Otoska Jama

Otok Cave


Useful Information

Location: 2 km northwest Postojna.
50 km south of Ljubljana. 2,4 km north of Postojnska Jama, 3 km north Postojna. Motorway E61 exit Postojna, towards the city, straight ahead through first roundabout, keep right at second roundabout. Turn left towards Postojna Cave, follow road for 1.8 km, turn right and follow road to the cave entrance. Not signposted.
(45.791941, 14.197055)
Open: MAY to OCT daily by prior arrangement.
[2023]
Fee: Per Person SIT 1,440. [2003]
Classification: SpeleologyKarst cave
Light: bring torch
Dimension:
Guided tours: D=60 min, Min=3, Max=30.
Photography: allowed
Accessibility: no
Bibliography:
Address: Postojnska jama d.d., Jamska cesta 30, 6230 Postojna, Tel: +386-5-700-01-00, Fax: +386-5-700-01-30. E-mail:
As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then.
Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History


Description

Otoska Jama is a small cave with nice speleothems, developed as a show cave, but has no light. As the Postojna Cave is much more spectacular, this cave has become quite unimportant, and it has no regular open hours anymore. Nevertheless, it is open to the public after reservation at least three days in advance. The cave has nice stalactites and stalagmites and is well worth a visit. It is actually connected to the nearby Postojna cave by a waterfilled passage, the Pivka river can be seen in the cave at the far end. However, there is no dry connection between the caves.

Otoska Jama has some fame as a filming location of the 1960 Karl May movies. Several scenes of Winnetou II were filmed here. Terrence Hill plays a young man who is caught by bandits, together with a woman of the Apache tribe of Winnetou. They are bound to a massive stalagmite with a rope. The link below shows the comparison between the movie scenes and reality. Obviously the cave has not changed at all in the 60 years since then.

The movies were a co-production between Germany and Yugoslavia. As most people in the sixties had never been in the U.S.A. they actually did not know much about the landscapes there. But piczure of Monument Valley and the badlands were known from books. As the movies were low budget, the looked for similar landscapes in Europe, and chose the various bare karst areas in Slovenia and Croatia. Today there are fan pages where people collected lists of filming locations. The cave scenes were according to the books in wild caves, so they looked for caves with some development, which allowed the transport or equipment, but no electric light or other installations wich would be seen in the movies later. For this reason Otoska Cave, which only has paths without railing and no light was ideal. It was also possible to film here for weeks without disturbing the regular show cave tours. And the hotels and restaurants of Postojna were nearby for the crew. And as this was an eastern country, anything was rather cheap, due to the exchange rate.

There are numerous picture of crew and actors in the Otok Cave, for example Pierre Brice (Winnetou), Lex Barker (Old Shatterhand), and Klaus Kinski who played one of the bandits. For numerous famous actors these were their first movies, and they were still unknown.