.........what can we say?

We arrived at Plitvice mid afternoon from Sibenik, the bus dropped us outside the entrance to the national park and we headed to a nearby village to try and get some private accommodation, ending up in a lovely little pension.

That night we went for a walk around the village, which was more just a heap of pensions along a small road-tourism was definitely keeping this place afloat. As we walked we were amazed at the amount of sink holes around in the surrounding forests, you really wouldn't want to be walking in dark through here. We were looking for bears and to our surprise we didn't find any :( but we did hear cuckoos calling their famous song.

For dinner we headed to a restaurant called Licka Kuca near the park entrance. The food was fantastic and in the middle of the dining room they had a fire and a spit set up which made the place very warm, we dined on an awful lot of meat that night. We headed home early as the street sign warned that the bears come out after 23:00.

First thing in the morning we got up and headed to the park. We were some of the first people in for the day and the weather was overcast but not raining. We entered through the park gate and we were greeted by the most amazing site of the bluest of blue lakes and beautiful forests with a waterfall cascading off the opposite cliff. We just can't describe the colour of the lakes it was unreal and the water was so clear, again I don't think we have every seen water this clear and so many fish.

The lakes lie in limestone and are separated by natural dams of travertine, which is deposited by the action of moss, algae and bacteria. The encrusted plants and bacteria accumulate on top of each other, forming travertine barriers which grow at the rate of about 1 cm per year.

We wandered around the lakes for eight or so hours, meandering along forest paths and boardwalks this was truly one of the most beautiful places we have been to.

It was hard to believe that this park was where the 1991 war began it was overtaken by Serbians it was not liberated until 1995 by the Croatians, during that time the parks infrastructure was destroyed and the park was heavily mined, the park was reopened in 1998 after it was completely demined.

What an amazing place!!!!!!!!!!!!

That night we went out for dinner at another restaurant which was quite nice although it felt like stepping back in time about 30 years. On the way home we got caught out in absolutely torrential rain. We were absolutely soaked after the 2 km walk back through the park, where we got one more beautiful surreal view of the falls in the dark and rain. We still didn't see any bears though.. although Adam carrying on about them gave Eva the willies. We did spot a wolf out of our pension window later that night which was pretty cool.

Photos: Happy days, Eva trying to get her finger bitten by the multitude of fish, Blue, blue, blue, blue, a bunch of wet numpties.