Hrvatska Republic (AKA Croatia) and the inland waters

Everyone told us that Croatia was all about the sea. Well... we'll see about that.

We came into Croatia by train and immediately were left wondering what the heck the Hrvatska Republic was. It turns out that's what Croatians call their country. So why do we call it Croatia? No idea why, we never got a back story, Google defaults a search for "Hrvatska Republic" to Croatia and a bunch of things in Croatian... and the Wikipedia page makes no mention. Some things are better left unknown I guess... HR is on the license plates, but Croatia it is.

For those that keep track of such things, Croatia is outside of the customs block of the Schengen zone but inside the European Union. All that this meant for us is that the clock for the 90 day maximum stay in the EU was stopped when we left Slovenia. On the train into Croatia, we cleared customs for the first time since arriving in Rome in July and we had to show customs proof of where and when we entered so they could verify we weren't overstaying our welcome.

Anyway, we pretty much skipped over Croatia's capital, Zagreb, it looked pretty nice but we were on a mission to experience what Croatia had to offer in terms of natural beauty.

First on the list was Plitvice Lakes, which are a very curious set of lakes, waterfalls and rock formations in the interior of Croatia. They look like something out of a Garden of Eden artist rendition, lush greenery, clear turquoise blue water, all framed and accented by numerous waterfalls.

You just can't take a bad picture here!

I'm (Bill here) going to ramble on for quite a while about why these lakes formed... if this isn't your cup of tea there are plenty of pictures thrown in here to keep your scroll wheel moving.

Turns out Plitvice Lakes started to form a mere 12-15 thousand years ago. I was sort of shocked when I heard that time line. Generally nothing happens on a geologic time scale unless you're talking at least 100's of thousands of years, 10's of thousands of years is like a day in geologic time.

I tend to think of water only eroding things away, but water can also form rock under the right conditions and currently those conditions exist at Plitvice Lakes.

Some of the lakes.

After the last ice age the chemistry of the water running down the rivers that feed this area changed every so slightly such that rock started to form on everything that the water touched, I'm oversimplifying here but wikipedia does a much better job. I'll give you the readers digest version that avoids the chemical equations.

Walk ways and waterfalls, really well done.

The entire region is karst, a water permeable rock that dissolves in water that has become acidic from CO2. Rain falls with some CO2, and picks up more CO2 from the soil. As the rain water makes its inexorable march to the sea, it dissolves the rock it flows through. This causes caves, underground rivers and sinkholes to form. This phenomena is all over this part of the world, including the caves we saw in Slovenia. When the water reemerges and hits the air, i.e. exits the ground as a spring, it gives up some CO2 and then some of the minerals that it picked up earlier start to precipitate out, provided some temperature and pH values are correct.

Not just little falls!

The rivers here are like any other, sometimes they flow through very shallow fast moving places, when this happens in concert with some vegetation, the previously dissolved rock starts to form again. The formation or growth rates can be as much as 13 mm (1/2 inch) per year, that might not be fast enough to notice year by year, give it 1000 years and you've got yourself a 13 m (45 ft) wall built up. It doesn't look like a perfectly vertical wall though, subsequent layers tend to form just down stream from the previous layers.

Waterfalls everywhere!

So the little ripple in the water rushing around some vegetation is left with a buildup of stone, the next layer forms on that and makes a barrier for the rushing water, after many layers you start to get a dam that forms a lake upstream with a waterfall flowing downstream, and because the newer layers form just downstream, the dam is tilted downstream and a small shallow cave underneath.

Even branches lying in still water have build ups of rock forming on them.

The rock formed is called "Tufa" or "Travertine", which cuts and carves easily and forms quickly too! Easy come, easy go I guess. Oddly enough Travertine is the primary rock that Rome's buildings were built from. Rome wasn't built in a day but maybe a day in geologic terms.

This whole process ends up making some very interesting structures, and those structures are in a state of constant change and make for some great pictures. Despite being super saturated with minerals the water is super clear but with the turquoise hue.

We did get rained on a little bit...

Plitvice has an extensive set of trails and walkways to check out the sites, we walked around 12 miles in about 8 hrs. It was raining when we got there but cleared up soon after. It was a great way to spend a day, but the big downer: there isn't any swimming at Plitvice.

Rain kept the crowds away though

I really hate being around beautiful temperate water and not being able to swim, so to get my fix we signed up for a kayaking tour the next day in a river nearby that also has the same kind of tufa formations. We got to kayak down about five waterfalls in "rubber duck" kayaks. The highest was probably about 5 feet, with a 12 foot long kayak it was actually a lot easier than it sounds, basically just hold your paddle above your head and enjoy the ride, of course I was in the back...

Intrepid kayakers!

Kayaking made for a great way to see underneath the waterfalls and get a better idea of how these barriers build up over time.

Waterfalls with caves underneath, nice spot to jump from!

All the boats parked for lunch

So Croatia has really delivered on its promise of a great visit and we didn't even get to the coastal part of our Croatia adventure yet... that's up next.