Plitvice Lakes

Thursday 8th April 2010

We left Zagreb at 8.30 on a bus heading for the Plitvice Lakes. They are located very close to the Bosnian border about 2 hours away from Zagreb. The bus trip was no problems and the driver let us out right in front of the entrance, which was right where our hotel was. We had decided that we'd pay a bit more to stay in one of the 3 hotels located in the park, rather than saving some money and trying to figure out how to get to one of the guesthouses a few kilometers away. The hotel was pretty shabby, but luckily it was ready for us to check into as we arrived around 10.30. We dumped bags and set off for the information and ticket kiosk.

They have several different routes you can take around the path and we decided that we'd do one of the longer ones; it was supposed to take 4-6 hours. The first leg of that trip was to take one of the bus/tram type things up to the top of the upper lakes. We got off and set off back down the hills. The marked walkways were pretty easy to follow and mostly they were wooden boardwalks that went over the top of the lakes. The water was an amazing green blue and was so clear. There is apparently a big bear population in the park but luckily they were all still sleeping so we didn't get to see any!

The journey down through the upper lakes was pretty cool. There was lots of waterfalls and beautiful scenic spots. Once we'd reached the big lake about halfway down, we took a boat across the big island. We decided that it was lunch time so we grabbed a very expensive lunch from one of the kiosks that were open. I had a ham and cheese roll, while what Dan though was a sausage roll actually turned out to be a strudel; he wasn't completely disappointed!

The path through the lower lakes had to be different from the path that we'd picked out at the start because there was lots of high water and floods over the walkways. We ended up having to trek up a big hill for most of it, but the views over the lakes were spectacular. We eventually made it to the 'Big Waterfall'. From memory its almost 80m high. We came down the side of the mountain and traversed some really flooded walkways (With heaps of water gushing over them) to reach the edge of a cluster of waterfalls, which produced a massive rainbow. It was pretty special. We got fairly wet from the spray of the big waterfall too, but it was quite a warm day so we didn't mind too much at all!

It was at this point that Dan decided that we needed to tack some more onto our tour and climb up the steep path at the side of the waterfall so we could reach the top. After that just about killed me, we took in the views before making our way back down again. On the way back to the final stop on our route Dan thought we'd be right to take the path that said "High Waters Path Closed". We followed another Australian family (who we'd been near for most of the day), but as we had reached a fork in the path they were heading back towards us saying "Definitely no go". This meant we had to take a path up through a cave. It was pretty much straight up, but Dan got to climb through lots of holes so he was happy. After not being able to find the last bus/tram stop (It was very poorly signposted) and walking up and down the same hill twice, we eventually figured it out before jumping on the bus back to the hotel around 5pm.

We thought we deserved a beer after our 6 hours of walking, so we found a nearby, yet deserted, little restaurant/café and treated ourselves to a pint on the balcony.

Options for dinner were incredibly limited (as we were staying in the park and not being high season not much was open) so we opted to go back to where we'd had our afternoon beers. The food was overpriced and fairly s***ty, but we needed to eat, so we did. The restaurant was massive and apart from us, there was only a group of 3 other guys in there.

After dinner the two weary walkers stumbled back across the path to the sleazy motel and went straight to sleep!