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Ten kilometres south of Kielce, and roughly 1km west of the main Krakow road, is the Jaskinia Raj (Raj Cave; April-Nov Tues-Sun 10am-5pm; compulsory guided tours in Polish only; 8zl), one of the myriad underground formations dotted around southern Poland, principally in central-northern Malopolska and the Tatras. Only discovered in 1964, the "Paradise Cave" (Jaskinia Raj) as it's popularly known, rapidly established itself as a local favourite, and particularly in summer, droves of school buses and day-trippers descend on the place. If you want to avoid the crowds, you'd be well advised to get there early. The bus (#31 from Kielce) drops you on the main road, from where you walk to the main car park and on along a wooded path to the ticket office-cum-cafe/museum at the cave entrance. Only a stretch of 150 metres inside the caves is open to visitors, but it's a spectacular enough experience comprising a series of chambers filled with a seemingly endless array of stalagmites, stalactites and other dreamlike dripstone formations. It's now been established that Neanderthals inhabited the caves as long as 50,000 years ago - these days the wintertime occupants are mainly bats - and scientific research carried out here continues to unearth archeologically significant finds such as a recently discovered stockade constructed from reindeer antlers. Some of the finds are on display in the small museum attached to the ticket office at the cave entrance. If you want to stop over, there's a basic hotel , the Zajazd Raj (tel 041/346 5127; 90-120zl/GBP16-22/US$22.50-30) close to the car park, which has its own restaurant.
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