A 6 seater people mover delivered us to Plitvice from the Trieste railway station in Italy via several hours' drive through wooded mountains of Slovenia and and a zig-zagging descent from a high-speed motorway to the 1st pit-stop at Opatija on the northern Croation coast - a prosperous, Riviera-looking place indeed. Later, after diverting off a motorway towards Plitvice our driver got a tad misdirected by his sat-nav and we found ourselves in backroad countryside of old-fashioned farms and small villages of Kamenica and the onomatopoeiacly named Slunj - and the few and only sights we had of damage from the 1991 war. A few shot-up walls with obvious bullet holes and some burnt out, over-grown farm houses. An accidental but worthwhile diversion through pretty scenery (Slunj excepted).
Limestone and chalk have built up as natural travertine barriers that have created a series of cascades, lakes and backwaters that form the UNESCO-protected Plitvice Lakes, now within the boundaries of a national park in the middle of Croatia. Despite the tourist hordes even in low season 1 cigarette butt was the total litter count on our circumnavigation of the Lakes. Ferries and buses hauling the multitudes to the various drop-off points are electric and it's obvious great care is taken to look after the whole environment.