Any early morning bus from Split found us in the small town of Starigrad, where the Paklenica National Park entrance is found. We secured a room in a three storey building right on the beach with the waves crashing below and headed off to explore the town. This took about 20 minutes as there is not much to it.

Our first day there was just a day of relaxing and the next day the exercise began as we headed into the Park armed with a trail map and a lot of water. The hike starts with a two hour climb up a steep-walled canyon, which is a mecca for rock climbers and there were a lot of them about. We then reached a mountain hut which consisted of a large locked building, a water station and some picnic tables. We enjoyed lunch with two Kiwis we met on the trail up, Dan and Lisa. After that we headed straight up the mountain with a goal of reaching the summit at roughly 1700 metres. Croatian trails consist of small rocks, medium rocks, large rocks, or a combination of the above. In most cases this is okay on the uphill until we ran into a scree field at approximately 1300 metres. We determined this to be too difficult and not a lot of fun to climb and so it was at this point, after a couple of photos of the spectacular view, we headed down. Rocks are even less fun on the way down, especially in very steep sections as they tend to turn into marbles under your feet. Nonetheless we made it down unharmed and got in a good 9 hours of hiking that day.

We were very much looking forward to that night’s dinner which we enjoyed on a patio by the sea. The first of what will probably be many “small world” stories on this trip occurred when we learned the couple sitting next to us, Bill and Marie, are from Edgemont Village in North Vancouver, just up the mountain from our old neighbourhood of Pemberton Heights. After a nice conversation with them, we headed to Campo Marco armed with a couple of bottles of Italian red to share with Dan and Lisa who had been camping and climbing at Paklenica for about ten days. We are still absolutely amazed that they did a six hour, 350 metre rock climb a few days earlier. Good wine and excellent conversation led us to seek out a late night ice cream café and the evening ended perfectly with a double scoop each.

Another early morning bus ride took us further north up the coast to Rijeka and then a transfer to Baska on Krk Island (or as Kevin calls it: K-R-K Island). During the bus ride we experienced our first rainfall since being here in Croatia: by the time we reached our destination, it had stopped. Baska is a small town of about 1000 people that is set at the end of a valley on a bay that is lined with the limestone hills typical of this country. We found a nice room with a large balcony with a view of the hills and ocean – our cheapest accommodations yet – only $27! The town is fairly quiet now but in the summer months it becomes inundated with Italian and German tourists: all the restaurant menus are in Croatian, Italian and German – rarely English.

The tourist office gives out a trail map of the area. Hiking trails are numerous and well marked. The rocky nature of them makes them technical and generally secluded. The first day we hiked up over one of the hills for lunch at another smaller village about 10 km away. The entire day we only saw two other hikers and about 100 sheep. The plateaus here are covered in rock walls, which are intended to keep the sheep in one general area. Many of these walls look like they are centuries old. The next day we packed a lunch and headed up another more popular trail. With hikers ahead of us, Kevin switched to adventure-racing mode so it was a scramble to the top and we beat those kneed-socked, hiking-poled, senior-citizen Germans fair and square! Another more desolate trail led us down an old river bed with steep walls and some of the biggest spiders I ever want to see with webs stretched 10 to 12 feet across the canyon, just waiting for a couple of well-fed Canadians to walk by. Their ferocity was evident by the numerous sheep skeletons in the riverbed. Okay, they probably fell down the cliff and were eaten by vultures, but in my world it was the spiders. The river bed emptied on to a somewhat secluded “naturist beach” (of which there are many in Croatia) and we spent the day getting the all-over tan and enjoying our last swim in the Adriatic. Tomorrow we are off for a couple days in Italy.

Life is rough.

B.

Photos:
Paklenica Park looking up
Paklenica Park looking down
Baska Beach
Typical Croatian rock field
View from Baska hike
Hiking Baska canyon
Our favourite Croatian wine

Kevin wanted this posting's FFP to be an old naked fat guy at a naturist camp leveling his trailer, but I would not let him take the shot. So, here's the reason that in Canada we crop the tails of sheep as this thing is disgusting (and funny)...
FFP 4