I lay awake for most of the night listening to rain battering the tiles on the roof - something which would've been wonderful had I been sleeping in a cottage in the rain forest somewhere. As it was, I spent at least three hours staring at the raindrops cascading down the window and inventing new curse words, before finally drifting off into a restless sleep which was interrupted quite unexpectedly at 8 o clock this morning by the sound of birds in the trees and a beam of sunlight aimed so precisely through the window at my face that I was seeing spots for at least an hour. The Adriatic coast does this to you toward the summer months - for several weeks, the sun will beat relentlessly down on you until you've shrivelled up to the point of resembling a prune, and then the heavens suddenly open and an entire years worth of rain is deposited on your vineyard within the space of 24 hours before god hits the reset button and the cycle starts over. Today, it is almost as though yesterday didn't happen - if it weren't for the fact that the large rocky outcrop on which people stand to have their photo taken in front of the "Great Waterfall" was so far underwater this morning that Atlantis was probably consulting its lawyer, you wouldn't even know there'd been any rain at all. Not that the absence of any identifiable path up to the viewing platform, or the fact that said underwater pathway teeters on the edge of a mind-numbing drop into the gorge far below was going to stop any of the maniacs determined to have their photo taken - when I arrived at the Great Waterfall at about mid-day, you could see the stress on the faces of the park rangers as they tried to convince people that wading through two foot of fast flowing water disappearing into a ravine just for the sake of a cool photograph was kind of nuts.

Having spent some time yesterday complaining about the rain, this might sound a little strange - but I would suggest that visiting Plitvice after a rainstorm can only add to the experience - after all, when's the last time you heard anybody say "You know what this waterfall could do with, Harry? Less water". Today, the sun was back to its previous unrelenting brightness - but there was also a pleasant breeze coming off the lake for most of the day which made the 10+ hour walk I embarked upon rather less devastating to my system than it might otherwise have been. In fact, the temperature has been just perfect for walking - which is probably just as well as I would probably have been far too distracted by the scenery to notice the heat stroke setting in anyway. There are plenty of benches and rest areas around the park to collapse on if needed, and refreshments are available wherever the road train or electric boats drop people off, but I don't remember ever feeling as though I needed to have a sit down - and I'm certainly not the fittest person in the world. For most of the day, I just wanted to press on - to turn that next corner and discover what it was that was making that deafening whooshing-roaring sound just out of sight. Inevitably, of course, it would turn out to be another waterfall.

I wouldn't describe any of the walking trails in Plitvice Jezera as particularly taxing for anyone seriously thinking about taking them on, with a couple of exceptions I shall come to in just a moment. All of the walks are circular, which means that as long as you stick to the path you're either going to eventually end up back where you started or at a point where you can hop on a boat or road train to return you to the start. The park is divided into sections, with the upper and lower lakes separated by Lake Kozjak, where you'll probably want to get your camera out to capture that perfect Kozjak moment. Each of the lakes has an accompanying signposted walking trail which takes you up close to its most impressive natural features and waterfalls, and quite often you'll find yourself quite literally walking across the lake on a raised boardwalk pretending you're a low budget jesus. Wherever you go in Plitvice, and whether you choose to stick to any one walking trail of just change direction randomly where two trails cross, you'll never find yourself getting bored because there's always something new waiting to visually slap you in the face around the next corner. Even if you choose, as I did, to walk as many of the trails as possible and therefore encounter the same scenery on multiple occasions, you'll still want to stop and gawk at it again - no matter how many times you see the same thing here in Plitvice, you just want to go back and see it again. Walking around each of the lakes will take you several hours - allow half a day for each - and that's another reason why coming here on a day trip is simply not going to be enough. The two 8 hour walks take in all three of the lakes - but you're still going to want to allow a minimum of two days to do them both, and unless you also take the time to wander off-path and explore the connecting sections from the smaller trails, you're still going to come away having missed quite a considerable amount of what Plitvice has to offer.

