Where to Next?: Do Yourself A Favour - Plitviče National Park

Croatia has such a variety of terrains - including this complex system of lakes and waterfalls... The Plitviče Lakes. A national park where they have built log pathways over the waterfalls and around the lakes.

This was such a beautiful setting, it was hard not to give yourself whiplash and/or fall into the lakes for all the rubber necking that needed to go on to take it all in.

There are caves and would you look at the colour of that water! The depths of the lakes vary from one to 47m and you can see to the bottom in almost all of them.... except the ones on the deeper end of the scale obviously, these aren't magic lakes!

You're not allowed to swim in this national park, but apparently people fall in all the time...... "oops, I fell, lucky I have my bathers on!"

It's quite exciting and you feel like you're part of the falls as you walk over the top of the rushing water, hoping to God that you don't slip as you squeeze past people who think it's appropriate to stand right in the middle of the narrow path... I mean, all it would take is one small push and you would literally be part of the waterfall!

There is a real sense of up and down; Fast and slow; Calm and out of control. You walk past the waterfalls and you can hardly hear yourself think, then walk up a few steps and you are faced with this huge lake of pure calm. Your heart rate slows down, your fast paced walk immediately becomes a meandering stroll and you can just breathe.

We got to the half way point and had to make a decision whether we were going to walk the entire park or if we would bus back to the beginning. We chose the former and boarded a boat to get tot he higher part of the park. Whilst we were on the 30 minute boat ride, a group of people just started singing. I think they were Spanish and they could possibly have been an orchestra as they all knew the words and they sang with a bit of harmony. Anyway, they were fantastic.

I did a few voice recordings of them on my phone, but I can't work out how to insert them into the blog. You'll just have to take my word for it.

In the higher part of the park it was a little bit different, but still breath taxingly beautiful. I was trying to find and photograph the elusive blue dragonfly, and then.... there she was, looking straight at me.

The landscape changes a bit as you get higher. Lucky Jenny and I had all that rambling training in the Lake District!

Me Jenny taking a little bit of a breather after a big stairs section.

I mean, look at that..... how lovely is that?

There were frogs all over the place. You could hear them croaking quite loudly. We passed this little chap mid croak and it was so loud. I peered through the grass and there he was looking up at me. The he croaked again!