Croatia's Plitvice Lakes National Park

0:15Hi, I'm Ryan Davis and I'm Kiernan Schmidt and this is Out of Office, a travel podcast. This is Taken. Hey, Kiernan. Hey, Ryan. How are you today? I'm good. I'm good. It's my We're recording this right before my birthday weekend. I'm turning 29. Is today your birthday? No, my birthday is tomorrow. Tomorrow. Okay, so I didn't miss it.

0:39Kiernan:So can I be the first to wish you a happy birthday? A happy and hearty birthday. Thank you. Thank you. You like your birthday. Okay, yeah. Late 20s, mid 40s, mid to upper 40s. Early mid 40s or late early. Early mid. Late early 40s. Early, mid, upper 40s. Yeah, yeah. Nothing wrong with that. So you're having a big shebang? No, I'm going to Medellin for the weekend. Okay, that sounds nice. Yeah, it's going to be just like a chill weekend. And, you know, it's Easter, so Latin America is pretty quiet to begin with. And it'll be, yeah, you'll mostly be prayer, contemplation, abstinence, all of the standard honors.

1:28Have you been following all this talk about how Catholicism is super cool again?

1:34Kiernan:Of course. Am I fine? Are you kidding? You should see my Instagram algorithm. It's mostly Catholic cool stuff. Yeah. Yeah. My Twitter algorithm is very Catholic. So I get a lot of the Pope and all these articles that are like, the Catholic Church is New York's hottest nightclub. And about like Gen Z Catholic influencers. Oh my God. You know, I should consider being a Gen Z Catholic influencer. I think I have that in me. You could be a great like millennial dad Catholic influencer. I get a lot of like priest influencers. And man, they are working so hard to build their audiences on Instagram. I mean, they really, there's very little self-respect in some of the videos.

2:21Kiernan:And the ones you really want to search out are the friars, like the ones who are just socked away and it's like a bunch of guys who all live together and they've clearly like brainstormed it for a few hours and they're all talking it up and how funny it's going to be and it's like I saw one the other day of different actually you know it worked it was funny it was different ways to genuflect when you get into your pew I am a big performative genuflector Of course, me too. It's the theater of it. It's how you and I turned out how we are. Yeah, yeah. The Catholic aesthetic, it's pretty good. Well, we're actually recording this on Good Friday, so I've got to...

3:04Kiernan:I know, I know. It's a very spare eating day, and it's good for the day job, vegetarian QSR. I posted to Instagram, in honor of Good Friday, no meat on today's menu. It's a little joke. That is very funny Thank you Now, speaking of other things happening in Boston, Ryan Quite a few listeners have alerted me And I want to let you know I hear you I'm well aware And I thank you That Rick Steves, godfather of the Out of Office podcast Is coming to Boston He's coming to Brookline Which is a neighborhood And he's going to the Brookline Booksmith on April 21st. He'll be there for 5 p.m. And he's talking about On the Hippie Trail, which is the book that he came on our show to talk about last time.

3:55Oh, that's fantastic. Are you going to go meet Rick?

3:59Kiernan:I'm considering it. Honestly, he gets mobbed when he comes to Boston. I mean, really mobbed. Like Boston is a Rick Steves town. I am sure. And you know, I've had the direct access already and I don't want him to be creeped out. He knows how much I like him. I think, you know, he didn't reach out yet. I mean, we're still, this is still early April. I'm expecting maybe there's like a, maybe a lunch invite, but if Rick Steves people are listening, you know, I'm, I'm, as far as I know, I'm, I'm around that week. Oh, you know what? I'm not around that week, but I could shift my schedule if need be.

4:36Kiernan:I would love to talk to Rick in person. I'm especially interested in talking about the future of Rick Steve's Europe and where the future growth is coming and all of the places it's going. So, you know, I'll wait for that invite. So maybe I'll see you there, listeners. I love it. I love it. And get a picture for the Instagram, OOOpodcast. That's right. At OOOpodcast, like OOOpodcast. And also, if you're local, highly recommend. Always a joy to see Rick. He's a natural performer, really good speaker, and a fun glad hander. So if you're considering getting tickets, I certainly would encourage you to do so.

5:17Yeah. And I'm sure if he's on tour, check out his website and go support Rick.

