Along Krka River

This evening our first campground choice turned out to be a gem stone. We almost had all the new, perfectly clean, and super close facilities for ourselves, a street lamp, useful during dinner, even wifi – and all that for merely 20€. The owner only accepted cash, which we didn’t have. But he was luckily fine with euros. Him and a Polish couple gave us a lot of useful hints on Krka National Park.

The girls enjoyed all the animals: worms, wood lice, huge grass hoppers. The highlight was a cat.

The next morning, we could even walk to the park entrance. Alan had booked online tickets for the earliest entry and we managed to catch the first park bus, taking us to the hiking trails.

People also used the power of water for grain and wool mills. It is still used for generating electricity. The first hydro-power plant was built in 1895. Therefore, the nearby city Šibenik received electricity before many other European cities, such as London or Paris.

Just like in Plitvice, we enjoyed waterfalls, watching fish („belub, belub“) in the clear turquoise water, climbing over roots and rocks.

Apparently, it last rained in May. Then the river and falls carry at least 2x as much water. We saw some lizards and even huge tadpoles, already having rear legs.

There were fig and olive trees all over the park. Unfortunately, we didn‘t find any ripe fruits. We just tried some dried figs from a seller.

Parking, bus shuttle, and the visit of all the sights in the park was included into the ticket price. Thats‘s why we were very surprised that one restroom by a rest area was not free.

We thought, we could enjoy our food at a rest area by a little creek. But then we were attacked by wasps. It was a wonder that none of us got stung. Unfortunately, Magda did get stung during a later snack break – right in her lip. Thank goodness, there were drinking faucets close-by. So the pain vanished soon and the swelling wasn‘t too bad.

We took our camper van for the rest of the trip along Krka River.

At Roški slap (many small waterfalls in a row), we swam, snorkeled and played with water toys in the lake. With her watering can, also Wilma enjoyed the water. Magda lost a shuffle in the strong water stream next to the calm lake. The only thing, we don‘t like about these Croatian beaches are the poky or slippery rocks! We have never experienced so (relatively) clean and non-stinky portable toilets as on this lake, even with multi-layer toilet paper =o)

There was a very narrow road leading to Roški slap. On our way out, a French car didn‘t want to make way and pushed us and two other cars back. Alan felt very stressed because the driver took the every meter that had just been cleared by us.

On the way to the Orthodox Krka monastery, we went through Kistanje. We were astonished to find almost all houses on the main road abandoned and in general many unfinished (missing plastering) ones.

Under the monastery, a very nice park guide showed us catacombs in a natural cave, were the Christians were hiding from the Romans 2000 years ago. He showed us pictures of his wasp stings.

All the park rangers were super helpful and spoke pretty good English, especially the young ones. They even instructed parking to avoid a chaos. Overall, the park was very well organised.

After such a long day and due to the heat, we were not very energetic on the walks to the Roman military camp of Burnum and the Manojilovac waterfall – the tallest one in the park.

Given the late day time, we decided to not go on to Dubrovnik, but spend one more night at the same campground. We had forgotten a bottle and a towel there anyway. The girls were also happy to play with the cat again. This time the site was more crowded with more than 10 RVs, but still quiet.

We talked until late to two Dutch girls (Our girls had started talking to them because they played a guitar.) who were also on there way south and a Belgian couple who were on their way back because it was too hot for them.