Cave hike from Vörös-tó to Jósvafő, Hungary

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I dealt with yet another range of extremes today, as Masayo and I had the fantastic experience in the morning of a private cave tour near the town of Aggtelek, Hungary and then took a bus trip down to the capital Budapest for the next part of our adventure. Unfortunately, the day would end with a shockingly high blood sugar, a reading so high that I can’t remember the last time I had one similar.

After the rice and liquor-filled dinner last night I was pleased and even mildly stunned that at 8:30 am this morning I was 123. I’m the Humalog cowboy!

But what surprises would breakfast hold for us at the homey guesthouse Katica Vendegház in the sleepy, misty village of Aggtelek? Meals here are home-cooked, delicious and unique but hard to anticipate in detail.

It turned out to be just Masayo and I alone again in the dining room downstairs, getting special personalized treatment yet again thanks to our traveling in the off-season. There were two giant sausages waiting for us alongside a basket of sliced bread and big pot of hot tea.

It was a nice departure from our usual morning meals so far on this trip, which have usually included yogurt, pastries, lunch meats, and coffee. The tea turned out to be really sweet, however. The rice and liquor hadn’t killed me, now they were trying pure sugar!

I treated it like I would juice, taking insulin for it but going easy on actually drinking it. And I only had two slices of bread. At any rate, the salty sausage, sweet tea, and soft white bread all blended excellently. Not only was it all great but it complemented last night’s chicken and rice and pickles well.

Hungarians seem friendly and have a great insight into food.

The woman running Katica Vendegház who’d made the meal for us told us to get a move on since she was going to drive us to the cave tour we’d planned. The three of us got into her little white car and we took off down the road, a winding two-lane path with nice, new asphalt zigzagging through leaf-strewn hills, bare brown trees, and green undergrowth in foggy morning drizzle.

We ended up at a tourist office near a place called Vörös-tó (Voros Lake). We’d begin our tour of the vast underground cave system here and emerge after the 100-minute excursion in the nearby town of Jósvafő. From there we’d take a free tourist shuttle back here, and the lady would be waiting to pick us up at 12:20.

Vörös-tó and Jósvafő

Today’s tour was discounted because we still had our tickets from the other cave tour in Aggtelek yesterday and there’s a two-day special. The tour was set to begin at 10:00 am and nobody else was around. It was very chilly and the rain dampened everything. The guide, unlike yesterday, thankfully spoke a little English. Otherwise we’d have understood nothing!

He led us into the cave entrance at Vörös-tó, two hundred seventy-one steps going down into the darkness. The first thing we saw was a bat clinging to the ceiling above with its head buried in its wings. The guide said each bat stays in one place for 8-10 days while hibernating.

Compared with yesterday, the guide was quiet today, perhaps shy about speaking in English. He stayed silent for long periods as he led us around the walkway, turning lights on and off as we passed through various chambers. He did point out the distorted formations around us that were said to resemble things – a Turkish town with minarets, a sinking ship, alligators, a king and his harem. They did indeed. As we discussed things, our murmurs echoed spookily around the inert and moist caverns.

The tour wrapped up a little early and, now at the complex in Jósvafő (pronounced roughly like “jos VA fu”), we got the shuttle bus back to Vörös-tó. There I checked my BG – 182. Not great but not too terrible. I can say I made it through the insane dinner last night with no real dent in my blood sugar.

We stood in the rain in Vörös-tó, without umbrellas, waiting for the lady from the guesthouse to pick us up. Like dinner last night and breakfast this morning, the ride came twenty minutes early. But this time it was the husband, not the wife, and we were surprised when he drove us not back to the room at Aggtelek but back to Jósvafő where the cave tour had just ended.

He wanted to show us a park nearby. And it was excellent: in the misty rain under burnt orange trees was a little waterway through a rock that came from the cave system. It led through the carpet of red fallen leaves to a stunning little blue-quartz pond. Bright green ivy covered the rocks and stones.

We lingered a few minutes at this hidden slice of Hungarian heaven, and then the guy (who apparently spoke no English at all) drove us back to the guesthouse, going way too fast around the curves on the wet roads I felt. Well, locals know these roads and know what they’re doing, I told myself to calm my nerves as I clutched the arm rest in terror.

Inside the guesthouse, nobody was around. The couple live in a different house themselves, and there are no other guests today. Masayo and I sat alone in the chilly dining room; we had two and half hours to kill before our bus to Budapest and there is nothing to do in Aggtelek that I knew of.

Eventually boredom took over and I wanted to get out and do something. We roused the couple from across the street to check out and pay for the room and the meals – all cheap and as expected re: the booking.com page. The couple were so friendly, smiling and shaking our hands like they were saying goodbye to old friends. They had worked hard to make us enjoy our stay, see more caves and local places than we’d planned, and eat well. And not for extra money – they just seemed proud of their area, and made me like Hungary that much more.