5:22Kiernan:Yeah. He's going all around. I was just browsing. He's in Texas. He's always in Washington, which is where he lives. Then he's in Chicago, Brookline, Massachusetts, Franklin, Indiana. Then he's going to Kansas City, Missouri, and San Diego, California. So he's doing quite a tour in April around the book. Yeah, that sounds, I should pick it up. Give it a read. Well, I mean, twist my arm. I guess I could put in the show notes a link back to our episode where we talked to him about On the Hippie Trail, which is, if you haven't listened to it, it's all about his very first major excursion. And he went on this giant road trip all across Europe and into Asia.

6:02Kiernan:And it used to be called the Hippie Trail. And these are his journals that he actually kept when he was a young man. I love it. I love it. There was a version of the hippie chair also in South America that was pretty famous. Is that right? I didn't know that. That'd be a fun episode to talk about. Yeah, we could talk about that. Did it have a name? Oh, I forget. But Hunter Thompson went on it and wrote a book about it. All right. This is a good idea. Another Rick Steve's tie here is to the show we're going to talk about today, which is we're going to spotlight an international national park, a protected wildlife and a natural area, which is Plitvica Lakes National Park in Croatia.

6:47Kiernan:And I remember I was using a Rick Steves book when I was preparing for that trip. Oh, well, I, you know, when you said you were going to do a national park here, and I just assumed it was going to be in the US. So I'm... Well, that's I'm trying to I wanted to get, you know, we were domestic last episode. So I thought this episode, let's do a price of gas with the price of gas domestic travels where it's at. But yeah, I don't know. A lot of our national parks are really far away from. Yeah. You got it. You got it from airports. You got to travel pretty far. Whereas Pudvice is a slick two and a half hours from Zagreb.

7:23Kiernan:So it's not bad. But why don't we take off and go to Zagreb? Okay. Tell the cabin crew. flight attendants prepare for takeoff please all right ryan now uh i i i can i you know i don't know every country you've been to have you been to croatia no it's like so high on my list so i haven't been to any any of these this this region so this is i katherine and i did a big road trip across uh slovenia and croatia and a lot of what you do uh in those places is you you drive along the coast. There's a lot of great coastline to enjoy. So you can do beach, you can do beautiful mountains and forests because the Alps continue down into that area.

8:08Kiernan:And we, in planning, I came upon a description of this Plitvica Lakes National Park. And if you Google it, you are going to see exactly why you have to fit this into any Croatian, Slovenian, Bosnian trip that you're taking. because it's actually quite close to the Bosnian border, but it's more towards the interior. But as I said, you can get to it from a lot of the major tourist areas that you're already going to be in. Cheap bus ticket. And it is the type of national park you can certainly visit in a single day. You're not going to explore everything if you're only there for five or six hours, but you are able to see the major stuff because the reason you go to Pletica Lakes National Park is to see these absolutely crystal clear, beautiful lakes and waterfalls.

9:07I'm looking at the pictures now. The color of the water is amazing. It's unbelievable.

9:12Kiernan:It looks incredibly exotic. It's not what you would like. I'm not thinking like Europe when I look at this. I think that is a perfect description of it. It's this crystal clear blue water that almost looks like what you would think like the Caribbean ocean looks like. And in person, it is just as electric blue as it looks in these photos. And the park goes back a long way. It was established in 1949 to preserve these very special lakes and waterfalls. The word Plitvice, which by the way, I should spell it for folks if you're not looking at it. It's P-L-I-T-V-I-C-E. So it looks like Plitvice, but it's Plitvice.

9:55Kiernan:And it means shallow because these lakes are actually pretty shallow. And the whole network of the 16 lakes and waterfalls has to do with some pretty interesting geology that I'll talk about. But it's a quite unique feature and it's very centralized. So that's why you can cover it in five or six hours if you're taking a bus tour in and out. And it looks like they've built some sort of like boardwalk all around. Yes. Kind of. I mean, you know what it really reminds me of? Like Avatar. Oh, that's interesting. I like that. Well, and it picks up on that because it is in this beautiful forest around.

10:34Kiernan:And so there's hiking you can do that goes away from the lakes. And then as you said, the boardwalks, there are boardwalks that crisscross these lakes and waterfalls to bring you to lots of beautiful views. And you can do miles on these boardwalks alone. And what I loved about it was it's super, super accessible for people because it's not strenuous hiking to take in these great views. You've got, it's easy for families, it's easy for elderly tourists. And it's pretty interesting when you're there, if you're perking your ears up, you definitely feel that this is a place that Croatians come to visit and a lot of Europeans come to visit.

