While it feels like every square inch of the Earth has been discovered, trodden on, bought and sold, there’s still plenty of real estate left beneath the surface to discover.
We found five of the most extraordinary experiences to be had below the surface.
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Travelling can be hard work. From lugging 25kg suitcases up Italian villa staircases to catching colds on long-haul flights, going on holiday can wreak havoc on the body. To cure all that ails you, here’s our top five weirdly therapeutic spa treatments from around the world. They’re an adventure in their own right:
NATURE’S SWIMMING POOL
Yucatán, Mexico
Alright, we get it. A cenote – hardly underground we hear you say. We might get some underground purists (talk about a niche community) turn their noses up at this inclusion, but the facts are, a cenote is a natural pit filled with water, a leftover from the collapse of a limestone bedrock.
This is more than enough for us to consider them an underground experience. What we already knew is what a glorious feeling it is to swim in cool waters beneath flickers of the Yucatan sun, like at Ik-Kil cenote near the sacred ruins of Chichen Itza, Mexico.
Vines hang loosely and attractively from the top of the sinkhole down to the surface of the water, an inviting shade of blue to dive in and escape the heat. You’ll start swimming at 28 metres underground and then it’s another 40 metres deep after that. Don’t drop your phone, or your GoPro.
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DIVING AND ABANDONED MINE
Dalarna, Sweden
Diving into an abandoned mine shaft doesn’t, on the surface, sound like a great idea.
But this article is about what’s below the surface, so that logic doesn’t apply here. For around 400 years the Tuna Hästberg mine in Dalarna, Sweden provided iron ore by the plenty. In the summer of 1968 (one prior to Bryan Adams’) the last shot was fired at the mine, and now water fills where miners once toiled and where explosives once detonated.
Diving from a depth of 80 metres below ground level (that’s from, not to) dive guides assist in lighting the way down the shaft. Following a network of rail lines, divers navigate through expansive stopes as well as tight rabbit holes, coming across long disused machinery and electrical stations.
There’s no coral reef to marvel at here; just the passage of time and human enterprise. It is eerie, it is unique and it is slightly unhinged.
For the less adventurous (crazy), Tuna Hästberg also offers mine tours by foot, staged gigs that are held 80 metres below Earth, as well as a one-of-a-kind underground sauna—this is Scandinavia, after all.
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AN UNDERGROUND THEME PARK
Transylvania, Romania
“Let’s put an amusement park inside an old salt mine,” was what one crazy operator presumably said one day, leading to general bemusement and eventually, the Salina Turda Salt Mine that existis today.
Based 120 metres below the turf in Transylvania, Turda Salt Mine was a source of salt for up to 2,000 years. Now described as “the world’s most spectacular natural underground formation,” and we’re not arguing.
Ground level offers no clue to what lies below at this place, located just outside of Cluj-Napoca, Romania’s second largest city. There’s rides, a Ferris-wheel, a sports field, a bowling alley, billiards, an amphitheatre showing films and gigs, and a lake where you can paddle on a boat to a man-made, neon-lit island. Salt waterfalls and stalactites adorn the cavernous walls of each section, giving an otherworldly feeling that makes it very difficult to believe you’re still on the same planet you started on.
TUNNELING THROUGH HISTORY
Berlin, Germany
A unique and sombre slice of German history is encapsulated in Tour M, taking trippers down to tunnels dug built by desperate East German citizens hoping to escape to a better life.
Around 70 tunnels were attempted, with only 19 proving successful, this number including sewer systems that were navigated as a means of escaping to freedom.
With the sound of trains rattling by on the U-Bahn overhead, Tour M tells the extraordinary stories of the 300 (possibly more) that made it across the other side, as well as the many, many more that didn’t make it. There’s several replica tunnels that have been recreated to simulate these very short, but incredibly dangerous journeys, but also real tunnels – like one used in the early 1970s which is situated eight metres below the surface of the Earth, and is still in excellent shape.
THE LARGEST AND DEEPEST HOTEL SUITE IN THE WORLD
Arizona, United States
You could advertise the Grand Canyon Cavern as the largest hotel suite in the world, but that would be cruelly robbing it of its other honours, those being the benchmark as the deepest, darkest and quietest hotel suite in the world.
There is only one underground suite at the Cavern, and it’s over 60 metres beneath the Earth, in a 45 million old cave beneath the Grand Canyon. We’re refuting the temptation to describe the room as cavernous, but it certainly is, given the expansions of 67 feet by 122 feet, with a ceiling 21 feet high.
The room itself is tucked into a corner of the cavern, enclosed only by a knee-high, wooden fence, with a library of books to choose from because what else do you do 60 metres below the ground?
Perhaps you could have passionate cavern sex, safe in the knowledge that you can be as noisy as you want given no-one will ever possibly hear you 60 metres below the Earth, although that fact may freak you out slightly and see you return to the surface, where you can see all of the extraordinary natural grandeur of the Grand Canyon.
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Tunnel 57, the most successful tunnel to smuggle East Germans to West Germany, was so named because 57 people made it through in two frantic nights in October 1964.