2 stops in walking order

Waterfall

Half-hidden in the middle of the Upper Lakes chain, the Galovac cascades are — after Veliki Slap — the most photographed waterfall system in the park. Water tumbles a total of thirty metres over a series of ivy-hung travertine dams into the bright-green Galovac Lake below, and the wooden boardwalk crosses right through the spray in a way that regularly leaves cameras wet. Late spring, when snowmelt from Mala Kapela is at full flow, is when the cascades roar; late summer softens them into lace-like veils. The Upper Lakes trail H is the least crowded of the classic Plitvice routes and takes in Galovac at roughly its midpoint — chain it with the panoramic viewpoint above the falls (a five-minute uphill detour signposted to Prošćanski Jezero) for the best photograph. Watch for endemic Plitvice trout hanging motionless in the pools between drops. The park's founding conservationist Ivo Pevalek studied travertine formation right here in the 1920s, and it was largely his research that led to Plitvice becoming a national park in 1949 and a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979.

~1 h at this stop

Lake

Kozjak is by far the largest and deepest of Plitvice's sixteen turquoise lakes — a two-kilometre sheet of glassy water that acts as the natural divide between the Upper and Lower Lakes. Wooden electric boats ferry visitors from stop P2 to P3 across its emerald surface for free with a park ticket, giving one of the most memorable perspectives in Croatia as the towering wooded cliffs of Stubica and Gradinsko drop straight into the water. Kozjak is fed by a chain of waterfalls at its southern end and drains via the thunderous Milke Trnine cascade into the Lower Lakes. Look for the small forested island of Štefanijin otok near the northern shore — reportedly named after Habsburg Crown Princess Stephanie who visited in the 1880s — and for shoals of endemic Plitvice trout that thrive in the mineral-rich karst water. In winter, when tourist crowds vanish, Kozjak occasionally freezes solid enough for the park to open ice-skating on its surface, a rare permitted activity inside a UNESCO site. The gentle east-shore trail K takes ninety minutes end-to-end, mostly boardwalk, and is by far the least crowded of the Plitvice loops. Bring binoculars — bears, wolves and lynx all range through the surrounding beech forest and are occasionally sighted from the lake.

~2 h 30 m at this stop