Our night bus from Mostar to Zagreb, Croatia took about 8 hours and arrived at 6am. Unsurprisingly, we did not get much sleep on the bus. It’s funny because 99% of the Flixbuses we had been on have had chairs that recline, but for some reason this one did not. In fact, the last bus we took before this one my chair was broken so it was fully reclined the entire journey. After we arrived it was a short walk to our hotel which we had strategically booked near the bus station so we could drop off our bags. Then we made it back to the bus station for a quick breakfast and hopped on the 8:00am bus to Plitvice Lakes National Park.

I had been to Plitvice Lakes National Park once before in 2016, but only saw about half of the park since the person I was accompanied with did not feel well. I was excited for a redemption visit and for Nick to experience it for the first time. The bus was just under 2.5 hours long and dropped people off at both the first and second entrances. We didn’t know that ahead of time and the bus said it would only go to entrance 2 so our ticket was for there. We then had to shuttle to entrance 1 in order to do the lower lakes first. As it turns out, the entry time is more important than the entrance on the ticket.

We opted to do entrance 1 first as the lower lakes have the supposed highlights and take the shortest amount of time. That way we could take our time in the upper lakes area and explore at our own pace. The park is well labeled with maps and has names for different routes. The lower lakes were beautiful, with a short walk through the woods that has a nice view of two big blue lakes from above.

After the woods, the trail brought us lower to the lake level. There we walked a ton along boardwalks right by the water. Different lakes had different colors, but the park is most well known for the bright teals and turquoise. The park is scattered with dozens of waterfalls of various heights and water flows. The big waterfall was the most crowded but also had nice shade so we enjoyed our sandwiches there before continuing.

The park was busy, but it tended to have bursts of people at a time due to the shuttles and ferries dropping people off in groups and most people wanting to go to the hits and avoid walking too far. It was nice to hang back sometimes in order to get a boardwalk to ourselves, even if only for a few minutes. After seeing the lower lakes we made our way to the ferry that took us to the upper lakes area. I was so exhausted after the night bus that the slow moving ferry rocked me right to sleep and I slept through a large portion of the ride. That was a little too bad because we had to wait a long time in line to board it. The line was funny, though, as we got to hear a group of elderly women chatting with their young Nat Geo tour guide. At one point he mentioned that he’s going about 6 months without seeing his wife due to work. To which one of the older women replied if her husband didn’t see her for 6 months she could be dead.

There was not much wildlife at the park except a few fish in the lakes, some ducks, and the occasional heron. The trails are well maintained, though. At the upper lakes we went up off the boardwalk along the “K” hiking trail first. That was incredibly peaceful as 99% of the tourists just walked along the boardwalk. We only saw about 4 other people on that part of the trail and got great arial views of some waterfalls and lakes.

Although it says online that the lower lakes are the highlight, we both agreed that the upper lakes felt more magical. There were more waterfalls and they were more spectacular and it was a larger area which meant less congestion. After finishing the upper trail we completed the lower section of boardwalks. I found the upper lakes paths to be slightly confusing as there were many smaller loops and out and backs. There was only one area through the woods we did not complete as I hit a wall of exhaustion from the lack of sleep.

Getting back was a short ferry only a few minutes long. Once on the other side we had 2 hours until our booked bus was coming. We utilized that time for a fika break which was perfectly timed during a huge rain downpour. After that we made our way to the bus station where we hoped that the bus that was coming earlier would let us on even though we had booked the next one. That driver was super nice and it worked! Nick and I lucked out and boarded the 4:15pm bus instead of having to wait for the 5:15pm and got back to town by 6:30pm. This was nice so we could have an early dinner of incredible pizza, then head back to the hotel for an early bed time. We were so drained, but happy we added this one day in Croatia to split up our journey. We will have to come back again for longer and do the coast since Nick has not done that yet.