That time me and my friend visited the illegal part of the catacombs in Paris

Hello everyone, before I begin this post I just want to say I'm a new member of Steemit. I've been a Reddit user for over six years so Steemit feels very familiar to me. Also sorry for poor formatting, I'll get used it sooner or later!

Introduction

These pictures were all taken in 2014, before the real terrorist attacks began on Paris. Me and my buddy are big fans of exploring old abandoned stuff, so when we visited Paris the catacombs were a no-brainer. The only problem we had was that we had no idea how to get down into the tunnel system. Luckily I had a friend who had been in the catacombs a couple of years earlier, so I asked him for some info. While he didn't know where the exact entrance was, he could give us the general area of the place.

Trying to find the entrance

When we arrived at the general area, we really didn't have any clue where to look, we lifted some manhole covers, peeked through the different buildings in the park, we looked everywhere but we found nothing. We were doing this for about an hour or so until we found a somewhat hidden "pit" in the park. In this pit there were train tracks and a tunnel. We immediately knew that had to be it. There was only one problem though, there was no way of getting down into that pit. We could always take the risk and climb it but we decided it would be better to find another way down. Finding a way down there wasn't too hard, we just grabbed our phones and looked if we could find any train tracks nearby, and sure enough we found it. These train tracks were really cool, so lush and green, felt like you were in a different world. While walking along the train tracks, we met a photographer which we chatted up. We figured he might know the way down to the catacombs but sadly he was just as clueless as us. We walked along the tracks, taking photos, talking about life and just taking the atmosphere. After 20 minutes or so we hit a dead end so we had to turn back, at this point we were starting to think we wouldn't find the entrance at all.

While walking back to where we came from, we had to walk through a long and dark tunnel. It was while we were in this tunnel that we noticed a bunch of flashlights emerging from the ground. When I saw those flashlights I almost knew that we had found the entrance. We greeted the group of french explorers and told what we wanted to do (see the catacombs obviously), but they had just been there for a couple of hours so they weren't so thrilled to go down again. Luckily I managed to convince one of the guys to give us a quick tour.

Entering The Catacombs

See that tiny hole in the pic below? Yep, that's the entrance. Very narrow and claustrophobic. What's even better is that my buddy suffers from claustrophobia, yeah, I already knew this wasn't going to happen. The "tour guide" squeezed through and so did I, but my buddy had difficulties... About half way in he started to panic and had to bail, I asked him if it was cool if I did a quick look around, he gave me the green light and we were off.

My tour guide had been here quite a few times, seeing as he moved swiftly and knew exactly where to go. I found this impressive, as the catacombs are literally a giant maze (and by giant I mean several hundred kilometers in length combined) with intersecting paths everywhere. As if that wasn't enough, some sections also have several levels. Going down here without any knowledge of where to go could potentially kill you. So as I said, the catacombs are huge and while most of it are just very long tunnels, there are different rooms, valves and chambers. My tour guide wanted to show me the most famous one, known as "La Plage" or The Beach in english. It was about a 30 minute walk from the entrance. We walked through knee deep water and mud to get there, in some sections we also had to get down on our knees and crawl because the ceiling was so low. One thing was certain, I had never done any exploration like this before.

La Plage consisted of a large room or chamber, don't know what to call it really. It's called La Plage because there's a giant mural of (you've guessed it) a beach. Picture of it further down below. It was painted like those old traditional Japanese paintings, really cool. Since my friend was waiting outside we decided to head back. I wasn't worried about my short visit, because I was planning on going back here the next day. When we got out, I was hyped and told my friend how cool it was and I could see that he really wanted to see it for himself. The tour guide gave us his map and highlighted how to walk to get into La Plage, we thanked him and went back to our apartment.

The Next Day

After I told my buddy how cool it was, he just had to go down there. So we had to figure out a way to cure his claustrophobia, at least temporarily. We went down to the super market and bought 6 beers and a bottle of Pastis. The plan was to get him drunk enough so he wouldn't care that his in a tight claustrophobic place, I was skeptical but what other choices did we have? We arrived at the entrance and noticed there were a lot of people going both in and out. I always had this image that the catacombs are pretty untouched, but it turns out there's a whole movement around these tunnels. We chitchatted with some people, just asking questions about the catacombs in general and were told that there's actually police (or something similar, English wasn't their strongest side) down there sometimes. From what I managed to understand, there's some kind of group that goes into the tunnels each week to look for lost people, it's apparently pretty common. They told us it wouldn't be a problem because we were tourists, that really didn't help but we said fuck it, my friend chugged 2 beers and off we went.

