Amidst lakes in High Tatras

Last week, we spent some days in High Tatras, more especifically in Strbské Pleso (for the non-Slovak speaking world, quite a challenging name to pronounce), a beautiful lake and ski resort near Poprad. The main goal of this break was to forget about the world and to get lost in the mountains, just surrounded by beautiful nature everywhere. I certainly think that we achieved it.

First of all, before proceeding with our adventures there, I must mention the love of Slovaks for the mountains. Some parts of our trekking routes were more crowded (in a working day in September) than the commercial streets of Bratislava and it was not strange to see people well in their sixties walking into the mountains. That love for nature is evidenced by the Slovak word for trekking: turisticka.

The first day we decided to go to a waterfall and then to a lake over it (named, in Slovak, pleso na skokom, literally "lake over fall"), in Mlynická Valley. The way was pretty hard uphill and it certainly takes more than the mere 1:30 hour that the maps show you. The only explanation I find for this is that the man who made this map was in really good condition. In the last part, one must really climb over the waterfall, with the help of a chain (but again people of all ages are going there with no fears), so I could feel a little bit like Indiana Jones. The lake in question is just a glaciar lake surrounded by mountains. Most impressive are the views towards the valley, as you can see in the picture below (where I have my beloved T-shirt of QPR).

One of my biggest fears around these days in the mountains was the possibility to find bears and become part of their menu. I must admit that the fear was totally unfounded, since the only animals we saw were two squarrels running away from us on the way down to the hotel.

On our second day of lovely weather, we walked to Popradské Pleso, another lake not far from Strbské Pleso. Here the walk is really nice and easier than the other one, as our legs happily experienced. This second lake is also remarkable and to my eyes it is just the image of Canadian natural parks we have in our minds. I even dared to put my feet in the water (although people were looking at me as if I were crazy) and I would say that it is not colder than the water in Norway and certainly not than the water in Iceland. Having said that, after two minutes I decided to conclude the bath, je, je, je.

As it is quite late and tomorrow the alarm clock will go off, I will leave the second part of the trip for another post, later this week.