Plitvice National Park, Croatia

If Lake Bled in Slovenia was a dream, Plitvice Lakes in Croatia was a fantasy. The oldest national park in the country and a UNESCO World Heritage site, Plitvice is a natural wonderland located in a mountainous area southwest of Zagreb, not far from the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Water flows everywhere you look in Plitvice—lakes and waterfalls surround walkways and streams pour down limestone cliffs covered in vegetation—with the deep turquoise contrasting against the bright autumn colours.

Its magnificence was overwhelming in all the best ways and I hope to return because I could have spent days on end taking it all in and photographing every corner of the 300km² that make up the national park. Photos from October 2023.

LAND OF WATER • AUTUMN COLOURS