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“Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” –Mark Jenkins

Wednesday 26 August 2009

Day 104 – 16th August, Sunday – Risnjak to Plitvicka Jezera.

Late-ish last night as Ant and I were engrossed in either guitar tab or spider solitaire (probably shouldn’t have confessed to that) we thought we heard a knock at the door and listened again to check; sure enough a second knock came some moments later. With some reluctance we eventually opened the front door and came face to face with a short Slovenian man. He spoke no English and we had used up our entire Slovene saying hello. By way of hand signals and the odd village name, we managed to deduce that he was lost and trying to get to Delnice to find the Autostrad to Ljubljana. We handed over a tourist map and pointed towards Delnice, smiled, nodded and thanked him in Croatian (I have no idea what we thanked him for, but at least this time we were only one country away with the choice of language!).

The drive south through the mountains to Plitvicka was beautiful; simple houses, simple lifestyle and only the occasional house still showing evidence of the recent wars. Many of the houses were not rendered and there were quite a few left to ruin with trees growing where kitchens would have been. But all had overflowing baskets of flowers and brightly coloured tubs decorating the porches and balconies.

We arrived mid afternoon at Kamp Borje 13kms south of the lakes just as an Italian ploughed into another car on the main road outside the campsite. We were bound to witness one sooner or later. Incidentally Croatians have a fab driving law which makes it illegal to overtake a convoy of vehicles stuck behind a slow moving truck – perhaps the Italians ought to take a leaf.

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