Plitvice Lakes

The Plitvice Lakes National Park is one of Croatia's premier tourist destinations, quite rightly. It consists of a string of 16 lakes joined by waterfalls and cataracts.

The catch, like Krka, is that it is so popular. While the photos below give an air of serenity, and the park is extremely well organised in terms of getting the maximum number of people through with the aid of shuttle busses and boats, one can't avoid other people. There is a set number of paths to follow and a constant stream of tourists following them. In many places it is more like a long queue than a walk. Worst of all there are some tour groups who re being led (quite unnecessarily) along the trail by officious guides, one of whom was particularly annoying in pushing past us and then pushing her way back again to urge on her stragglers.

But nothing can wholly detract from the beauty of the place, and in particular the stunning blues of the lakes.

Typical of the walkways we followed, but here was a quieter patch, allowing me to take out my camera!

  

 

 There are several routes you can take depending on your appetite for walking and time you have. We chose one of the longer ones, but still with a short-cut - taking a boat across one of the larger lakes.

You really can't beat that blue can you?

At this point, nearing the big waterfall at the end, we took a diversion into a limestone cave.

Our diversion up through the cave did leave us close to the bus stop back to the car park, and afforded some fine views, but did mean we had missed "the big waterfall" - Velik Slap. So in the end we decided to revert back down again and continue on.

 And here it is. Yes it is big, apparently a drop of 78m.