Plitvice Lakes

After a night at Camping Primavera and a short drive up a winding road peppered with cheese-and-honey vendors, we got to the lakes for a 9am entry slot, which turned out to be a very good idea, as there weren’t too many people around yet.

Plitvice is Croatia’s oldest and biggest national park (founded in 1949, and on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1979). At its heart is a staircase of sixteen lakes, split into the Upper and Lower Lakes, each one spilling into the next over a string of waterfalls. The natural dams between them are travertine, built up over thousands of years by moss and algae trapping the minerals in the water, and they’re still growing today.

Wooden boardwalks take you right across the water, and the colours are unreal, shifting from turquoise to emerald to deep blue depending on the depth, the minerals and the light. At the bottom of the Lower Lakes is Veliki slap, the Great Waterfall, which drops 78 metres and is the tallest in Croatia. Swimming is strictly off limits, so it’s very much look but don’t touch.

In the afternoon the rain rolled in, so we spent it in the car park(woods), sheltering in the van and getting some work done. Beautiful lakes in the morning, working in the van in the afternoon: both very much enjoying and getting into the swing of life on the road.