Our second day trip in Zadar was a trip to Krka Waterfalls.

Our trip to Krka Waterfalls was with Elegance Tours again. We met at their office at 7:45 and then walked to a mini van just outside the Old Town walls. This time there were only six people in the group. It takes nearly an hour from Zadar to reach Krka – it’s about halfway between Zadar and Split.

To get to Krka our driver dropped us at a little village and from there we caught a large wooden boat to the falls. It was quite different to Plitvice in several ways. You can swim at Krka, although only in one lake and not up to the waterfalls – you can see the barrier in the photo above. There are also lots of shops and restaurants and food stalls. Quite an astonishing number selling nuts and olive oil. It is similar to Plitvice in that there is a boardwalk that you can follow to see the upper pools but it is much shorter and there is only one track to follow.

We decided to walk around the loop as soon as we got there and then stopped halfway for a drink. On our walk we saw a snake in the water and a few frogs as well as masses of fish. We also saw an ambulance and Luke saw a large pool of blood and broken glass by one of the bars. Boris later told us he’d seen a woman with a broken leg but we don’t know if it was the same accident.

By the time we made our way around the falls and back the crowds at the swimming area had quadrupled and there was barely room to put a towel down. We decided to catch the boat back to the little village and ended up talking to Boris the whole way. Turned out he studied history at university and told us a lot about Croatia and the differences between Zadar and Split. He had been born in Split but moved to Zadar when he married. We ended up sitting in the front with him all the way back to Zadar and Luke fell asleep while Boris and I talked about everything from the party politics of Croatia to why young people are leaving in droves.

The little town that the boat leaves from.

As a day out I don’t know that I’d recommend going to Krka during the peak season. It depends on how you feel about enormous crowds, really, and if you do go I’d recommend wearing reef shoes as we were told the rocks could be sharp and slippery. They advertise a limited number of tickets but it’s a huge number (over 6000) and Boris said he didn’t think they really enforced it anyway. Plitvice was more beautiful but having the opportunity to talk to Boris was really the highlight. I learned more about Croatia in a couple of hours than I had in the rest of the trip. Deb left a comment on the blog the other day regarding Croatia’s recent history of conflict and I can’t claim to know much about it but I mentioned to Boris that we hadn’t seen any kind of memorials or information or museums about the war – so common in countries like Vietnam and Rwanda where the commemoration of conflict seems to be viewed as a matter of national importance. He said he had only just been noting this with his friends the day before and couldn’t work out why it was so different here. Any ideas, readers?

Apologies for the lack of photos in this post, I don’t know why I hardly took any! Too hot and crowded, I think.