The motorways in Slovenia and Croatia are excellent, as are the service areas, but the other roads would give Italy's worst a run for their money, but we made it to 'Bear Camp' by late afternoon. Bear Camp is just the name of the small family run campsite 3 miles north of the Plitvice Lakes, top of our 'must see' list of Croatia. The campsite's name derives from the brown bears which inhabit the local forests, but unfortunately we didn't see any. However, what we did see was a stork 'tip toeing' through a freshly mown field of grass, what an amusing sight!
We had been tipped off by the campsite owner that to avoid the crowds at the lakes it was best to arrive as close to opening time as possible, so a rather bleary eyed Rachel got her cuppa at 6am, and we arrived at the lakes shortly after our 7am target. You have seen the photographs so have some idea what it is like but as always, photographs can never do a place justice. It was truly stunning, and we have never experienced anything quite like it. After about 3 miles we hopped onto the boat which takes you across the largest middle lake, after which we continued our uphill walk to the end, where a bus collected us to return us to the starting point.
A 7 mile linear walk on wooden walkways between lakes and waterfalls was truly amazing. The water is so clear and the wildlife is everywhere, fish, butterflies, frogs, dragonflies, birds and they we just the creatures we could see! The paths are obviously man made but other than that we really felt we were walking through a totally natural environment and not something created like a theme park.
By the time we got back to the starting point the hoards of tourists arriving made us realise that it was a wise decision to prise ourselves out of bed early!
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