One of the things I can see causing my legs a certain amount of stress by the time I move on to Zagreb tomorrow evening is the fact that Plitvice changes throughout the day as the sun arcs across the sky. The shadows change, the light changes, and it's no good being able to say you've seen the Great Waterfall at dawn if you can't also say you've seen it at dusk, or high noon, or at the exact moment when the shadows cast by a particular rock make it look like a deer is drinking from the water. It is for this reason that I chose to start my visit with the shorter single lake walks in order to gauge the major features of Plitvice, and then move on to the long-haul tracks later in the day when I could return to my favourite places and see them in a different light. Of course, this sort of scheduling does require a lot of getting up at the crack of dawn and returning to the hotel after the park is closed to everybody else and there is a very real danger of not being able to see where I'm going, falling in the lake and being swept off into the distance - but I figure I'm not going to be coming back for a while so what the hell.

The first three trails, labelled A, B, and C on the maps displayed around the park, all start from Entrance 1 near the lower lakes, but this gave me the opportunity to start my day on the electric road train which shuttles visitors back and forth between the two entrances. In my opinion, this is by far the best way to start any visit to Plitvice, both because it gets the lazy public transport side of things out of the way at the beginning of your trip but also because, in my opinion, the entrance to the walking trails from the lower lakes provides an altogether more picturesque introduction to Plitvice and a good indication of the size of the lakes - not to mention that heart-stopping moment when you break through the tree-line at the start of the trail and see the lower lakes stretching out before you for the first time. The train weaves its way through the forest toward the lower lakes, at all times concealing the wonders of Plitvice just out of sight beyond the trees while allowing the distant rush of water to reach your ears and excite your senses. Finally, you come to a stop at a nondescript little turning area somewhere in the forest, where a rickety wooden sign reading simply "A, B, C" points mysteriously toward a well maintained wooden boardwalk which disappears into the trees. Then, while you look around curiously wondering why you've been dropped off in the middle of the woods, the road train sets off again back the way it came, leaving you with no choice but to head off along the boardwalk, trusting that the lakes are out there somewhere. And out there, they most certainly are.

The boardwalk winds briefly through the woods before emerging on the edge of the lower lakes quite unexpectedly, striking out across the water for the far side and forcing you to begin your hike by literally walking on water. The crystal clear lake stretches out in front of you all the way to the horizon, fish swimming around your feet, broken only by the outline of a far off electric passenger ferry as it crosses the horizon silhouetted against the sun. And so your hike begins, weaving in and out of the trees and crossing the lakes at regular intervals as the boardwalk attempts to get you up close and personal to anything worth seeing. As a well seasoned traveller, one of the things which struck me immediately was just how well maintained the facilities are - normally, when you visit a national park or nature reserve, you need to pack a machete in order to hack your way through the foliage which has overtaken a series of paths which clearly haven't been maintained for 20 years - sometimes, you get to walk on a boardwalk for a while, but it seems as though just at the moment when you really need it, they take it away and you're up to your ankles in mud. In Plitvice, quite the opposite is true - it would almost seem as though somebody goes around the entire park every night with a broom, pot of paint and can of wood polish repairing and touching up everything. Throughout the park, the boardwalk and walking trails seemed as though they had only been put there yesterday, making every step an absolute pleasure - and believe me, when you're crossing a massive lake and the only thing separating you from the depths is the wooden planks beneath your feet, you really don't want to be worrying about the quality of workmanship.

The main problem I have with describing Plitvice, to be honest, is that no words can even hope to adequately describe it. Every time you turn a corner, there's something different waiting to take your breath away - and since Plitvice is essentially a series of terraces leading down from the upper to the lower lakes, every step of the way is accompanied by the roar of water as it cascades down over the rocks and forces its way through every obstruction. Plitvice is quite literally a world of waterfalls - everywhere you look there's another one, whether it's a giant behemoth of a thing which suddenly towers over you as you emerge from the woods, or a series of miniature falls which run alongside the path as you make your way down a flight of stone steps from one level to another. I could quite literally fill a book with descriptions of the wonders of Plitvice National Park, with each page dedicated to a different geological feature. At one point, the boardwalk actually crosses the raging waters at the bottom of one of the largest falls, the only thing separating you from the afterlife being a sternly worded sign suggesting that it might not be such a good idea to remove your shoes and socks and go for a paddle. I encourage you to fire up your internet browser this very second, type the single word "Plitvice" into Google and then hop across immediately to the Images tab. If you don't immediately fall off your chair, then I'm going to assume you've had yourself surgically attached to the upholstery.

