Velka Amerika

Velka Amerika is a limestone quarry worked from the 1890s until the 1960s, cut about eight hundred metres long and a hundred wide with walls dropping some sixty to eighty metres to a lake at the bottom, and since pumping stopped the groundwater has filled it to a depth of around twenty metres, coloured intensely blue-green by dissolved limestone. It is one of the most photographed places in Bohemia and is regularly called the Czech Grand Canyon, which is not a serious comparison but conveys the shape. The rim viewpoints are legally accessible and the descent is not: swimming and climbing down are banned, the walls are unstable, and people are killed here with some regularity, which is worth stating plainly. Smaller flooded quarries, Mala Amerika and Mexiko, lie nearby, along with a system of quarry tunnels. It appeared in the Limonadovy Joe film, which is why some Czechs call the area the Wild West.

The landscape

• A flooded quarry - eight hundred metres long with walls up to eighty metres.
• Blue-green water - coloured by dissolved limestone, about twenty metres deep.
• Rim viewpoints - the only legal access, on marked paths.
• Smaller quarries nearby - Mala Amerika, Mexiko and connecting tunnels.

When to go

April to October. Two hours.

Practical notes

Descending, swimming and climbing are banned and genuinely dangerous - the walls are loose. There are no facilities. Weekend crowds fill the small parking areas. Stay behind the fencing.

Nearby

Karlstejn castle is five kilometres away; the Bohemian Karst surrounds it.

Key facts