The Slovakian High Tatras

One again we are sitting on a train, this time from poprad to Vienna. There is an ongoing snow storm going on outside and all the ground is covered with snow. The storm started on Tuesday morning while we were in the Mountains staying in Stary Smokovec.

Stary is situated at 985m above sea level so we thought we could get some cool weather but when we arrived on Wednesday last week it was 24 Celsius and sunny. On Thursday we went for our first hike, a beautiful day with mostly sun. We hiked from Stary Smokovec up to Hrebionok, then across the mountains and up to Sliesky Dom, a pass in the mountains with an alpine tarn or lake. We then hiked back to Stary - 12kms all up. We were quite happy with ourselves as it was a long hike and we climbed about 800 metres vertically too. This was the first real exercise we had done in about a year so we felt good about it.

Next day ready to conquer the mountains found us walking through rainy fog, seeing about 20 metres ahead. We did a wet walk from Stary to Tetranska Lomnica along the path by the road. We walked another 12kms there and back but it is not quite so satisfying when you can’t see anything and its wet. We did have a nice warm meal in a little Restaurace by the train station in Tetranska.

The next day we were really getting sick of the crap weather. it was now foggy and raining properly. I had resigned myself to staying in all day when corinne decided we should walk to Strebske Pleso, 16kms away. I like a challenge so we went for it and we got wet, real wet.

As soon as we went outside the slovakian rain gods laughed and slowly ramped up the weather. We made it to one village and decided to catch the train to Strebske. While we waited for the non coming train the weather fined up and so we continued our walk. We walked into Nova Polianka with rain pelting down and decided to definitely wait for the train which took about an hour to come.

The rest of our week has been spent watching satellite tv and using the internet which we have in our unit luckily. We had planned for the week to be a good outdoor session, be a bit more healthy etc and instead we sat on the couch or bed and ate and drank ourselves through the long rainy days.

One of the path markers on the trees

Our village of Stary Smokovec from about 1500mtres.

Corinne looking bushed

Sliesky Dom - lake in a mountain pass, we had lunch here, quite pleasant, freezing water - 1800mtres.

One of the major sign markers showing the various routes.