BSAC TRAVEL CLUB - Trip Reports - Grotta Giusti, Tuscany

TRAVEL CLUB

Grotta Giusti, Tuscany

by Gordon Mackie

When I heard about cave diving in 34°C water, I just had to try it out.
The historic Grotta Giusti Spa has been popular since Victorian times. This 4 star spa resort, located between Pisa and Florence in the town of Monsummano (close to Montecatini) sits above the Grotta, a series of caves heated by thermal lakes to 34°C - a natural sauna. In Limbo, there is a tantalising glimpse of the beauty below as there is a small azure pool of crystal clear water.
In 1980, Luciano Tanini started to explore the cave system, having found the tight entrance that leads into the cave system below, since then, captivated by the caves, he has dived and explored them for the past 20 years. Following the lead of the spa Grotta naming, he has named all the caves and sections based on Divina Commedia by Dante Alighieri.
He has also created a unique Spa Diver course and published an informative manual called Spa Diver (Subaquea Termale)

Uniquely, cave dives here start with a walk down a carpeted section of the cave and end with a member of the spa staff offering you a warm towelling robe... hardly the usual cave diving experience!

Entering the cave system without fins, you "climb" round the caves as the main section is a cleft in the rock, running at about 20 to 30° off the vertical. Luciano, assisted by Marco Maccioni and Silvia Mochi, has roped the main section clearly. The main pass-throughs are at 10m, 18m and 27m - all are breathtakingly beautiful, the water is clear as gin and at almost body temperature. The rock formations are stunning and your torch beam flits from feature to feature, revealing more fantastic shapes than I have ever seen before. There are quite a few tight squeezes to negotiate but they are well worth the work as they lead to more and more interesting areas within the cave system. There are several air spaces with breathable air where you can pop up and talk over the delights of the dive so far. Another highlight is to group in a cave underwater, turn off all the lamps and experience true darkness and peace... a fantastic experience.

The Hotel

I dived the caves every day of the week that I was there and I could have stayed another week, poking around the corners and delighting in the weightless leaps around the main open area of the caves. Luciano and Marco were fantastic company and gave me a full briefing on the caves, the style of diving and the unique features of the cave system and the rocks before we started diving. If you love cave diving, Grotta Giusti has to be on your "must do" list. As Truk and Scapa Flow are to wrecks, Grotta Giusti is to caves. There is a link to Me.Di.T (Luciano, Marco and Silvia) the only dive operation allowed to dive the caves at the bottom of the page. You need to stay in the Spa Hotel (a fantastic hotel, glorious Tuscan food and wine and stunning service).

The Spa can be easily reached from UK by flying to Pisa and taking a train from Pisa airport to Montecatini. We stayed in the Grotta Giusti Spa hotel, a magnificent hotel with wonderful food and great staff, very attentive and efficient. Lorrie took a full anti-stress course while we were there. We also visited Montecatini to take the waters..I tried all of them and they are powerful stuff indeed!! The feature of the Grotta Giusti Spa since Victorian times has been the Grotta, entering the first cave, Paradiso, you move on to Limbo (the lake entry to the underground cenotes) and then via Purgatorio to the hottest (34°C) Inferno. The caves are all heated by the underground lake systems.

See an enlarged Plan and drawings of the caves (supplied by MeDiT)

Grotta Giusti Homepage: http://www.grottagiustispa.com/flash.html

Grotta Giusti Diving: http://www.meditonline.it/

Photo Credit: Gordon Mackie

More Fantastic Photos/Info: www.gordonmackie.com

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