Limestone cliffs

This restful scene is now my screen wallpaper

Jane armed and dangerous

Typical rocky waterfalls

Jane and Mike

Lake ferry

Rock pools

No danger then - only 600ft over the edge

Olwen

Three wise monkeys

Fishes in the water

Brown trout for dinner tonight

Dont fall in

Mike and Olwen

Two ducks in a row

Pensive

The ferry landing

Green foliage

Looking back

Last slide in sequence

---

Previous Next Pause

Plitvici National Park

The next day we left the hotel and made our way to Plitvice which was undoubtedly the highlight of the tour.  What an amazing place this most popular of Croatia's National Parks is.  The route down to the lakes waterfalls at the bottom is quite arduous with fairly narrow winding walkways down the rocky cliff face.  In our safety conscious society the authorities here would probably have had something to say about the potential risk of falling over but in Croatia they haven't yet wrapped everyone in cotton wool and we had no problems getting down to the bottom, even me with my dodgy ankles.

I make no excuse for the number of photos that we took of Plitvice; almost every part of the park was a photo opportunity.  The lakes, waterfalls, cliffs, boardwalks, wildlife, fast flowing rivers, plant fauna; it was just wonderful. I've been all over the world but nothing beats this place for breathtaking scenery; the only down side was the number of tourists but I guess I was one of them and therefore can't complain.

I read up a bit on Plitvice when I got home and found that it is yet another part of Croatia that is on the Unesco register; the park was founded in 1949 and is situated in the mountainous Karst area of central Croatia, at the border to Bosnia and Herzegovina and covers an area of over 73,000 acres.  There are 16 lakes in all on three levels descending from over 600 metres and they 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.  Some of the photos show these different colours - outstanding!!

At the end of our visit to Plitvice we were pretty tired from the climbing down and back up again but it was worth the effort; the photos don't do it justice but it is not a place we will forget in a hurry.  From here we proceeded to our hotel at Opatija for two nights and a day's rest which we were really looking forward to.  The hotel was very nice and our rooms looked out over the sea where we got our first view at night with the quayside and restaurants in front of us and the coastline opposite a splash of lights and colour.