Luke, around the world.

U is Dutch, or so says the pin on his backpack, a blue-red-and-white De 4Daagse sticker. We don’t really interact much, and yet, since both of us are on the second-longest H trail of the park (and only because the K trail is allegedly flooded), we become each other’s unofficial pacemakers.

We meet for the first time during an uphill detour to a viewing point, another hour added on top of an already long walk. I overtake some Polish couple with a young boy; they are wondering about the time necessary to get to and back from the hill, and I feel obliged to inform them about the timeframe in our snakelike mother tongue. They turn back. U is ahead of me, his calves are vascular, lithe, they work at a very regular pace, never missing a beat. I am trying to keep up but it’s only at the top that I catch up to him; he turns to look at me and smiles.

The Plitvice Lakes National Park, a paradisiacal retreat hidden two hours south of Zagreb, has been on my radar for over a decade. The lakes form what one could call a natural staircase, and after being picked up by a minibus from the entrance number two, it’s the lake at the top where I start my journey. I join a very diverse mix of nationalities, all traversing the narrow causeways and footpaths surrounded by brisk mountain runnels, majestic forests, and birdsong.

The viewpoint lets me take a few excellent photos of the waterfalls downhill, but it’s just the beginning of the hike. As me and U descend closer and closer to the miracles of nature we’ve just witnessed from a vantage point, the trail gets more crowded. Soon enough, the waterfalls are within my reach and I can feel the refreshing breeze spraying my sweated forehead. As close as they are, taking a picture without being interrupted by droves of tourists is a challenge. I manage it anyway, and soon I pick up the pace. This time I am leading, with U a little bit behind.

Uncertain of how long it takes to get to the boat, I rest next to a few lean-tos overlooking a pond full of frogs. Their polyphonic ribbit gets into my head; after eating a few granola bars I descend further. Lo and behold, it is just around the corner that I find a crowd of people on a wooden jetty, waiting for the boat. U is among them, and we get separated as I become the first person forced to wait for the next barge. Luckily, they are more frequent than the Warsaw subway, so soon enough I get a window seat and many opportunities to admire the park from the middle of the lake.

The boat trip takes no more than half an hour and I end up at the first entrance to the park. I can’t find U anywhere, he may have moved forward. I stop for a traditional sausage with a big side of mustard. I need more energy, as it’s not the end; the H trail continues and I start walking towards the largest of the waterfalls. At some point I catch up with U again, and while he is busy taking pictures of an astonishingly scenic route towards the Veliki Slap, I take the lead again.

There is a narrow turn just before the final descent to the Great Waterfall and the road is swarming with other hikers. Right now it feels more like one of the confession queues I will later see at Medjugorje. It takes at least half a minute to move even one meter, but as soon as I get a place at the edge of the precipice, I look into the lush, gaping abyss and pray that my fingers do not betray me; I need my camera for another fourteen months at least.

And then the Great Waterfall, what a majestic sight. Little do I know, but the Plitvice waterfalls are the first in a long succession of these gravitational bodies of water I will discover in other countries. I’m only starting, I say to myself, it hasn’t been a month yet. But it already feels like a lifetime.

Everyone’s trying to take selfies with the waterfall, so do I, but at some point enough is enough, and I get back to the footpath marked with the eighth letter of the alphabet. U is ahead of me, but after a while we swap places. Again, he’s taking quite a few pictures as we both ascend to the bus stop that should take us back to the second entrance. Fair enough, there is an excellent view of the paths winding down below, but it’s been a long day and I dream of nothing more than a comfortable bed and an AC swing in a position fixed right above my slightly sunburnt body. 

U never makes it to the bus stop; perhaps the K trail was open after all?

The Plitvice Lakes National Park was the highlight of my round-the-world trip so far. Apart from the obvious charm of nature, I enjoyed it for its infrastructure, too. Everything is carefully planned out, the trails are marked so well that even a person hopeless at getting bearings won’t get lost. I needed to take a thirty-minute walk to the entrance, but even the road leading to the park was stupendous, with that fresh forest air I so badly needed in Malta, and all the verdure, and points of blue way up high in the treetops, peeking through.

Something tells me I’ll come back here. Maybe not with the twins me and T were promised, but somehow, somewhere, I have to find what I am looking for, right? One element of the puzzle is definitely nature, as seen and relished in this Croatian national park.