So this is going to be a post with a whole lot of pictures and very little text. Because there's honestly not a lot to talk about. All I basically did for a two days is walk around a park. And it was incredible. I took a ton of pictures because it's the kind of place you don't really think exists in real life, but I didn't really do anything, I just walked and admired and ate and slept. But I'll say what there is to say and then the rest of the time I'll just give you the highlights of my pretty pictures.
Here goes.
So I left Split on May 28th at 8:30 in the morning! Whew!
And there was a lovely 4 hour bus ride through the Croatian countryside.
And I looked out the window and took pictures and listened to music and chilled.
We eventually got to the Plitvice Lakes National Park. Which is in... it's hard to describe where it is geographically. So here's a map.
There. That's where it is.
And it's gorgeous.
I got there around 1pm and checked into my room and then headed down to the park, because it didn't close until 8pm and I wanted to make the most of my time there.
Here's another map to help me explain what I did.
So I walked around the perimeter of the large lake to that little chain of the bottom (the lower orange path. I walked from St2 to St1)
And it was nice. There lake was big and still and it was a great follow-up to 4 hours on a bus.
I hate buses. They're so much more stressful than trains.
So back to the narration of what I was doing.
Here's that map again.
At this point I had reached St1 and I continued to follow the path down the bottom from left to right along little lakes. Of course the actual path didn't look like that. It was much less straight. More curves and winding.
It was also much prettier
I mean...
So pretty.
As I was walking I was going down the chain of lakes, which is what the park is.
There are all these lakes right in a row as the ground goes down
which causes some spectacular waterfalls
and just spectacular views in general
When I made Dad google the pictures he said he thought it looked like the planet Pandora from the movie Avatar
And really, the whole thing looked like something out of a book or a movie.
So as I went down there were all these paths over the water
sometimes over a waterfall!
It was totally surreal
But that's why I came, really
I wasn't sure that it was a good idea to come.
Because as I mentioned, I hate buses.
And Croatia doesn't really have a rail system
So I had to figure out how to get to these lakes, which are pretty far from where I was using buses
which I really don't trust, because the bus stops could be in the middle of nowhere and poorly marked.
Since it is a park, not a city, it's a bit more difficult to get to, and there aren't as many places to stay
So I had to get a hotel room rather than a hostel,
which was just some extra hassle.
But, well
It was so worth it.
So this is the lowest point of the lakes that you can go. Then I turned back and went uphill
past what are known as the big falls
which were...
incredible.
Then I went back up to the ridge on the far side (top of the map) of the little lakes
and got a better picture of the big falls
Ok. So now here's a story about this guy.
So I was walking around by myself and all of a sudden this older gentleman, also traveling by himself, stops in the path in front of me and takes out his phone and turns his camera around and takes a selfie with the falls in the background. And he was so good at it. He had a selfie face and everything. You can't see it in the picture, but it was great. Just one of those little things you see on your trip that make you smile.
So back to my hike.
You know,
pretty lakes
stunning vistas
the usual.
Who am I kidding?
I don't think this will ever be "usual"
But I am definitely willing to give it a shot.
It wasn't all by the lakes, there were some points where I was in the woods.
Which was just horrifically ugly. How did I ever stand it?
So let's check back in the map, and I'll tell you about a bad decision I made.
So I had come around the trail and was then at P3. I stayed there for a while, had a fanta (EUROPEAN FANTAS!!!! WHOOT! I've missed them so much), and chilled. By the time I was ready to move on it was 5:30 and the park closes at 8. So I had to decide what to do next, and I thought, oh, it'll be fun to just go the rest of the way around the lake. I had no clue how long this would take, so I was really hoping I'd get back before the park closed. And then there was this
This is a cliff. I had to climb up one side and then slide down this one because the path, which you can see at the bottom of the picture was submerged. This made the path effectively though not TECHNICALLY closed.
Also, there are bears in this park. And there was NO ONE else around. It was really fun!
I found a fallen tree
I took dumb kung fu selfies
like ya do.
Anyway, the moral of the story is that I managed to get back to the entrance all in one piece and in plenty of time, and I saw some pretty amazing things along the way.
The part of the path right across the lake from the entrance was maybe my favorite part.
It was just so magical
there were all these waterfalls and it was so green
and you were walking right through it and at that time of evening there was no one there.
And after that I took a ferry back across to the entrance and walked back up to my hotel and took a shower. I went to dinner in the hotel restaurant, because there is basically nothing else around and had decent food and good wine. After dinner I went back to my dorm room, where all my plans to blog and read and generally do anything fell through when I collapsed on my bed and slept until the next morning.
