Adventure in the Polish Mountains

June 23

I am writing this from our hotel in Warsaw before a day full of sightseeing and magical adventure.  I figured before Dagmara and I set out on our Warsaw tour, I would fill you all in on the last few weeks.

Work has been going really well for me.  I've been at the school "Speak Up" for exactly a month now, and they still like me, so that's a good sign.  I work about 15 hours a week there, but hopefully it will be a little more soon as one of the British teachers is leaving in a week.  Classes are pretty easy to teach, very little preparation time, and generally I really enjoy my students.  Some of them are very intelligent people.  For example, one student does electrical engineering and programming for the GPS company TomTom, and another is either finishing a thesis or a patent on some algorithm for eye-scan identification, kind of like they had in the movie "Minority Report" with Tom Cruise. 

Now that I am legal to work in private language schools, I've been getting flooded with job offers, but the hours and pay are the same as where I'm at, so I'm still looking for some daytime hours to add to my evening work at Speak Up.  The preschool is going ok, I told them to cut me down to 3 days a week, as it's only for 30 minutes a day and I spend close to an hour commuting there and back.  The owner had promised that there would be more kids and more classes soon, but there hasn't been, so I have a feeling I will part ways with the school in a month or two if nothing changes.

As for adventures….Dagmara and I made a very exciting trip to the Polish mountains about two weeks ago.  We went to a beautiful mountain town called Zakopane in the Polish Tatra Mountains, determined to ascend to the highest peak in the country, Rysy (wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rysy), at 8,212 feet.  The mountain can be climbed from both the Polish side and the Slovakian side, as it is exactly on the border of the two countries.  However, the Polish side is much steeper and more difficult, something Dagmara and I underestimated.

After doing some sightseeing on Saturday afternoon/evening in the town, going up a gondola to a shorter mountain peak overlooking Zakopane, and buying some warmer clothes for the higher altitude, we hit the sack early.  Sunday morning, we set out from the parking lot in the national forest at 9:30am.  A website Dagmara read said it should take 10 hours to get to the peak and back, so we knew we were okay on time.  The trail for the first 2.5 hours is actually a blacktop road, which was kind of disappointing.   The road ends at a hostel/restaurant/grocery store on the glacial lake of Morskie Oko.  That’s where the real hiking begins.  The view from Morskie Oko (Marine Eye) was beautiful.  After another 1.5 hours, we made it up to the second glacial lake, Czarny Staw (Black Lake).  Planning ahead, we packed a lot of food and water, so we stopped here to rest and eat some.  Most people who hike in this Tatra park stop at Morskie, but of those that choose to continue, the vast majority stop at Czarny Staw.  We were already behind almost all people that were going to the peak of Rysy at this point, but based on our research, we still had plenty of time to get to the peak and back down.  Or so we thought…

The trail goes around the lake and then begins to rise very sharply on the far side of the lake.  Maybe 100 feet above the lake, the snow drifts begin.  After this, the trail really deteriorates, with loose rocks and no real steps.  After an hour or two of hiking, we met a group of people coming down who told us it was about two hours to the top from the point we were at.  No problem.  We hiked another hour, met a guy coming down.  He said another 2.5 hours, but he didn't make it to the top.  He said we could do it easy because we were young.  My confidence was high.  In all honesty, I wasn't too tired yet because the trail was so bad that it forced us to move very slowly.  It was a very tedious task, and probably more mentally draining than physically. 

The views were more and more amazing as we went up.  The two glacial lakes below us were beautiful, the pictures I took will not do them justice—my camera just couldn't capture the vivid blue-aqua color.  At about 3pm we met a middle-aged couple coming down from the top.  The woman was wearing sandals, so I felt encouraged that the way may even get easier.  They laughed when we said that this part of the trail was difficult.  It only gets harder, they responded.

We crossed a few more snow drifts and at 3:30 we rested for a while on a plateau to take in all the beauty.  We still had a ways to go, and we were running out of time.  At this point I started to have serious doubts.  We climbed another 20 minutes and reached something I wasn't prepared for: chains bolted into the mountain side to help with the ascent.  While helpful, there is a reason they had to put chains on the trail: it was too difficult to climb without them.  We went even more slowly and carefully now, getting our gloves soaked from the snowmelt as we climbed up.  I'm not going to lie, I was a little scared at times, there were some pretty hardcore maneuvers we had to pull to move around, under, and over the rocks.  Just before 5pm, we met a group of climbers descending.  They said we were very close to the top, but the way didn't get any easier.  We were probably an hour from the top by my guess, but we simply had to turn around, the daylight was running out.  So we took a few pictures, soaked in all the beauty, and prepared ourselves for the long trek back.

Going down, however, proved to be even more difficult than going up.  We were both tired at this point, having started the hike (actually, it became a "climb" once we reached the chains) at 9:30am.  It was already twilight when we reached Czarny Staw, and the sun was completely gone when we reached Morskie Oko (we did get to see a few mountain goats, though!  Too dark to get a picture L ) Thankfully, the trail was basically flat at Morskie Oko and the moon was very bright, so the danger of falling was zero.  As we walked in the moonlight, Dagmara mentioned that there were lots of bears near Morskie Oko.  This was a very comforting thought, especially since our only flashlight was a cellphone.  We regrouped at the Hostel, and prepared for the 2 hour walk to the car in the darkness.

About 20 minutes into the walk, we heard/saw something, but it turned out to be a deer.  After that, our nerves were on edge, so we talked very loudly to scare away potential bears.  After an hour of walking, we saw headlamps coming onto the road—we were saved from the darkness by another group of hikers!  It was much welcomed company for the last hour of the hike.  We were both so tired when we got to the car at 11:30 pm.  14 HOURS OF HIKING!!!!  Nearly 2 weeks later, I think we both are still a little sore from that brutal hike.  It was a great adventure, but next time I think we will take the Slovakian side.  (pictures to come soon!)

But now, the adventure is Warsaw!