Plitvice Lakes National Park

The second stop on our waterfalls tour was Plitvice Lakes national Park (www.mp-plitvicka-jezera.hr ). Bear thought it was twice as good, i.e. twice as many photos. Do we love the digital cameras? We would have to mortgage our house to process this much film and, besides, we wouldn’t be able to share with you. I don’t know how to share what we saw. It was too overwhelming. The park is divided into an upper and a lower part. We started in the lower with Veliki Slap, the Big Waterfall. The path wanders back and forth across the river on boards. The boards are so close to the water in places that the water bubbles up through them. Most of the falls are only a few meters high and the water tumbles through grasses and moss with the occasional fall dropping the whole distance (Re-reading this it doesn’t do justice to the real thing – you will just have to come and see for yourselves). The lower and upper parts of the park are separated by a large lake. After a 1 ½ km ( a little over a mile) walk we got to ride a boat the length of the lake. There are no buildings along the lake except for the boat launches. It was very beautiful. Once we got to the other end of the lake we walked another about 1 ½ km under, around and through the falls.

After all the walking (uphill, I might add – that being the main criteria for waterfalls) we were exhausted and determined to spend the night in the mountains rather than trying for a 200 km bolt for the sea. We were interested in a place with both a restaurant and rooms so that we didn’t have to drive after drinking wine with our dinner. In this part of the world one of the specialties is whole pig roasted over a wood fire. I spotted a sign for a place right on the road with food, rooms and roasted pig. We decided to give it a try: what a good call! The pig was outstanding and the wine was good. We had crepes filled with chocolate for dessert – mmm, yummy. The rooms where not actually at the restaurant but were a few blocks (an euphemism for around a couple of corners) away in a house set up as a B&B. The first B was great, clean, comfy, private bath. The second B was also great. Cold meats (more of that dried salted pig, mild pepperoni-type something, smoked bacon), hard boiled eggs, cheese, sliced tomatoes and little tiny croissants with meat and cheese in them.