15/08/2011 Day 14. Plitvice

Work up at 7.30 and headed to the bus at 8. It arrived around 8.10 and my god, it was a total free-for-all. There is no concept of queuing, elbows were everywhere, I was shocked! We waited for the second bus and waded onto that one. After about a 10 minute drive we arrived at the entrance to the national park. 80 kuna admission for students, bargain! Aaron had to pay 110 the sucker. We headed for the shuttlebus inside to take us to the top of the lakes for us then to walk down to the bottom. We got there about 9.10 and the walk was supposed to take between 4-6 hours. Gave us some good time to stop, take pictures, mess about and have dinner. We got on the bus which was a three trailer beast with wheels that turned on the back to help get around the twisty tight roads. We arrived at the top and set on our walk. It was very sunny when we arrived but still relatively cool. The first thing we saw were the bright blue waters of the lake. The water was so clear we could see straight through to the bed and could see the fish in the water too. We walked over wooden walk ways that go over the lakes and the fish hang around there hoping for some food to be chucked in to them. The lakes were in series so the top one slowly drained to fill the second one and so on. Each sets of waterfalls were different and looked brilliant. We were walking trough the forest surrounding the lake for the majority so enjoyed being in the shade. We saw lots of fish on our walks over and next to the lakes and connecting rivers. We read there are bears, otters and wolves in the area but didn't see any of them. The fish we could see were apparently trout. We even saw a couple of snakes swimming across some parts of a lake, eeew. We saw a toad too! Eventually we got down to the place where we could catch a boat across the main lake. Again, total carnage. No queuing system and there were no sides to the platforms so people could easily get knocked off. Elbows in my chest, it was rubbish. We need to get over here in mass and teach the art of queuing. On the boat across the bright blue water in the lovely sunshine, listening in to the captain's old English rock (we were in Croatia as a reminder). As we got off he was listening to Yellow Submarine by The Beatles so I sang along :). We got off and headed to a beach at the edge of the lake and got our feet straight in. Very clear water with fish very close to the edge looking for some grub. I filmed a little bit using my phone but the water is so clear at the shallow end, it can't be seen in the video, awesome. We headed to the ice cream stand after drying off and I applied another layer of sun cream :) we made it to the "big waterfall", the biggest in the park. I'm not sure how tall it was but me and Aaron climbed up what felt like thousands of stairs to get the viewing point opposite. We saw nick and sam from up high, they were tiny. We also came across a dirty cave that probably had 16 bears inside so we ran away. After this we headed for the exit. We got to the bus stop just after half 3. The busses were due between 4 and 5. As you can probably guess absolute carnage with the bus and the Europeans. We got the second bus which we got on at half 4, arrived shortly after back at the campsite. We chilled around the van and got some food then when it got dark I had a shower. Me nick dave and Aaron web for a walk to the darkness for nick to be able to take some pictures of the stars in the sky. Because of the lack of light pollution I could see more stars than I've ever seen before, it was amazing, we could even see the line of the galaxy!!
Split tomorrow to the campsite by the sea. Hopefully they'll have room for us. I'm kicking off the drive to tomorrow at 8. Wish me luck!