I hinted before that there are a couple of places in Plitvice you probably won't want to go unless you are at least relatively fit. One of these is Supljara Cave. Accessible from trail A and only a short walk from Entrance 1, Supljara actually caused me something of a dilemma. Below the entrance, the path forks in two directions with the boardwalk snaking off across the lake beneath a series of beautifully scenic miniature waterfalls which pour down over several levels from the lake above. Meanwhile, a separate path leads to a series of rough-hewn stone steps up into Supljara which towers some 20 metres overhead, inviting you to literally take your life into your hands as you attempt to scale a flight of stairs so narrow and so steep that you feel certain they were hewn from the rock by the devil. Then, assuming you arrive at the cave entrance in one piece and without having suffered a major cardiac episode on the way, you'll be delighted to find that most of the cave is in virtual darkness and that the steps continue up the walls until they disappear out of sight. The thing is, climbing these steps - as I discovered after forcing myself to do so purely in order to see what was at the top - simply brings you out at a point high on the cliff overlooking the lower lakes which you would've arrived at anyway had you simply stuck to the boardwalk like a sensible person, so unless you really do have a penchant for mountain climbing, I'd go the long way around. Besides, the long way around is where all the scenery is - so once you arrive at the top and find that the path goes in two directions, you're probably going to want to backtrack to find out what you missed anyway. It is from here, high above the lakes above Supljara, that you get one of the most truly iconic images of Plitvice below, showing people crossing the boardwalk as it snakes across the lower lakes far below with the water tumbling between terraces all around. Take your camera, and don't forget to pack a wide angle lens!

Nearby, and visible for miles, is the pride of Plitvice and the largest waterfall in Croatia. The Great Waterfall - known locally and rather comically to anybody whose first language is English, as Veliki Slap - virtually cries out for people to perch themselves precariously on the rocky outcrop in front of it for a very wet photo opportunity. Access to Veliki Slap is via a well maintained but nevertheless slightly frightening path which runs along the cliff face from where it breaks off from the main trail. This cliff path, in itself, offers magnificent views down into the ravine below the Great Waterfall where several other falls converge on the lake below in a scene straight from any "shipwrecked on a beautiful uninhabited island" movie you care to mention. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, access to the falls is particularly treacherous following heavy rain when the path is underwater as it was this morning, but that doesn't seem to stop anybody hoisting up their trousers and pretty much swimming around the cliff to get to another photo opportunity. For those of you who always have to push yourself that little bit further and don't wish to have any breath left at the end of the day, another ridiculously steep series of steps lead up the cliff face to a viewing gallery far above from where you can look down on the falls just in case the view from the bottom isn't up to scratch - but I'm not kidding when I say that this isn't for the faint hearted as I had to stop twice on the way up to consider whether the end result was actually worth the effort. Which it was, by the way.

Digital photography was almost certainly invented purely for the benefit of visitors to Plitvice, as I got back this evening with just short of a million photographs. Trying to imagine how I would've coped had I visited the park 15 years ago in the days when taking photos required opening up the entire back of your camera and carefully threading the end of a chemically coated till roll between two rollers every 24 shots gives me a headache - I probably would've needed to carry a backpack full of film around with me and have spent most of the day in imminent danger of tipping over into the lake. In fact, I've enjoyed myself so much today that I didn't even notice the pounding ache in my feet or the steam emerging from my shoes until I fell into my chair at dinner tonight - although even then it was hard to concentrate on anything other than the chef, who spent the whole time wandering around the place with a portable skillet threatening to flambé everybody's eyebrows.

In my humble opinion, it is simply not good enough that Plitvice has now been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Centre. To my mind, it deserves to be the eighth wonder of the world.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.