This park is simply breathtaking.
Plitvice is made up of 16 lakes and covers an area of 115 square miles. We spent a day there using a combination of footbridges, hiking trails and boats to move around. The wooden footbridges take you close to waterfalls and traverse the lakes; they are a fantastic and close up way to view the park. With no barriers or handrails on either side, we were glad that we were not visiting in the height of the season; there must be people that end up in the water, particularly when meeting tourists coming from the opposite direction using large umbrellas as sunshades! There is no swimming allowed anywhere in this park, unlike Krka which to our surprise (and delight) permitted swimming at the foot of one its big waterfalls. In our day at Plitvice we covered about 9 miles on foot and more by boat, but probably only scratched the surface of everything that can be explored. The photographs only just begin to do justice to the immense beauty of this place, it really was a day we will remember.
Our campsite, about 10 km from the park entrance, was extremely pleasant. One of the advantages of hitting Croatia at the beginning of the low season is that we can use a special discount card on a number of campsites. We have been paying roughly 17 Euros on sites that would normally charge nearly double that, even in September.
Arriving at the campsite, we pulled up alongside Janet and Ian – we know this because their names were written in felt tip pen on a piece of A4 paper stuck in their side window. We did start to wonder… maybe they couldn’t afford the full blown sticker emblazoned with their respective names along the top of their windscreen and this was the next best thing, or maybe they sometimes forgot who they were, so this piece of paper was a very useful little reminder?
None of the above. Janet and Ian were part of the Autotrail Motorhome Owners Rally to Croatia and so, for the first time in our three months of travel, we were on a site with numerous British vans. It was a very well organised affair – we know this because Alan went on a number of little walks that just happened to take him past the rally leader’s van with the day’s schedule posted on a large board outside. I did worry he might jump ship, particularly when he noted they had an Apple Strudel event and then mentioned it at least a couple of times!
We did get chatting to one couple on the rally about our plans for the rest of our year away and it transpired that they had travelled for three months in Morocco twenty years ago, with a caravan AND taken it up the Tizi n’Tichka Pass. If you don’t know what this is, Google it, then spare a thought for me in February when, according to Alan, we shall be doing the same (minus the caravan of course)…
Photographs: Plitvice Lakes National Park (for more pictures, follow us on Instagram – sunnyjimontour)
sunnyjim on tour 