I had heard about the amazing Plitvice Lakes and booked a trip to head out to see them. Another UNESCO site, the lakes are the oldest national park in Croatia.
I met my guide (and the rest of the tour) early in the morning in the middle of the Old Town (which is where all of the people free Old Town shots come from!) and we jumped on a bus for our three hour drive up to the lakes.
From the water when you are sailing up the coast, you see these towering limestone and karst mountains called Veliki Kabal. They rise steeply (to about the same height as Ben Nevis, but they look meaner because they are so steep) and they also make the coastal area look dry and infertile. The roads are excellent in Croatia and of course there is a tunnel right through the mountain, we we weren’t winding up and over them!
On the other side it was an entirely different climate and soil type, almost alpine meadow type scenes. All the stall holders were selling cheese and honey, so it definitely was the land of milk and honey on the other side of the mountains!
Arriving at the national park, we were ferried to the top of the 16 lakes to stroll the 8.5kms back down (good idea!). Plitvice Lakes are a result of the confluence of several small rivers. The lakes are all interconnected and are separated by natural dams of travertine, which is deposited by the action of moss, algae, and bacteria. This all builds up at a rate of about 1cm a year when a tree or plant falls in the water.
The water is so blue because of the chalk in the water and when the sun is shining, it’s an amazing type of blue! Because of how the cascades and lakes are created, there is no swimming in the lakes, as the residue from sunscreen, make up, hair products, detergent would stop the travertine from forming. This was no huge issue, because of the altitude, Plitvice Lakes were (a little) cooler than it was in Split, so no huge need to swim.
As you do when you are travelling on your own, I spotted another solo traveller on the trip and we got chatting. Once we got back into Split at 8:30 later that night, Jo from Sydney and I headed out for a bite to eat and a bottle of wine. It was good to share a meal with someone, instead of sitting alone all the time. We were both leaving Split the next day, Jo to Spain and I am off to Montenegro, so we called it a night around 10:30pm, so just a small encounter, enough time to enjoy another solo travellers company (also, it is interesting to note how few make solo travellers there are, they’re all mostly women… go figure!).
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