We’ve spent the last couple of days in Pension Winnetou, a comfortable and extremely friendly guest house on the road to Plitvice and the Lakes National Park. We’ve had almost every type of weather since arriving here, experiencing brilliant sunshine and torrential rain in almost cyclical regularity. Needless to say, it’s caused us some issues in attiring ourselves appropriately for the conditions, but it hasn’t prevented us from admiring the amazing scenery at Croatia’s most visited beauty spot.

We arrived here yesterday in the early afternoon, following a smooth flight over from Gatwick and a stunning mountainous drive 150km North from Split. There was still plenty of daylight left by the time we arrived at the guesthouse, and despite feeling weary from the 4am start it wasn’t long before we found ourselves on the boardwalks of the National Park.

Filling up on pomme-fritzes and dubious looking boiled meat hamburgers (I’m not fussy when I’m hungry and there’s not much else on the menu), we headed off in the direction of the lakes. Walking about a kilometre from the car-park to the docks, we took a short boat trip upstream on the Kozjak Lake, before continuing on foot along the boardwalk up to the Veliki Slap (the “Big Waterfall”).

It was pretty overcast as we walked on, but the less than perfect skies took nothing away from the scenery, with deep valleys and aquamarine waters forming a backdrop to our afternoon stroll. Climbing up through water-eroded caves, we found ourselves taking the high road, getting a birds-eye, panoramic view of our surroundings along the trail to our destination.