for our decent.

When I arrived back in Tatraska Lomnica, I went to get on the tram instead of walking the 9 kilometers back. I got back to my room, showered and went out to have a scotch & water, and do my daily blogging at the bar with free WiFi. By now I was felling a little awkward in my stomach, I think it was the bag of dried apricots, and if the scotch hadn’t settled it the last thing I needed was more food. So for dinner I just had a bowl of soup and a glass of tea. Today went pretty much as planned but I am quite sure I will be a little sore in the morning from all the walking.