Ok so we left at seven o'clock with our guide for the day Jakov. Jakov was a mine of information and a very proud Croatian claiming all things Croatian. It was quite amusing. We spend the 2 hour drive (in the guides van) to the park talking to Jakov and we made one stop and saw many interesting thing while driving. The one stop was at a old village that was set over a waterfall plateau and Jakov called it a mill village because all the houses had mills. We went to one of the only mills that was still working in the village owned by an old lady and she opened the water gates so we could watch the wheel turn and see the corn being ground. The water mill was special because it was horizontal unlike normal mills that are vertical and also unlike normal mills it had spoon shapes bits of wood to catch the water. It was very cool and we wouldn't have seen it without our guide.
While on the road our guide showed us bullet holes in building near the road from recent battles (20 year ago or less). I think mum found this fascinating if a little scary.
Once we arrived at the park Jakov dropped us off while he went and parked and then came back and bought our tickets for us. The plan was to look at the park starting at the bottom and go to the top. We started with the parks biggest waterfall which was pretty but I found it a bit pathetic compared to the Icelandic waterfalls. We made our way up twisting and turning around the small terraced lakes. Also stopping regularly for mum or dad to take pictures. They took quite some time trying the take a shot of some very pretty blue dragon flys.
At the lower main lake we ate a morning tea of cherry pastry thingys. After this we waited about half an hour for a boat over the lake watching and telling off "bloody Russian" who were just walking around the queue pretending it wasn't there. A Norwegian guy next to us got a bit pissed off. For good reason! Anyway the boat/ferry trip was very pleasant and we got a good view of the lake as a whole.
When we reached the end of our mini cruise we tried to get ahead of the crowds but were unsuccessful because we spotted some Rainbow trout in a small pond. This was special because all we had seen in the rest of the park was carp. We continued our trek around the park seeing many beautiful mini waterfalls along the way and a little frog.
We had lunch at a little sitting place a bit up from the lakes. Lunch was spinach pastry things and they were very nice. Again we continued on our way until we reache the end of our trek exhausted and had an ice cream as a reward.
We caught a bus train back to near where the main entrance was and look over the edge of a cliff onto the lakes that we had just been walking near. I must say they look much more spectacular from above.
The park as a whole was very pretty and Jakov had heaps of interesting info about the parks and lakes. E.g. Lots of the lakes were named after people who had drowned in them.
Once we were dropped off back near home we bought the lunch rolls for tomorrow and headed home where we all collapsed. For dinner we had an improvised version of a meal we have back in Adelaide which is gnocchi with tomatoes, tomato pasta sauces (home made) basil and boccincinni. Our version had gnocchi bought tomato pasta sauce and parmesan cheese on top. It was still very nice and rather filling.
Goodnight
Alastair
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