Near the bus stop is a small shop and we went there for food. It was basic, and Masayo and I took a long time to decide on what to get. I finally settled on yogurt, sunflower seeds, and a cinnamon roll. Plus water of course.

Outside the shop we found a covered (but still wet and cold) wooden table to eat at. Shivering through a Humalog shot, I had to guess how many carbs were in the large cinnamon roll. And then we huddled and ate as the soft rain fell all around us in the limpid afternoon.

And still we had two hours to kill before the bus to Budapest.

We went and sat in the bus stop, a little covered concrete area with a wooden bench. Occasionally a car would pass by on the road, or an old woman would walk past, clutching a scarf around her head in the rain. But mostly nothing at all happened.

I decided to go hunt for coffee, leaving Masayo with the bags. I made it all the way down to the cave entrance, over a kilometer away, where we’d had crepes yesterday. I hoped they’d have coffee in to–go cups.

Unfortunately it was all for nothing. The restaurant was closed when I got there: lights off, door locked, chairs on the tables. I went across the parking lot to the tourist info office and asked the lady if she by any chance had coffee. No.

“Does anyone around here sell coffee?” No, she smiled.

So all I got out of the walk was some time killed and a little warmth from the motion. Didn’t help Masayo much, though, who was still cold and wet back at the bus stop.

To pass time I started telling her lists of things. The Beatles’ UK albums, in chronological order. Pink Floyd albums, in order. The songs on The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, in order. Anything I could think of. As I did this other people began to show up and wait for the bus.

To Budapest, the capital

And it came, finally. Wet and cold and tired, we climbed aboard the large comfy conveyance, paid the driver, and settled in for a four-hour ride to Budapest. It was sort of chilly even inside but soon heaters in the floor kicked in. I shifted my day pack, which is full of insulin pens, so they wouldn’t get too warm.

As we hummed and bobbed over Hungarian roads I checked to see how the cinnamon roll had affected me. Not positively: my BG was 257. I had some Humalog and ate sunflower seeds.

It was long after dark when we pulled into Budapest, and still raining a little. We had booked a room at a place called Elvis Guesthouse through booking.com; the Metro station was just outside the bus terminal. We entered and bought tickets to the station next to the hostel.

Soon we were walking through the wet streets of Budapest trying to get our bearings, before we asked directions at a falafel shop and found Elvis Guesthouse. But there was a problem: they in fact have two locations and we’d come to the wrong one. The other, correct one, as I peered at a wall map, seemed right next to the bus terminal actually.

The staff was really cool about it – we had the option of being taken to the correct place or we could stay here, where we’d get a bigger room and be near more shops, but there would be no free breakfast. We chose to stay.

The room is very large, apartment style, with a loft at the top of some stairs where the bed is. Downstairs we have a small but full kitchen and our own private bathroom. And they let us have it at the same price we would have paid across town. Who cares about the free breakfast!

Then the day turned terrible, medically speaking.

We went to a shop to buy cereal, milk, eggs, and bacon for tomorrow’s breakfast, plus some slices of pizza (and cookies) for dinner tonight. I got a bottle of beer.

In the room we sat and relaxed, enjoying our warm-ish food and proud of the day’s many achievements. I’ve had bad luck with pizza BGs on this trip but have recently had some improvements, such as in Kutná Hora, Czech Republic. I felt I could handle this one ok too.

Still, I knew that this Budapest pizza was particularly thick and sweet. I took a little extra Humalog because of that but still felt I wouldn’t be shocked by a high afterwards.

Heh – didn’t know it would be that bad though. Two hours later I was 402. The first 400+ reading of the trip and my first one in who knows how long. Months, at least. The number even looked surreal on my OneTouch. But I knew it was true.

I sighed, took four units of Humalog, and did some laundry with the Scrubba bag. I remain ambivalent about the Scrubba: it helps with the washing, but that isn’t really the hard part of sink-laundry anyway. Squeezing the water out each item is what takes all the time and the Scrubba isn’t designed to help with that. The Scrubba does, however, make me bend over in the shower stall or on the floor, which hurts my back. On previous trips I’ve just done laundry in the sink with no Scrubba. It can be annoying and boring but doesn’t hurt my back.

Tomorrow we have a particularly boring day planned: we want to hang around the room and do nothing. We’ve had several days of big activity in a row; hard to believe that in the last week we’ve hiked to a castle, gotten stuck on a cable car high in the mountains, walked around an ancient wooden church, and taken two cave tours. All while moving from town to town.

This 402, if it had to come, showed up at the right time I suppose: tomorrow’s a rest day anyway.

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