11:12Kiernan:But as far as I could tell, there are not as many Americans who put it on their Croatia itinerary. itinerary. And this podcast is sort of my argument that you should do so. Okay. Well, I'm sold. Croatia does have several national parks. This is the oldest and largest. It's also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I know you like to keep that list on your mind. And it has some interesting features that I'll touch on. And it's got one really funny factoid about it that I absolutely love, which is, right. Do you know, I learned this when I went there. I didn't know that, you know, like Western movies in the United States, like John Wayne, you know, banded movies.

12:01So they were all shot in Europe, right? They were like, oh, I don't know. Is that true? I don't think that's true. There was a whole Italian Western. Yes, that's right.

12:10Kiernan:Well, these spaghetti Westerns, as they were called, were very popular in Germany. And there was a whole European industry of trying to create like American style Westerns. Okay. And completely weirdly, Putvice National Park is a place where they filmed some of these spaghetti Westerns, these like German spaghetti Westerns in the 1960s. And so apparently German tourists still search it out to like see, but it looks nothing like the American West. I mean, nothing like the American West. No, it's like, it's like maybe what the Grand Canyon looked like before it was a canyon, you know, like when it was like a lush area.

12:54area.

12:55Kiernan:Exactly. And so the location, particularly that people point to that you could recognize from the films is it's called, I'm probably mispronouncing, I apologize if it is, but it's Supriara Cave, which is this little cave system you can see there. The lakes themselves, I mean, because there's waterfalls, you could figure this out. They sit on two different tiers. There's upper lakes, there's lower lakes, 16 in total, and they all flow into one another. And the, the, the, the waterfall that you really want to search out is 255 feet. It's called the Veliki Slap, which I think is a great name for a waterfall.

13:36Kiernan:Cause that's kind of the sound the water makes when it hits. And, and, and can you like walk up the waterfall? Yeah, there's, there's a, There's stairways and boardwalks all along the exterior. So if you only have three, four hours, you're going to spend all of it on the boardwalks. And then there are eight hikes that you can do beyond that. There's two entrances to the parks, different hikes pick up at each of those entrances. And so there's quite a good afar.com layout of those eight hikes. And what that article is arguing is take a little bit of time, spend an extra day or two at the park to incorporate the hike.

14:15Kiernan:So it's too in the weeds to go into each one of those hikes, but I'll link to that afar in the show notes. And I will say we took that path. We stayed a night because I could just tell when I was considering this trip that this was a place I was going to want to see over a course of time and not be in a rush. And there are three hotels right on site. And I mean, you're a five-minute walk from the lakes and the waterfalls and the boardwalk. Really lovely accommodations and quite affordable if you're coming with the US dollar in hand. And so I think if you have the time on your Croatian visit to stay a night, absolutely would do it.

14:56Kiernan:Very charming restaurant on site where they actually serve trout, much like the trout that you can see down in the lakes, even though there is no hiking, there is no fishing allowed. No fishing. I mean, ugh. And it gets, it's like a pretty healthy crowd, but it doesn't get overrun. It gets about 15 ,000 visitors and hikers on a busy day. So, you know, spread out across a decent stretch, that's not too bad. But the boardwalks and the lakes can get a little backed up, especially if you have some slower tourists around it. But I found people to be very polite. Um, and there is an interesting, um, uh, there's an interesting historical cultural tie into this, even beyond the spaghetti Westerns, which was, oh gosh, it's actually very relevant to the time of year too, which is on Easter Sunday, 1991, the very first gunshots of the Croatian, uh, war of independence from Yugoslavia came, they were shot inside the area that is protected in this park.

15:58Kiernan:And so the Serbian Yugoslav army was actually, they took over this park and were there until 1995. So there's an additional resonance for those locals who make their way here. But no acknowledgement of that history in the natural areas that you'll be visiting as a tourist. But it's a good thing to know. And when you go to the Balkans area, I mean, you should read up on the history. That might not be a bad episode for us to do, too, about the kind of complexities of that war. Yeah, that's a war that I remember as a kid, but don't really have any adult understanding of. So it would be interesting to read something on that.

16:43Kiernan:Yeah, that's about where I am on it too. It was like kind of in the background, but we were just a touch too young to be following it closely. There is wildlife, as you'd expect. I'm just looking at it. It's 115 square miles. And these lakes and waterfalls, they are one piece of it, but a lot of that is just forest. And so you do have deer, wolves, wild cats, lynx, wild boars, otters. There are a lot of birds, and it's a good place to be a birder. A lot of those others that I said, they're very shy of humans, so you're unlikely to see any of those. But it's a good spot to bring your binoculars with you.

