Hope you’re all enjoying the terrible weather back home. I
won’t rub it in by talking about how beautifully sunny and close to 30 degrees
it is here. Because I’m a nice, caring person.
I imagine by now many of you have seen my (unordered and
unlabelled) photos of Plitvice Lakes National Park, or Nacionalni park
Plitvička jezera. We probably should have seen it towards the end
of our trip rather than the start, because it was absolutely stunning and is
going to be might hard to top. For those of you who don’t know, Plitvice Lakes
National Parks boasts a cascade of sixteen lakes littered with waterfalls and
brilliant turquoise colours. It’s also the largest national park in the
country.
We woke bright and early (one of the benefits of doing it at
the start of your trip – you’re still waking around 6 am) and arrived at the
gates at the opening time (8 am). We took a not-dodgy-at-all bus-train up to
the top lake (Prošćansko) and weaved our way down the cascade, all the way
to the bottom eventually. The top sections of the lakes were largely navigated
by gorgeous rustic boardwalks, which were a beautiful kind of dilapidated with
the unfortunate consequence of being unable to walk and scan the views at the
same time. No siree, you had to watch where you put your feet, otherwise you’d
end up like a few people we saw along the way – very wet!
The environment changed considerably throughout the park,
from lush parkland to reeded ponds to gorgeous moss-littered forests to cliffs
peppered with the greens, reds and oranges of evergreen and deciduous trees to
more cliffs with tumbling, gushing waterfalls to small,
so-turquoise-you-feel-like-you’re-staring-inappropriately lakes to large,
breathtaking lakes. All I’ve been able to find on what produces the colours
(which range across a large breadth of the blue-green spectrum) is that they
have a ‘unique’ mix of minerals and organisms.
As we moved along we frequently ran into signs that pointed
to whereabouts we were on the cascade and told us how deep the lake we were
walking around was. The day was fairly foggy and then hazy, which meant as the
sun got brighter it actually made it harder to see, so unfortunately the
pictures pale in comparison to the real thing by more than usual. We continued
to traipse downhill, stopping frequently to ogle the different lakes and
waterfalls, navigating boardwalks, stairs and dirt tracks long the way.
After a rest at lunch we made our way down to the bottom to
the main waterfall, Veliki Slap. It’s apparently the tallest in Croatia at 78
m, although I have to admit that I found features like the small turquoise
lakes and the tiny waterfalls cascading over moss-covered rocks more beautiful.
Each to their own I guess. Probably didn’t help that the largest concentration
of tourists was found at the foot of Veliki Slap. Oh well.
We wandered our way back out of the lakes and took a short
ferry across the largest lake in the middle, Kozjak. From there we trundled
home through the gorgeous forest that I mentioned in my previous post, which
rivalled a few sections in the National Park in my opinion.
We had dinner at our accommodations, and although I’m pretty
sick of meat already (what would you like for dinner: meat or fish?) it was
actually pretty damn tasty. It’s been hard to find vegetarian food that’s not
just potatoes and garden salad – haven’t found any yet. I think I’m going to go
crazy. I think that Andrew and Cam are enjoying all the seafood though.
Okay, now I’m hungry.
Plitvice Lakes
