PLITVICE LAKES NATIONAL PARK
War-torn history is washed away by Plitvice’s ever-changing landscape of pools and terraces. As you step along wooden walkways over cerulean pools, it’s hard to imagine that landmines once dotted this slice of Eden in Croatia. Waterfalls feed the park’s 16 crystalline lakes and butterfies gather near the spray. The tallest waterfall, Veliki Slap, tumbles from 70m high. But Unesco-listed Plitvice Lakes National Park was also among the frst battle sites between Croatia and Serbia during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, with ‘Plitvice Bloody Easter’ in 1991 the frst fatal armed confrontation of the Croatian War of Independence. The last of the remaining landmines are thought to have now been weeded out, but in the more untrodden depths of the park, it’s impossible to be sure.