Krka national park is a truly unique experience – everybody should try to fit into their itinerary when they visit Dalmatia in South Croatia.
The national park has been created in order to protect the river Krka, which the park is named after. The area is mostly unchanged, with exception of the one or another minimally altered eco system and covers 109 square kilometres, starting from Knin in the north all the way down to the picturesque little town Skradin.
In Skradin you will also find one of the five entrances to the park; the others being Lozovac also in the South and the main road entrance for busses and Roški Slap, Burnum and Kistanje in the North.
Overall, the Skradin entrance is a popular choice among tourists and travellers, since you enter the park by boat, which on its own is an amazing experience. It’s a 30 min ride down the river surrounded by exceptional natural features.
Once the boat docks on a rather unrevealing part of the shore you follow a short path through the forest to face the ITS GOING TO BLOW YOUR MIND LAND á la the Skradinski bug waterfall and main swimming area. This is probably the best known part especially by all of you who have looked up Krka on Instagram or other kind of social media. (Waving at all my fellow ‘mermaids’ taking nymph like sunset pictures in front of this breath taking natural occurrence.)
At this point of your trip you can choose if you are here for the water fun and swim around for a couple of hours or you would like to explore a bit further and by further I am talking 5 km worth of further.
The national park is equipped with a network of wooden paths that allow comfortable and safe walking even in flip flops (if you want to climb some rocks to get to the really good photography spots bring sport shoes or alike). In total, it takes about 4 hours if you really take your time to take beautiful photos and follow every side path, which usually leads to a view point where you can see the waterfall cascades from above.
We chose to do the walk first and cool ourselves down in the waterfalls at the end, which happened to be around sunset as well and definitely added to the whole experience, rather then hopping in with your whole boat tour batch straight after arrival.
The walk itself is so multifaceted you will not get bored at any point. The five kilometres that you cover offer a vast variety of different landscapes, from the waterfall cascades to little islands, rivers, lakes, a rather ‘jungly’ looking part and traditional water mills that function as souvenir shops now, but don’t worry they don’t degrade the natural look of the trip since they are mostly to find at the beginning of the tour.
While walking the endless paths of the national park there is also a lot of wildlife to encounter such as the most beautiful dragonflies I have ever seen, frogs sitting next to paddles quaking along, plenty of fish, especially the big ones you are swimming with in the waterfall :) and so on.
Krka has also the second highest concentration of lavender per square kilometre in Europe, which leads to a high frequency of wasps and bees. EEEEWWWW (We saw only one though…phewww)
Generally, it’s hard to describe the infinite beauty of this place in words but let’s put it this way, I’m from Austria and we have beautiful landscapes tattooed on our foreheads as babies but I have never seen anything like Krka before. Hooked? I thought so ;) Go and check it out for yourselves you won’t regret it.