So the next day I had breakfast at the hotel and was in the park by 8:45 the next morning. Since I'd done a loop of the lower lakes the morning before, I decided to go for the upper lakes today, as seen in this map
So I started at the bottom left of the picture and... somehow wound up at the green dot by the end of the morning.
And it was lovely
Everything looked different at the different time of day
and being in a different part of the park.
I mean, obviously there are some similarities
But it was interesting to me how the upper lakes looked different from the lower ones
It was much more heavily forested
which was kind of nice, since it kept it cooler
Actually, the weather in Croatia was pretty great.
I had jeans and a t-shirt every day
in the mornings and evenings I had a jacket.
So I was planning on going around the lakes on one side, but this path was closed, I had to go up on the ridge on the far side of the lake
And it was still awesome.
Of course.
So yeah, I went around the upper lakes
and through the woods back to the actual station
where I stopped for a little bit
before deciding to start out on a 9km hike through the woods and mountains that would eventually put me back down at the P3 location on this map from yesterday
The station I was at is off the map to the left. Namely
this green spot. So I went off from that green spot, basically up and right
it started out by crossing over the uppermost lake
This is a hole in the ground that water is pouring through. It was incredible.
and past some waterfalls
This is a massive slug I saw on the path and almost stepped on while I was in the heavily wooded portion of the hike.
This was actually the only picture I took while on this trail, because it was the woods. They looked like woods. If very pretty woods. But basically I walked on this trail, periodically stopped and read for a bit, ran out of water, and generally enjoyed being alone in the woods.
Then I came out onto this meadow up in the mountains and the urge to sing "Sound of Music" was STRONG.
and then I went back down off the mountains past some cute farmhouses and beautiful lakes and wound up back at P3, where I got some french fries and sat for a while and then I went and retraced my steps in reverse from the day before. Basically.
I went back by the big waterfall
still cool.
and the beautiful valley at the end of the lakes
where you stand right by the edge as the water falls down a hundred feet.
and up the paths over little falls
back past these
This was obviously later in the day than I had visited them yesterday.
And the light really does change the look and feel.
So then I took a detour
towards this cave
which is actually a nature preserve within a nature preserve, because it's very special.
and has some very steep stairs.
But the path eventually led up to a different entrance of the park.
not before passing some gorgeous lookout points, though.
And so I went to the second entrance, but I had to get back to the first entrance, since that's where my hotel was, so I went back to this path
from yesterday that went around the large lake. The first one, not the dangerous one. Anyway, so I spent like 10 hours total in the park on the 29th, leaving at about 6:45. And then I went and showered, had a leisurely dinner, and went to bed.
The next morning I woke up and packed everything up, went to breakfast, checked out of the hotel, and dropped my luggage off in the hotel's luggage room. Then I went back to the park!
Yay!
and as with the past couple days
I just pretty much wandered
and admired the beauty of the place.
The park was a little more crowded on the 30th
because it was a Saturday, which makes sense.
But you know,
it was still pretty.
It was so sad to me that I couldn't go swimming in these lakes.
They just looked so pretty.
But it probably would have been cold.
And there was plenty to see and do.
I honestly don't remember the exact circuit I took on May 30th
I really just wandered
and saw things
mostly waterfalls
and lakes.
Like I said,
there really isn't a ton to talk about
though I highly recommend you visit
because clearly there's a lot to see.
Ok. So there is one thing to talk about, and that is how it felt to be there. Because that's not really something you can capture with pictures.
Especially my last morning there, it felt almost magical. In a sort of deep, old, Druid or Earth-magic kind of way. Like if you looked away just for a moment the Ents would start moving again.
And look at this path. I felt like a Hobbit.
The Road Goes Ever On and On
So at this point in the photographic tour of my wanderings
I decided to go back around that mostly-closed path,
because I figured it would put me back at the second entrance in time to take a train back to the first entrance
head back to my hotel, and get directions to my hostel in Split before the bus showed up.
And it was a fun path that I'd totally survived last time.
LIZZARD!
Ah, the cliff I had to go down last time. This time I went up it. It was much more difficult, but I managed.
So you guys know how I like to take pictures of signs I completely ignored?
Well when I got to the END of that trail, I found this sign. In all fairness, it wasn't closed from the other end, nor was that sign there when I took the trail on my first day. So I didn't actually MEAN to break that rule.
So yeah, then I walked back past the lovely lower lakes
and back towards the cave
and headed up to the entrance,
caught the train and went back to my hotel. I got my luggage, charged my phone, got everything settled for my next hostel, and got on a bus to Zagreb at 2:45. And what happened there is for another blog post.
