Adriatic Adventures Part 2: Land O' Lakes

One of the amazing things about Croatia is you can literally average one UNESCO World Heritage Site per day on the way down the Adriatic coast. Today's stop: Plitvice Lakes National Park, about two hours out of Zagreb.

But what's so special about a bunch of lakes? Sure the waters nice and blue, and the shore is suitably verdant, but come on, it's just a lake, right? Another over-hyped J00ster post perhaps?

That's what Team J00ster was thinking too...

...until they spotted the roast chickens! Nothing like some charcoal chicken roasted on an open spit to whet the appetite for some serious hiking. Sure beats the "I'm sorry, we only serve Pepsi" attitude of stateside parks.

I'm seeing a lot of eating folks, and not much hiking.

That man deserves a... hang on, he doesn't deserve anything. Sure, downing a roast chicken in five minutes flat is mildly amusing, but it's hardly worthy of an elixir usually reserved for the summiting of epic mountains or the conquoring of vast plains. Or finishing a blog post.

Suitably chastised, it's time to hit the high road. And what a road it is. The absolutely unique feature of the lakes of Plitvice is their geography. Each lake in the chain is sunk a few meters below the last, forming a series of watery terraces that snake their way down the valley.

On the valley floor far below, an elevated boardwalk skirts the edges of the waterfalls that form the link between lake n and n+1.

The water is ridiculously clear, and the day is ridiculously hot. Unfortunately, it appears a couple of hikers already succumbed to the temptation, with earth shattering results.

Team J00ster is in da house!

The limestone the underpins the whole region makes for some great caves. And some lame photos.

As impressive as they are from above, the lakes are even more spectacular from water level. Each is delineated by a gurgling series of waterfalls that spill over the limestone rim and into the lake below.

Mei sees how close she can come to violating the No Swimming regulations. Actually, even if she fell in she wouldn't exactly fall foul of the letter of the law...

Rock demonstrates the textbook method for testing an unknown lake for crocodiles. He never was very good at biology.

Without a single predator to worry about, the lakes are almost overflowing with fish. Someone should really show them the standard menu from just about any Croatian restaurant, and perhaps they wouldn't be quite so keen to loiter right below the surface.

One of the interesting conundrums is why all the fish don't end up in the bottom lake. Unfortunately it will remain a conundrum because Wikipedia doesn't seem to have the answer.

The boardwalks are a great feature, allowing one to literally walk right over the delicate landscape without leaving anything other than an annoying blog post.

More boardwalks than Yellowstone. Even Mei is impressed, a state of affairs that is usual reserved for Bergdorf Goodman.

Good one dude, so you would have been cool in the Pleistocene epoch. Big deal, you're in the Holocene now. Get with the program.

In case you haven't noticed, there are a lot off waterfalls in this park. Rest assured, by the time you get to the end of this blog, you will certainly have noticed.

Mmmm... char-grilled fish with a dash of salt and olive oil. That roast chicken was a long boardwalk ago.

Apparently the color of the lakes is determined by the concentrations of various dissolved minerals and the angle of the sunlight. It's also determined by Rock's ability to use all those buttons on his camera. Which one is white balance again?

This is the view of the lakes Mei would have got if Rock wasn't too cheap to fork over for a helicopter flight.

Heading to the upper lakes as the sun sets proves to be a great plan. Or it would have been a great plan, had Rock checked the return boat schedule first. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, there's plenty of stupidity to go between now and then.

Now that lake deserves a UNESCO.

The elevation difference between lakes at the top of the park is much greater than in the lower lakes. Instead of waterfalls of a meter or two, here the water plunges into a multi-story void.

You can almost hear the creaking. The only question: is it the boardwalk or those gimpy knees?

The grand finale. A spectacular waterfall that forms a semicircular veil of icy water as it gracefully leaps from one lake to the next. Even by the lofty standards of Plitvice falls this is a winner.

View from the bottom. 180 degrees of awesomeness.

As the sun slips below the hills, brilliant turquoise gives way to deep blue and finally inky black.

Speaking of inky black, that was pretty much what Team J00ster was facing after a rookie miscalculation involving distance, time, boat schedules, and Rock's brain or lack thereof. See, the only way to get back from the upper lakes is via boat. And this not being the city that never sleeps, it turns out the boats tie up for the night at 7pm...

Luckily, to cut a lot story short, or rather to cut a long and panicky run short, the last boat was just pushing off from the dock when Rock came charging down the path. Disaster averted. Beer and pizza never tasted so good.

So that's Plitvice folks. Next stop the old town (is there any other kind in Croatia) of Sibenik/