Euro Day 23 - Plitvice Lakes National Park

Tuesday, 16 July 2019

I had never heard of the Plitvice Lakes before Zali showed me some photos of it as we were planning our holiday. And I'd never really considered putting Croatia on the itinerary, but here we are!

And it was amazing.  Not surprisingly it's a pretty popular park - in fact I had to reserve our entry time on-line a few months ago (and pay a huge entry fee). I choose 7am as by all accounts it was much better first thing in the morning.  We're staying just a few kilometres away in a guest house but it still meant an early start so we could be picking up our tickets at 6.45.

The park isn't amazing just for the incredible waterfalls, it's also amazing because of the fantastic way the wooden paths wind through, around and over it.  There are plenty of different walking routes to choose from ranging from loops of a few ks to 18 k with a few ups and downs.  Since we'd paid heaps to get here I insisted we walk every inch of the trails and take all the transport options within it which included the electric boats and the buses.  It was great.  It did get a bit busy as we were finishing off our trip but for most of it we had lots of space. Particularly on the less travelled paths.  The water was so clear we could see all the fish quite far out into the lakes. 

So, was it worth the extra time and money to divert down here to Croatia? - it sure was!  We head north to Slovenia tomorrow but we've got another Croation waterfall spot to look at on our way (as recommended by our guesthouse host) .  We really enjoyed the forest that we walked through today too - the area has lots of 'karst' landforms - deep depressions which make for fantastic orienteering.  It was also really nice to eat our lunch not in a car park :)

We're now resting our tired legs back at our guesthouse.  I booked this (rather than camp) because I couldn't really see what the campsites were like online and I was a bit concerned about having all our stuff stolen while we were in the park (we'd been heavily warned about the pickpockets operating in the area too).  But as we drove through the towns near the park I spotted lots of lovely looking campgrounds - so I'm sure they would have been fine too.