27 May - Plitvice Lakes (listed in the book : 1001 Natural Wonders you must see before you die) enroute to the Dalmatian Coast

27 May 2016 

We woke up at 6 am after having slept seriously soundly except for the brief interruption when our room mate for the night entered the room and switched off the lights.  On our way to the bathroom for the morning rituals, we spotted this little bird with a beautiful call – it has some blue on its head, and some orange on its breast. It was appearing at eye level on a branch of a tree near our cabin just as we emerged without our camera.  As soon as we returned to the cabin, it decided that it would hide among the thicker leaves higher up the tree.  Bird photography is always challenging.

We had decided to look for that river that our Saudi friends found the evening before. We took along our camera but now our sweet singing bird was nowhere to be found.  We could still hear it among the leaves up in the trees.  We headed towards the restaurant on the campsite and found none other our friends Saudi friends who were already enjoying a quiet morning stroll.  They indicated the path that we had to take to get to the lake.  It was rather steep at the very bottom though the initial descent was relatively easy.  The river was pretty but possibly prettier in the setting sun.  

Panoramic view of the Korana river into which the Plitvice Lakes flow

We made some photos and decided that we would walk back up the path which location we had marked earlier in the thicket.  We got to the restaurant but accidentally took the opposite direction from the cabins and ended up going for a longer walk than intended.  We did find an interesting sticker on one of the RVs.

We found the cabin just in time to finish packing and then went to breakfast.  Our first stop this morning was the Pitvalic Lakes.  Here we would spend the entire morning exploring the place as it was the main attraction for this bus tour.  Great.  This was what we wanted.  Apparently during the Civil war this was where the first execution occurred, of the park ranger.  It being only 6km away, we were there by 8.15 am.  

As it was a huge area to cover in the time that we had, we tried to do some planning.  The young at heart decided to hang together.

Map of Plitvice National Park

We walked to St 1 and took the train to St 2 after only a short walk as Sami was trying to elect herself out of the group thinking that her "non-walking" shoes would slow us down but we did not let her.  We hiked to our first stop.  It was a beautiful walk. 

Overview from hike to St 1

We took the "bus-train" on wheel (the park called it the panoramic train) to St2, where Nas went to explore a little while the rest of us waited for the boat.  His verdict was that we needed to come back.  The boat came and we boarded.  

Me on the electric boat on the lower big lake - Kozjak

Only then we realised that the pass for the National Park included only a single one way boat ride. Our original plan was to do a round trip boat ride around the lake.  Oops!!  That may explain why the young ones were getting off the boat when we were boarding it.  Still the boat ride was a tranquil one over crystal clear waters filled with fishes.  

Clear water with lots of little fishes

The colours were amazing.  Our photos do not really do it justice.

The jetty was at the bottom of St 1, so back uphill we hiked and caught the panaromic train again to St 2.  This time we had to wait as we did not realise that the train we boarded was the overflow train and would take off at the next scheduled departure.  A change of strategy was effected during the 10 minutes wait.  We would take the bus-train to the highest point at the top-most lake furthest away from where we were and worked our way back to St 2 where we would have to find our coach at 12.30pm.   

The bus-train took us to St3, which was at the top of the top most lake at elevation around 675m.  The area has layers of lakes flowing into each other.  For a better explanation of the geological features and environmental impact of tourists to the area, we recommend this article at page 12 : http://geol.pmf.hr/~jsremac/radovi/strucni/egm34_small.pdf

The hike down was estimated to be 3 km.  We have 1.5 hrs at that stage to complete it, so we started downhill at pace.  There were so many waterfalls and even more tourists.  We found unbelievably huge number of tourists taking multiple selfies that making our hike down almost dodge-ball like.  The roar of the numerous waterfalls, the sprays and breeze that came along with these though drowned out most of the loud human chatter so the feeling in nature was not compromised as much in spite of the crowd.  Most of the walk was on boardwalk fashioned from unfinished timber lashed together.  It was a beautiful walk.  

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When we arrived at St2 around 12.20pm, we asked for direction for the shortest walk to the coach parking area. The path we were directed to take took a good 25 minutes to complete.  Our guide could not understand which long path we took.  The good thing was that although we were the last to arrive, we were not late by too much compared to the others.  It was a good thing as we would hate to upset everyone else with our tardiness.  We arrived 15 minutes after the designated time for arrival back at the bus.

For more pictures of this leg of the journey, please go to :

https://www.facebook.com/SylviaTanPhotography/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1103851559692065

The road trip from Plitvice Lakes to Split would be the most scenic leg of this bus trip with beautiful craggy mountains against a foreground of green dotted with villages. 

Sheperds herding cows and some sheep could be observed with their herds / flocks from time to time.  Usually, trips on motorways tend to be borish, but the A1 in Croatia passes through some really pretty sceneries.  We made a single rest stop at Kozjak where there was a Marche cafe where we had lunch.  We also went through the Sveti Rok tunnel, one of two 5km long tunnel through the mountains where the climate at entry point is different from that at exit point.  The Sveti Rok tunnel separates the mountain climate at its entry point from the Mediterranean of the Dalmatian coast at its exit point.   We were advised that at times, there was a difference of about 10 deg in temperature.

A1 with the Sveti Rok Tunnel  - shot through shaded windscreen

As we pulled into the Split area, we learnt about the Roman Emperor, Diocletian, who built his retirement palace there.  As a youth, he was told by a seer that he would one day become emperor although he was born to poor parents.  But before that, he would have to kill a boar.  So he became a great hunter and killed many boars; but nothing much happened.  He then became a member of the Roman Legion and rose through the ranks.  Later, he would meet this other general whose Latin name meant pig / boar.  It was after killing him, that Diocletian was made Emperor. Diocletian is remembered in history as the first Roman emperor to go into retirement.  At his retirement home, he loved to grow cabbages.  He invited his friends to visit and do the same.  

Remnants of Salona, the old Roman capital of Dalmatia in the hills outside of Split, Croatia

Next, we would start our Dalmatian Coast adventure ...