Summary
Croatia - what a country!!! It has beautiful unspoilt beaches, clear blue ocean water, beautiful mountains with stunning rivers that navigate between them and some of the best national parks either of us had seen in our lives. Croatia was also what we needed exactly when we needed it. After smashing ourselves from the middle of the Turkey across Bulgaria, Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro in the space of 10 days, we basically came to a halt and caught our breath. We did less than 1500 km's over the space of 2 weeks so it was great to slowdown and enjoy everything Croatia had to offer.

We started in the south at Dubrovnik, taking a few days up the coast until we caught a ferry across to Hvar Island. We spent a night at a caravan park here, we were the only ones there for the majority of it, that was absolutely beautiful. We explored Hvar and then caught a ferry across to Split the following day. We wanted to go to Brac but the ferry's only went to Split and we'd then have to get another ferry back to Brac and then back again to Split. The cost of the ferries with a camper van isn't cheap so we opted out of that. We stuffed around the Split area for a few days until we went white water rafting down the Cetina River near Omij that was awesome. Not crazy extreme rapids but instead a nice relaxing row down the river with stunning scenery.

After Split we mainly did the inland sights including Krka, Paklenica and Plitvicka National Parks apart from Zadar that was really nice. Plitvicka National Park is indescribably beautiful, the pictures don't even do it justice. We spent 6 hours hiking through here and we'd be happy to do it again. On our final night just outside of Plitvicka, we accidentally camped in a forest that had 'Beware of the Land Mines' signs within a kilometre of where we camped - so much fun!! We finished our Croatia adventure with a visit to a bear sanctuary near Kuterevo before heading into Slovenia much, much browner than when we entered Croatia.

The only downside of Croatia we experienced was the constant fear of being fined by the police for wild camping. Apparently it's illegal and there are fines issued between 150 and 1000 Euros. So this played on our minds a fair bit and we did a fair bit of hide and seek much to our success. But we loved Croatia, next time we come back we'll be hopefully sailing in a catamaran.

Speedometer: 150,702 km's