17:25Kiernan:And what I think is cool, though you're extremely unlikely to see one of these, It is one of the few places that the European brown bear still lives. And that's an endangered bear species that is almost never spotted on visits to Europe. Oh, that's cool. And so I guess you didn't see one when you were... No, no, I wasn't lucky. Trust me, I would have led with that. But you'll never believe it. No. And what's cool, kind of the next layer down outside of just the unique beauty of these waterfalls and lakes is the geology. And I would say that they don't do a terrific job of laying out what exactly is going on that formed these shallow lakes and these waterfalls.

18:13Kiernan:And so just to give a little bit of a descriptor of it and why Plitvica shallow is a great describer for these lakes is because it is a very soft rock that is preserved in this area. And it's a limestone that's called travertine. And it has in it a lot of calcium carbonate, which means that the landscape where the rocks are building up where they're ebbing and flowing over time change, not extraordinarily quickly, but in the course of a thousand years, it can actually dramatically change the layout of these falls. And so the walls, the natural dams that are creating these waterfalls to spill over, those are these natural rock formations.

19:07Kiernan:And below what you can see, below these beautiful lakes, The rock is so porous that there's underground rivers, there's underground passageways. So it's a very unique ecosystem, which is causing this constant flow of this gorgeous water. That sounds very cool. Beautiful. And that, of course, too, is the reason that there are caverns and caves, because it got carved out over time through the movement of water, like all caves do. Can you do a cave tours there? You can't do a cave tour, but it's a good question. Outside of the boardwalks and the hiking trails, there are electric boats that will take you actually out onto the lakes.

19:51Kiernan:And they can connect you to different places across the 16 lakes and onto different hikes. So as far as I know, they don't actually take you into the caves, but it is easy to get out onto the water itself and get just a different view. And this underlines a big point that I should make, which is we've talked on this podcast a ton about the problems of overpopulation in trying to protect these natural wonders. And they do have limited availability tickets. So while I am saying it's not a place that every tourist seeks out, it is popular enough that you should book your tickets in advance. That's good to know.

20:35And I'm sure you can do it online. Not too hard.

20:39Kiernan:No, it's not too hard. Very easy. And our experience of getting a bus there was just regular buses are running from all the major hubs and a bus ticket was like$20. Super affordable. I love picturing you on a bus in Croatia. Oh, that's funny. Why? What's wrong? I'm a bus guy. I'm a bus man. You're a bus guy? Yeah. All right. I mean, I've spent a lot of time on buses. A bus can be one of the most efficient ways to get around in some of these places. I take the bus in Mexico from Guadalajara to Puerto Vallarta, and it's like three hours, and they have really nice buses in Mexico, and you can go through the agave field.

21:24It's lovely.

21:25Kiernan:So yeah, I get it. I mean, at some time we should talk bus riding in Central and South America because we took some pretty harrowing buses in Guatemala that I'm still thinking about some of those roads. We took a few in Peru that were sort of like that. Yeah. I mean, you know, a lot of these, especially, you know, the rail infrastructure just isn't there in a lot of these places. And for difficult terrain, I mean, Peru's like this, Guatemala was like this too, which is there are places that are only 20 miles away from each other, but the road system is so poor and there's no way to go through the mountains that you're looking to go 20 miles.

22:04Kiernan:It might take a four or five hour bus trip on pretty tight roads that are just switchbacks going up and down mountains. It surprises me though, because it's Europe, you'd think there'd be a train. You would think there's a train. Yeah, that is an interesting thing. But you know what? I'm sure it has to do with the natural protection of the area. And my memory of that trip was that it was a very easy, super pleasant, straightforward, very calm road. And you know what? I often like these sort of downtime moments in a trip, like a bus trip or like a train trip in the middle to kind of relax and compose yourself between seeing all the cultural sites.

22:42Yeah, no, I have done very little of that in Europe. So this has inspired me.

22:48Kiernan:Especially because you're still planning on to decamp to Austria next year, right? It's TBD, I think, next year. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Breaking news. Why wasn't this in the A segment? We got some trouble in paradise there, Ryan? No, the boyfriend is delaying his master's for a year. So I'm going to be in Columbia. All right, great. Well, that means lots more time. I have a bunch of places I need you to hit in South America for good episodes. So I'm thrilled by this news. Yeah, me too. Yeah, so there's a lot of places to go over the next year or so. So I'm excited to keep exploring. My Spanish gets worse every day somehow.