Starting with the night before – our little AirBnB was well outfitted and our host Marija was wonderful. We took all of her suggestions for our visit to the park. It rained for most of the night, maybe that helped the waterfalls a little. We woke to a cool 8 degrees C and sunshine. Sooooo grateful for that jacket!

Our sleep was a bit rough. The building was old and had a disturbing musty smell that was enough to keep us both awake for a while. The radiators made it far too hot, though Rick turned off all the ones he could.

What does one do when the host is awesome and space generally good except for these almost unsolvable problems? Rick and I considered the world that Marija lives in, how hard she tries, and we gave her a 5 star review. There wasn’t really another option. Her review of “Robyn and his wife” was very nice and she gave us a little Plitvice fridge magnet as a thank you.

For the last two days, as we trundled through the countryside, I wondered what people do here. How do they survive? Honey, cheese, potatoes, and AirBnB? There was very little else in many of the small towns we drove through. I did see a couple of small sawmills, one man operations, but not much else. I imagine it is a simple life, but not an easy one.

Plitvice. 9.5 km of walking, 300+ metres of elevation, a boat ride, and two short, though rather frightening, bus rides. It was amazing.

We were up and ready to go quite early, with plans to maximize the park and still make the 3.5 hour drive to Ljubljana in Slovenia. It was going to be a long day.

I had really been looking forward to visiting Plitvice. I enjoyed Krka, but was also fairly confident they would not be the same experience. I was right. Plitvice is so much bigger, in every facet: the height and number of waterfalls, the size of the park, and the number of people wandering through.

We arrived a bit before our appointed entry time with 20 minutes for a cup of coffee (thank goodness as the coffee in the apartment had been abysmal – like dishwater as Mom would have said) and also scored some free parking! We were not opposed to paying for parking but the official parking areas looked a bit like the midway at the PNE with restaurants, coffee shops, souvenir stands, tour buses and far too many people.

We followed the route that Marija suggested, heading to the bottom of the park first, then gradually going uphill from the lower to the upper lakes. This meant the waterfalls were always in front of us.

No photos really capture the scope and the beauty of this place. The waterfalls can vary in size considerably based on the amount of water and rainfall in the area.

I like to think we benefited a bit from last night’s rain, though the largest fall, Veliki Slap (which means ‘great waterfall’) was not even close to its maximum flow of 4000 litres per second. It is still an impressive 87m high and the largest waterfall in Croatia.

The park contains more than 90 waterfalls in all, spread across 16 lakes, and I think we did our best to see every one of them. The lakes vary in colour from day to day depending on the angle of the sunlight as well as the amount of calcium carbonate from the limestone rocks. On this day, we had more than our fair share of beautiful turquoise lakes and pools.

There were also many caves throughout the park. The largest is Supljara in the lower section. The caves have been largely undisturbed. The constant temperature of 10.5 degrees C allows small creatures to flourish there; millipedes, moths, crickets and Zospeum isselianum, the smallest snail on the planet at 1mm in size – it has a transparent shell! Bones of extinct Pleistocene cave bears have even been found in some of the caves. We walked down hundreds of steps to get to the bottom of Supljara, which has no roof remaining on the main structure.

There are many other ancient caves in the park in all sorts of shapes and sizes, with new ones being formed from the cascades of tufa being gradually formed by the deposits of calcium carbonate left by the cascading falls. You can see some of this in the last photo; they look a bit like rock formations, and in some cases are covered in plantlife.

We stopped for lunch in one of the three areas with washrooms, picnic tables and a small restaurant run by the park. Having been warned by Marija (and Rick Steeves) that the food was expensive and not very good, we had brought some home-made sandwiches, fruit and snacks. We happily munched on those while enjoying the sun with approximately 100 other hikers. Afterwards, we took the small electric boat trip across the lake to continue our walk on the other side.

I cannot leave the topic of Plitvice without sharing a few other snippets:
– There are many boardwalks through the park, all assembled out of natural wood, so a bit erratic in size and very slippery when wet.
– You can almost always hear the falls before you can see them. In some cases you can even feel the spray.
– Visitors are not permitted to swim in the lakes, though they do look very inviting. Swimming would upset the chemical balance.
– Visitors may not fish in the lakes, or feed the fish. There are many healthy fish easily visible in the turquoise water.
– Many visitors bring their dogs. Some bring three. Most dogs, not all, are well behaved. Apparently the no swimming rule does not apply to dogs?
– We passed many families along the way and a good number of those had babies in backpacks.
– What constitutes hiking gear is highly variable. We passed one woman in a maxi dress, wearing sneakers and carrying a gold clutch. We also passed people in full hiking kit with backpacks big enough to take on a week long hike into the wilderness. There were a large number of women in short shorts (it was a tad chilly) and other groups in running tights. Most were like us, serviceable shoes, hiking pants, and rain jackets.

We enjoyed every moment at Plitvice and I can see why this is such a highly rated and popular destination.

We left the park around 2:30 – a little ahead of schedule but with a long drive ahead. We opted to take the road less travelled through the countryside, rather than staying on highways the entire way. We passed through many more small villages (does 20 buildings constitute a village?) and in some cases the roads were frighteningly narrow – a single lane only.

While driving along I casually commented to Rick about the fact that some guy named Zimmer seemed to have cornered most of the available rooms for rent, near Plitvice and along our drive, and how hard that must be for the rest of the population to compete. Rick pointed out that ‘Zimmer’ means ‘room’ in German. (Head smack!) We both had a good laugh.

We saw several deer at the side of the road, looking very beautiful and healthy. Rick also saw a huge turkey just hanging out; I missed it. And much to our surprise, we passed two Chinese restaurants, something we had not seen in even the larger cities like Split or Dubrovnik. Croatia is not a terribly diverse country with respect to race and culture.

We did make one stop just before leaving Croatia, at a small truffle shop. We could smell it as soon as we opened the shop door. They had everything imaginable ‘truffle-ized’, including chocolate, cheese, salami, pasta, oil, salt… you get the picture. I tried the chocolate; it was a bit disturbing. We came away with some truffle spice, white and black truffle paste, and 2 bags of delicious truffle chips. I do enjoy the truffle flavour, however, it has to be applied with a light hand. Too much and you can smell and taste nothing else.

While this post is about Plitvice – SO BEAUTIFUL – it is also about our introduction to Slovenia, which we loved.

Our arrival at the Slovenian border caught us a bit by surprise. We turned a corner and there it was. We were through in moments, without a hitch or even a single question. Our next goal was to acquire a Vinjeta card that would allow us to drive on the tollways. This seems to be handled by video cameras vs toll booths – very modern tech.

Slovenia is so different from Croatia, though only an imaginary line on a map separates the two countries. Croatia is a bit rough around the edges with rundown buildings, many falling down and deserted. Slovenia on the other hand has tidy villages, well kept roads, and a general sense of greater wealth. Slovenia was the first republic to leave Yugoslavia and a member of the EU; Croatia is not. This does seem to be a part of the explanation.

The scenery was stunning. I played peek-a-boo with a number of small but beautiful churches along the way, at least one in every town or village no matter how small. I will enjoy capturing more of them on our future Slovenian drives.

It was pouring overnight with huge claps of thunder. The forecast is for more of the same. Perhaps our next adventure will be caves? TBD.