Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Veliki Falls


The next day we took off to the lower lakes and the famous Veliki Slap, or Big Waterfall. This is undeniably the most visited portion of the park. One can enter from the first entrance area, walk to the lookout for Veliki Slap, take a few pictures, and then look down upon the crawling bits of humanity making their way around the tricky paths, and use the telephoto to take a few snaps of the visible waterfalls and finally walk away, knowing you had seen the falls. There are, I’m sure, any number of people who take that route (the parking lot has the first 20 minutes free). Others do walk down, take the short loop and then slowly make their way back up the hill (1k, straight up). Then there are the rest of us. 
We took off on the 2nd ferry, heading off to the far side of Jezero Kozjlak. We headed up to the upper path with promised viewpoints along the way – we weren’t disappointed! We also found that it was quite sparsely populated; obviously the teeming crowds did not like hiking the upper reaches. We make our way along Jezero Milanovac, Gavanovac and Kaluderovac, checking out the various falls connecting these and other lakes. The water carries the calcium carbonate in solution and as the water falls over the edges, it is deposited, forming spectacular terraces for the water to cascade over. 
We wound our way to the numerous upper views of Veliki Slap, finally descending (yes, hundreds of steps) to the teeming mass of humanity. There we joined the slowly wending path among the stunning vistas. We didn’t stick around for too long because we made our way up to the upper viewpoint (the one that is quick to get to if you’re up on top) and then walked along the opposite edge of the lakes, again taking pictures. 
Well…we couldn’t be satisfied staying up there…after all, we found some more stairs and we couldn’t resist the urge to climb down them. We wound are way through a cave and back to the milling crowds. Finally we arrived at the edge of the lake and walked back along the quiet path to our hotel. 
FYI...this last picture is the view from the top - very stunning to see.

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