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Published: October 11th 2007
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The main reason we’d started in Zadar was to make it nice and easy to head up to Plitvice Lakes National Park. From when we first started planning our trip to Croatia this was one place we were both really excited to see. The pictures explain it the best but its draw card is the fact that there are 16 turquoise lakes which are all linked by waterfalls and cascades etc. Pretty amazing to see.
Now before I go on, there’s something that needs explaining….over the two weeks we were in Croatia Adam and I decided that generally I tend to curse god and shake my fist at the sky far too often to be healthy and that bad things are going to happen as a result. Sometimes Adam tends to walk at a distance in case lightning suddenly strikes me! It might be a bit of a chicken and the egg story though, crap things happen, so I curse, so bad things happen and Adam tells me it’s because I cursed and so on….
So back to the story…..
After 6 months of planning our trip and being super excited about the two days of hiking we
A cool ride up the mountains
They had these massive trucks that haul everyone up to the top of the lake system for the walk back down. were going to have in the national park we awoke to some uncommonly ordinary looking black clouds looming over Zadar. No worries we’re jumping on a bus and heading 2.5 hours up into the mountains…. Surely it will be better up there??? Ha! On the sides of the roads they have temperature gauges and Adam and I watched in horror as the further we got from the coast the lower the temps got. By the time we past the 10 degrees sign (cursing had begun) and we couldn’t see the road for the fog!!
Long story short - 2 days in a national park and we had fog and drizzle on day one and pissing torrential rain on the second. Lovely. BUT we didn’t come this far to sit at the bar in the hotel, so we got our walking shoes on and made the most of it!
We started at the top lake - not that we could see too much thanks to the fog - and worked our way all the way down. The further down we got the more the fog lifted so although it wasn’t the best conditions it certainly wasn’t the worst it
could be!
As you might be able to tell from the photos, it was really pretty cool. I could have stayed there forever! Just so peaceful and nice to be away from everything just wandering around the lakes. And the colours were amazing, just like the rest of the water in Croatia really, just so clear and blue. Adam was so enthralled with all the fish in the lakes and how you could pretty much just reach in and grab them - shame you can't swim or fish there.
On the off chance that the weather wasn’t going to be any better on day two, we made it a long day on day one and saw most of the lakes. And just as well we did. Talk about a down pour on day two, it was just impossible to see or do anything and after some light cursing and a little fist shaking, we admitted defeat and headed back to Zadar a little earlier than planned.
The bus we caught back was a bit of an adventure in itself actually. On the way up we’d just followed the new highway but on the way back we went
via the old highway. Wow. Good and bad wow. We wound our way up through these mountains and popped out on the other side… well on the side of a mountain. So high up! I tried not to think about how tiny the guard rails were and hoped the driver had done this before. I wasn’t feeling too bad until we started noticing all the cars at the bottom of cliff faces and stuck against rocks half way down. Not just one, or two cars, we’re talking 5 - 10 cars easy! And some you could tell were only fairly recent. Urgh.
Anyway aside from that the trip was pretty interesting. The little towns and things we passed were interesting to see, some were pretty creepy though, just destroyed or abandoned - it was strange to see for sure.
So after a long, winding, wet trip we made it back to Zadar in one piece. And after a day like that there was only one thing to do… have a pivo and some Mama Rina’s pizza!!!
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