And yes, that wall dates back to 1836, pretty cool huh? While being down there, the thought of getting lost always in the back of my mind. Would we have to wait several days before someone finds us? What the fuck do we do if we get lost? We decided to not get too adventurous and just stick to La Plage. On our way there we met about 3 or 4 different groups of people, all of them french, but they were still very nice to us (the day before our tour guide also mentioned that some people dislike when foreigners go down there). We made our way through the mud and low ceilings, slowly but surely. At some places there ladders leading up to the ground level, most of these are sealed off unfortunately. Standing at the bottom of these ladders and looking up made me realize just how far down we were (about 30 meters or so).

After 30 minutes of walking and crawling we finally reached our destination. We hung around for a while, took a smoke, drank some beers and just took in the atmosphere. The pictures doesn't really show the whole place, but behind us there's plenty of more space with large pillars spread all around. After chilling for a few minutes, my friend started to sober out and we were out of beers, so it was time to head back.

On our way back we bump into a guy crawling through the mud, he asks us if it's this muddy the whole and we respond with yes. He swears and says he has to take another way around. I realize this guy probably knows the catacombs very well, so I ask him if I can tag along. He thinks about for a while and says he has to talk with his friend. We go back towards the entrance where I drop off my friend for the night and head back into the catacombs to meetup with my new tour guide. He says he's fine with bringing me along but wants to make sure his friend doesn't mind. After 10 minutes or so, I hear loud jazz music playing around the corner. Out from the shadows comes a tall guy, with a rastafari hat, one of those old school lanterns, and high rubber boots. They talk to each other, look at me, and agree to let me come along.

Turns out they're having a little dinner with a few friends in a secret room they're making. Because of the mud we had to take a slight detour, I think we were for almost an hour or so before we met up with the group. Walking to their secret room was surreal. These guys knew the catacombs inside out, there were really fast and didn't hesitate once where to go. It amazes me that someone can remember a maze so good, to me most of the parts looked pretty identical. The jazz music was also a nice touch.

When we arrive at their secret room there's a bunch of people, women and men, young and old. There were all really friendly, gave me some snacks and some pot. We spend the next hour or so here, just talking about everything, relationships, music, hobbies and so on. I learned that one of the guys in this group hosted monthly raves in some part of the catacombs, sounded really cool but unfortunately we never got to see one.

After our dinner, my tour guide and the jazz loving rasta asked me if I wanted to see their own special room. I was hesitant because I had been down there for a couple of hours by this time, but they insisted on showing me. I agreed, this began another hour long journey. This time we headed into the more unknown parts of the catacombs, which got me thinking... "Here I am, 30 meters below Paris, walking with two complete strangers taking me to the most unexplored parts. Are they going to let me die down here or what?" I tried to shake the thoughts but to no avail, so I decided it was best to be alert if they tried to do any shady stuff, like try to run away or knock me out. As we got further in, it became harder and harder to navigate.

At some point we had to go prone and crawl through 10 meters of sand. I was lucky I didn't suffer from claustrophobia. Finally after an hour or so of walking, we arrive. It's a small room that they've been working on for a while. They had made a bench to sit on and a small table. The rasta man was however most proud of his mushroom sculptures which were scattered all over the room. After talking to them for a while I realized that these guys are really friendly and down to earth. Both had families and were working normal jobs, one was software engineer, couldn't remember what the other guy did. I told them about stay in Paris, I got some sightseeing tips and so on. We had a great time.

I looked at my watch and noticed I had been walking around here for about 6 hours or so. It was time for me to head home, this time we took a complete different way, which took us several floors up and I somehow magically ended up next to a tram station. I thanked them both for the tour, added them on Facebook and began walking home. This was easily the best adventure I've been on and it will always stay with me. :) I hope you enjoyed my story!