Plitvice National Park: A Haphazard Guide

Plitvice National Park is a jewel in the crown of Croatia. It is a gorgeous collection of lakes that cascade into each other creating gorgeous waterfalls. Every vista is stunning, and the park paths bring you right to the base of the falls. At peak times (especially in the summer) the boardwalks can be crowded with tour groups that flock to the falls for day trips from Split or Zagreb. The crowds will definitely detract from your enjoyment of the falls, so try and come to in April or May, or stay the night and enjoy the park early in the morning at 8.00 or stay late and go after the crowds at 16.00.

The falls have 2 entrances, aptly named Entrance 1 and 2, which are about 2km apart on the main road. There are a few hotels in the park, but most places to stay are located 2-4 miles from the entrances. When we got our tickets, we got 2 days for the park, but we bought them for different entrances which turned out to be a little bit of a hassle. There is no dedicated bus between the entrances and the city buses don’t run consistently. The easiest way to get between the entrances are taxis (if available) or walking, which is along a road with no sidewalks.

 

Getting to the campsites and hotels out of the park is also a chore, especially in the off season when you want to be in the park. Some places offer a shuttle at 9.00 to the entrances and 17.00 back to the hotels. Again, the means you are in the park at the busiest times and are not going to enjoy the experience. So what did we do? Well, we made up our own plan and made it work.

Our bus left Zagreb at 9.00 and got to Entrance 2 of the park a little after noon. Our tickets didn’t get us into the park until 15.00 so we had a couple of hours to kill. We left our packs in one of the free storage rooms at the entrance and had lunch from our camp food (salami and cheese sandwiches). Across the main road from Entrance 2 are a series of trails that wander through the woods and up a couple of small mountains, so we decided to spend some time exploring the trails.

 

Now, wild camping is not legal in Croatia and in almost all situations you are required to stay in designated campsites, and this is especially true for the national park area we were in. However, the trails across from Entrance 2 into Plitvice Lakes were quiet, deserted, and offered plenty of ideal campsites for two young men to take advantage of. We hatched a plan: instead of rushing our time through the park to catch a bus to a campsite, we would take our time and just hike into this lush forest and camp. This way we could spend more than an hour in the park our first day and when we woke up the next morning, we would just have to walk the one kilometer to Entrance 1, and we’d be ready to hit the park at 9.00.

Our ramshackle plan worked out amazingly. We went into the park at 15.00 on day one and spend hours exploring the upper lakes. The tour bus crowds thinned out in the evening and we got great views of the falls with only a few people around. When we left the park we went and found a dry place in the woods and slept well. The next morning we got up early, had a campsite breakfast and walked down to Entrance 1. On our way, we actually hopped the fence into the park and got to spend and hour or so in the park before anyone else got there. Around 8.30 we got to the entrance and walked out, grabbed our real tickets for the day, grabbed a coffee and went back into the park at 9.00. Again we got to explore the lakes with a smaller crowd since the tour busses hadn’t yet arrived from Split and Zagreb yet. It was an amazing way to explore the national park and experience the lakes.

 

We left the parks around noon, ate some lunch and caught our bus into Split, feeling like somehow we managed to pull off seeing Croatia’s most visited national park without the crazy crowds and somehow our haphazard planning Plitvice paid off.