Epic Trip | Plitvice Lakes, Croatia

The problem with me is that once I settle back in London after a trip, the desire to blog about the trip goes away! Now Croatia seems like ages ago and I have been sitting here recalling what we did and the names of the places we went to.

As mentioned before, I have always wanted to go to Plitvice National Park. Also known as Plitvicka Jezera ("Plit-vich-ka Ye-ze-ra") in Croatian, this is the first national park in Croatia covering almost 300km square of land area. In 1979, the park was inscribed onto the UNESCO World Heritage list for its outstanding natural beauty. The park harbours a grand collection of waterfalls, gallery of lakes, forest and diversity of animal life. The lakes are renowned for their distinctive colors, ranging from azure to green, grey or blue. The colors change constantly depending on the quantity of minerals or organisms in the water and the angle of sunlight. The sixteen lakes which are formed by natural dams of travertine are separated into upper and lower lakes. About 8km of pathways and wooden walking trails around lakes are accessible to visitors. Trails are descending from an altitude of 636m to 503m above sea level. We walked a total of about 7km that day under the hot summer sun.

We signed up with a local day tour operator since it's outside Zagreb and we figured it's better to have a guide since QKL warned us saying it's "far away from civilisation". The bus ride took more than 2h and because it was a sunny Saturday, lots of people were headed towards the national park which our guide clearly dreaded, giving us ample warnings of a possible traffic jam, and thereafter human jam "walking like packed sardines". Thank God, nothing of the sort happened. The journey was rather smooth, and the park was not as packed as he said.

We started our walk and when we saw the first glimpse of the emerald coloured lake, I gasped and cameras started clicking. The guide walked pretty fast and along the way, we had to click really quickly if we wanted and listen to his explanations of the flora and fauna in the park. Or click and catch up with the group. He said he must have been here 500 times, and wished he could look at them thru' our eyes and be excited about the lakes. Alas - too much of a good thing..

"What a wonderful world.."

First glimpse of the lakes

The lakes are just a-ma-zing. Seriously we marvelled at God's wonderful creation that whole afternoon. The clear blue skies. The grey cliffs. The lush green vegetation. The deep and clear emerald green, sometimes blue lakes. The white waterfalls. The colourful flowers. The ducks and swans swimming in clear waters we could see their webbed feet. The birds circling above the waters. Our guide told us there are bears in this park but when hoards of people come, they go into hiding. When the sun's rays hit the water, from the top lakes, we saw how the waters glistened and shone. Oh what beauty. I was so in awe.