Dear Family and Friends, I'm writing to advise you that we won't be coming home. I am moving to Croatia, permanently. I've found a little piece of Heaven on Earth, a Garden of Eden. We are going to buy a tent and pitch it beside a lake of aqua blue, as perfect and crystal clear as the sea surrounding a tropical island. We'll swim in the fresh water and underneath the beautiful, cascading waterfalls - refreshingly cool in the 35 degree heat. I'll plant a little veggie patch and we'll live off the millions of fish that swim carefree at the waters edge, or roast a duck, or trek up into the grandiose cliffs and hills that tuck the lakes away from view to track a mountain lion. I'll send Mark off to wrestle a bear, not for food but to develop a mutual respect so that we can live in harmony with our furry friends.

Mark interrupts my daydream to pass me the map, which reads Plitvice Lakes National Park. On it are five little pictures that crush my ambitions of a new life in this little piece of paradise - no swimming (torture!), no fishing (no wonder they looked so smug), no walking off the tourist trails (boo!), no dogs off leads, and worst of all no sitting in front of your tent with a cup of steaming hot tea.

Not to mention the 900,000 tourists that visit every year.

Damn.

Still, our 4 hour walk through this breathtaking scenery is enough to satisfy me. Famous for its 16 beautiful lakes that cascade into each other, changing from one beautiful shade to another, it's huge (over 296.85 square kms/73,350 acres) and each turn reveals a new wonder. As we spot frogs and butterflies and dragonflies, I'm sure that I've never seen anything so beautiful.

Strange to think that large battles raged here during the Croatian War of Independance, the land laced with mines and soldiers feet trampling through the UNESCO Heritage listed park just 20 years ago. Pictures of death and destruction are so misplaced in this peaceful setting.

However our first stop in Croatia made this history a little more real. The bullet ridden and often crumbled houses of the town of Karlovac, near the frontline during the war, show the intensity of the fighting between 1991 and 1995.

The streets are quiet, but I spot a girl about my age riding her bike, off on some everyday errand. I ponder the horrors that her childhood entailed. She's my age..yet how can I possibly identify with her? She has lived through a childhood so far removed from my own reality, something we only see on the news in small horrific snippets before we eventually switch the channel over to something mundane and easy.

That these events were so recent, during my own lifetime, fascinates me and it's much of the reason that I've been looking forward to visiting this region of Europe - former Yugoslavia. A sucker for the so called 'tragedy tourism' perhaps, but I think it's more an interest in people - in how such things come about, why, and the ongoing effects on a society...the testing of the human spirit, the good that shines through, the incredible ability to move through and forward, the complexities that remain.

It's only a short stop here, to view an open air museum of tanks and planes which everyone climbs all over playing armies. I have to wonder how the locals feel having these machines outside their doorsteps as a constant reminder of the all too recent past. And what of the silly tourists treating it all as a game?

We've spent a good deal of time cringing at loud and obnoxious tourists, too often Australians, who trample through towns ignorant of manners and customs, complaining loudly that a shop owner 'didn't even speak English' or how 'weird' something different is. Embarrassing, bad for our reputation..but generally harmless.

But then there are the clear and definite no's, like the tourists we saw wandering through Auschwitz as though it were a theme park - laughing and joking, or posing for cameras, smiling, next to the hair of murdered Jews. Or remember the tourists who peed on the eternal flame in Brisbane's ANZAC square?

There are also a lot of grey areas. I was pretty bothered by the kids and adults alike using the Jewish memorial in Berlin as a playground, climbing on the blocks and jumping around laughing, playing chase. But the tour guide made a point that, much like the trees that line the edges...maybe the fact that the memorial encourages play shows hope for a brighter future?

As for the war museum and our jungle gym antics, maybe the locals think nothing of it. Maybe their own young children, just as blissfully ignorant, come here and do the same thing - I'm sure we saw a few. Maybe I worry too much but throughout our travels I'm always questioning these things, trying to be sensitive and respectful of that line, looking for cues from the locals who are, after all, human and usually with a sense of humour. I suppose the best way to read these situations is to understand the background, and so I am looking forward to delving further into former Yugoslavia and learning more.

We ended our first day in Croatia camping near Plitvice. After a great night barbequeing, drinking, telling stories of the supernatural and psychics, and enjoying a delicious chocolate mousse tart that one of the guys baked in the barbeque (impressive!), we crawled into our beds in little log cabins that Mark and I got locked into (had to clamber out the window when nature called in the middle of the night!).

The following day was our venture through the National Park, and then it was onward to our final night of the tour in the portside town of Split. Hello, sunshine!