August 20, 2012
Devil's Throat, the inside story: Dospat - Tesel
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YOU KNOW why they call it Devil's Throat?', Uli asked. He is a bright-eyed 21-year-old with one of those half quiffs that are all the fashion here... if you still have enough hair to make one. He wanted to go to the Olympic Games in London, but then he got a summer job as a guide in Devil's Throat cave instead. To be an archaeology student and to work in a cave just down the valley from the tiny village that's home, that's perfect, he says.
Devil's Throat is one of two caves in neighbouring valleys, in beautiful countryside woven into a cloth of greens, browns and muted yellows by small fields ringed by wooden fences.
We rode into it as soon as we left our camp spot, the morning light bright and soft, the rich shadows accentuating the folds of the hills. Two canyons spur off separately to the right, the first the more dramatic and the second leading to Devil's Throat.
'The water from the cave,' Uli explained as he told the origin of the name, 'comes out just over there, across from the entrance.' We had seen it fall in a crashing underground waterfall. 'But if I went into the cave and I dropped a pencil, if I dropped a hundred pencils, into the water, they would never come out. Nothing in the water underground ever comes out to the surface.
We looked at him, astonished.
'So, where does it go?'
'Nobody knows. But nothing you drop in the water ever emerges.'
'And nobody knows why?'
'No. Two divers went down to look but they drowned. So that created even more local legends about the cave and it's how it got its name.'
It's the sort of story you think cooked up for tourists. But we had done the touring and Uli was a sensible archaeology student not given to tales. He had no reason to spin us a yarn.
We asked if Bulgaria was where he wanted to work when he finished his studies in Plovdiv, the country's second city.
'I like my country,' he said with a half-apologetic smile, 'but Bulgaria is poor and I don't trust it [have confidence in it]. So maybe first I work here and later I decide. I am 21, so I have much time.'
I pointed to the T-shirt he was wearing, with a British flag and the legend 'London: capital city'.
'Maybe you'll work there after all,' Steph said.
Uli smiled. 'I would like that,' he said.
Neither his cave nor the other takes long to look round. It is the ride to each that makes the trip worthwhile.
We pedalled slowly, taking in the majesty, the drama. At one point the towering walls of rock, 250 metres high, come close to touching in the sky. The narrowest is known as the Wolf Jump.
It's in these caves that Orpheus is supposed to have entered the kingdom of Hades to find his bride, the beautiful Eurydıte, who died on their wedding day. The kings of the underworld allowed him to take her on condition that he never looked back.
Bulgaria doesn't make much of the legend, although the surrounding mountains are named after him. It doesn't make a lot of Spartacus coming from here, either. Locally, by the way, he's spelled CnapTak.
After that the road rose in another three-hour climb. We free-wheeled down to 1 000m and found a hotel... having discovered that there are indeed bears in Bulgaria and, what's more, in the very area we camped last night.
We didn't feel so bad about taking a hotel.
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