Plitvice Lakes National Park (Upper)

A big walking day for us with just over 15km of walking the circumference and a few other zig zag paths around the upper lakes and waterfalls of Plitvice Lakes National Park (21,500 steps according to the watch). This Park gets over 1,000,000 visitors a year, a large proportion of them in summer, but we still arrived there reasonably early (by our holiday getting-out-bed standards that is) to beat the enthusiastic winter crowds. We bought a two-day pass which includes a few boat rides and the mini bus. Apart from the compulsory electric boat to get you to the start of the trail head for the upper lakes, we avoided the bus and boat and elected to walk.

It was an overcast day with one brief appearance by the sun which you can see in the photos where the water is a brilliant blue/green. Also incredibly clear. I don't think the Croatians do murky water.

Our second last trail was obviously not as well maintained as it was covered in autumn leaves which obscured roots and steps so made the walk a little more "exciting".

No bears, red deer, otters, wolves or lynxes made an appearance 😥

At long last we have also found an open restaurant serving peka which is a traditional Balkan form of cooking over coals where the lamb and potatoes are placed in a pot and covered with a giant iron bell and cooked for around 4 hours. I had the peka, whilst Craig, Finn and Jeff had a "local winter meal" which was pork knuckle, sausage, ham etc. Basically a lot of pork based meat, cabbage and potatoes. Very hearty.

Kids were in bed early tonight. 15km must be tiring!Read more