Croatia: Caves + Nikola Tesla (August 19, 2025)
Imagine walking into a job interview holding a single letter of recommendation from none other than J.P. Morgan, the financial investor and backer to the company CEO in which you have a job interview. The letter says only this: “My dear Edison: I know two great men and you are one of them. The other is this young man (Tesla).”
As someone who has a deep appreciation for the power and simplicity of words, this was a great reminder of all that is needed to help someone get a job they deeply desire — even if these two men later turn out to be industry rivals.
I finally learned the context of this quote — it was over the $50,000 Edison promised Tesla if he could prove AC power was better than DC (and Tesla did).
My kids and I have been fascinated by the life of Nikola Tesla and the competition with Thomas Edison. If I had to summarize it, Edison was the better marketer and businessman while Nikola Tesla was the far superior inventor. There are some incredibly powerful lessons to be learned here, and I enjoyed spending time in the Tesla Museum learning even more about one of the greatest scientific minds with more than 100 patents in the US alone and according to some sources as many as 700 patents globally (and not all of his inventions were patented).
One of the most fascinating insights I learned from this museum was about Tesla’s gambling addiction and the stark contrast between how both of his parents approached the same problem — one successfully and one unsuccessfully. His dad, like most parents are prone to do, appealed to his logic and reason, sharing his own concerns for what he was witnessing and the long-term damage his gambling addiction would cause. Tesla, like most addicts, rebuffed these concerns with a simple, “I’ve got this under control and when I want to stop, I will.”
His mother took a wholly unique approach that was both risky and clever. Instead of combating her son’s addiction, she embraced it. She gave Tesla a big stack of money and said, “Go and enjoy yourself. The sooner you lose all we possess the better it will be.” It worked. Tesla conquered his gambling compulsion at that moment and never had a single desire to gamble again.
But perhaps the coolest part of the museum was when I temporarily got to be Luke Skywalker (for about 2 minutes). I was handed a regular fluorescent light and then the guide turned off the lights and turned on one of Tesla’s AC generators. When you’re near the generator, you pick up the electricity and it literally flows through you into the lightbulb and YOU power the light. SO COOL!
The force is with me as I power this regular light with my bare hands!
The 5 year old in me finally had my true and authentic “Star Wars moment.” For those two minutes, I was not holding a light, I was holding a lightsaber and I got to play as the electricity flowed through me and into this long sword / tube.
And yes, I enjoyed taking a few more picture around the museum (and nearby) capturing the fun and excitement of Nikola Tesla and his influence in Gospic, where he grew up.
After I’d had my fill of the Tesla museum, Nikola Maras and his wife, Ivana drove me to the Cerovac caves — the largest cave complex in Croatia. For context, I’m not “new” to caves. Growing up in California, my first time spelunking was in Northern California dropping down about 120 feet (about 37 meters) in order to enter a cave. I also loved taking a wooden slide into a cave in Salzburg and a train out of it. And in a few months time, I’ll be headed to Vietnam where I’ll be camping overnight in Hang Son Doong, the world’s largest cave.
I share all of this context as I’m not a newbie when it comes to caves. I enjoy them. I think they are beautiful, magical and special. I even took the time to learn that stalactites are the ones that hang down from the top and stalagmites are the ones that grow from the bottom. (Just in case you were wondering as this question often comes up during exploration ;-)
What I was not expecting was the hike up to the lower cave. Don’t get me wrong, I’m always up for a good hike. It’s just the idea of a “lower” cave implies that the entrances is relatively near the parking lot. Instead, we hiked up a good quarter mile straight up. Thankfully, there were many concrete stairs, which made it easier, but navigating 500 steps is like going up more than 30 flights of stairs.
Again, not complaining, but I have MAD RESPECT for the guides who not only do this each day, but several times a day between the “lower” and “upper” caves as well as taking their breaks down near the parking lot.
The first thing you notice when you are near the cave entrace is the cool 6 degree celsius temperature that is constant year round. That’s 43 degrees fahrenheit. In the dead of summer, we just hiked up 500 steps in 85 fahrenheit heat (30 celsius) and the first thing we need to do before going inside is … put on warmer clothes! Like a warm jacket and long pants. Totally worth it!
Now, from here, I’m going to do my best to share what we saw. Fully admit that there’s something lost in the translation between the actual experience and the pictures — especially as we’re not allowed to use our flash, so we use the lights inside the cave and the low light features of our phones to guide us.
And if you’re like me and love the look of the inside of the caves, I’ll share the next set of pictures from the upper cave. We navigated more steps up and saw a beautiful look out before entering the upper cave.
The only thing I’ll add here is that there were more expansive spots in the upper cave including a space that is perfect for acoustics. Our guide demonstrated this with the beginning of the Lion King and it was so fun to hear the reverberations throughout the cave.
Only later as we were exiting did I consider songs that were in rounds we could have played around with. I think if I come back here, I’d like to be with other singers who are interested in playing with the acoustics. I think it would be really fun to sing in this space.
And so, I got my fill of Croatian caves (both lower and upper) in addition to a nice hike up and down the surrounding area.
When I take a moment to pause, it’s actually incredible how much I’ve done during my time here in Croatia. When I first considered coming here and spending some quality time, I had in my mind something more along the lines of what my wife Elena would think of when she books island adventures. After all, Croatia is known for having more than 1,200 islands as part of its country.
And yet, I’ve had an incredible action-packed “Bill” adventure. That is, when my wife and I choose our vacations, we take turns between “Elena” sit-on-the-beach vacations and “Bill” get-out-and-adventure ones. I was not anticipating so many individual adventures here in Croatia and I’m so grateful for each of them. I feel like I have a much better sense of all that this country has to offer — from beautiful, jaw-droppingly gorgeous aqua-blue lakes to 360 degree mountain peak views to various ways to swim and play in the Adriatic Sea and let’s not forget the bears (up close and personal).
If you asked me at the beginning of the month what I associated with Croatia, it wasn’t all of this. And yet, now I know better. Having the time to deeply explore a country makes all the difference. Once again, I’m so grateful to Nikola Maras and his family for this deep immersion experience.
