flowing water!

When I woke up this morning it was not so hot, thankfully!  My parents, though, were still sweating heavily.  They, apparently, woke up at 5:00 in the morning because of the heat and the noise.  I must have gotten used to the languid weather because I did not wake up in the middle of the night.

After we got out of bed, we had some major decision making to do.  We all decided that we could not stay in this weather for another night.  The question was, where should we go?!  After we had all given this question some deep thought, and had eaten our breakfast, we decided to rent a car and drive along the shores of Croatia and the beautiful coast of Europe.  It was too hot to take a bus to the waterfalls and lakes, which had been our original plan.

After we had rented a car in downtown Zagreb, we came up with the idea of driving to the beautiful lakes and water falls (which, by the way, are called Plitvice Lakes) on our way down the coast.  We had read bad reviews of the hotels in Plitvice Lakes, so the best option was to stay in a town a couple minutes away from the lakes. 

When we were almost to the lakes we found a really peaceful town called Slunj.  The first things we noticed in Slunj, were the lakes and water falls in the middle of town. These are just like Plitvice Lakes, but they are less intense and less huge.  Another interesting thing about Slunj is that in the 1600s it was a mill town, and they would use water wheels to grind their flour.  Twenty years ago, this town was near the starting place of the Croatian War of Independence.

The water mills

Along a calm section of the river in Slunj is a beach where they built a high dive and a low dive.  Now, you might be a person who is afraid of the high dive in the U.S., but this was way higher than any high dive I have ever seen!  My mom jumped off the high dive 3 times, I jumped off ~ 10 times, and my dad jumped off 2 times.  It was super cool to feel the sweet air on my body when I was flying through it on the way into the deep river.

Weeeeeeee!!!!

We have now found a guest house in Slunj and are planning to stay the night here.  The house is right on the river.  It is much cooler than our last stay in Zagreb.  Tomorrow we will drive to the Plitvice Lakes and see what there is to see.  Then we will continue our driving adventure to the coast of Croatia.

Thank you for reading Rohan Geographic!