More Waterfalls Please!
Trip date: March 3, 2017
After leaving Plitvice NP, we headed to Zadar where we would be spending the next couple nights. We were planning to visit Krka NP after our time in Zadar, since it's about halfway between Zadar and Split. However, when we looked at the weather forecast, it looked like it was going to be raining for a couple days so we decided to do Krka as a day trip from Zadar before the rainy weather started.
Krka National Park is probably the second-best known park in Croatia, but I don't think it's anywhere near as famous as Plitvice. Before visiting Krka, I had seen a couple pictures of it and sort of imagined it as just a smaller Plitvice. Having visited Plitvice and Krka back to back, I can safely say that while the two parks are similar (both feature waterfalls and blue-green water), they are also very unique unto themselves.
The park area of Krka is smaller than Plitvice, but its waterfalls are more spread out. Krka NP is long and narrow, running along the Krka river with a couple different waterfalls. Unlike Plitvice, there aren't really hiking paths between the different waterfalls. The easiest way to see all the different waterfalls is either driving around or taking a boat up the river (which runs on a schedule only from April - October).
The biggest waterfall and main attraction to Krka is the Skradinski Buk. Similar to Plitvice, there is a (mainly boardwalk) path that goes around the waterfall that's a 2km loop. Normally, there's a parking lot right by the start of the Skradinski Buk trail. However, when we went, they were doing construction or something so we had to park by the road to Skradin and walk about 4km into the park itself before reaching trail loop. From reading some reviews, it sounds like this is a pretty common thing (having to walk instead of drive into the park) during the offseason. But hey, we paid only 30HRK for admission, as opposed to 180HRK in July/August! It was also a beautiful day and perfect weather for a stroll through the park so no complaints.
After walking the 4km in (along which we'd see the occasional car driving by - what's up with that?), we'd reach the official entrance of the park where you can hear the waterfall. Just a couple minutes further and Skradinski Buk is in front of you. This waterfall was huge! It wasn't tall like Veliki Slap but it's wide, with lots of terraces. The volume of the water while we were there was also absurdly high so we were seeing Skradinski Buk in all its glory.
Continuing onwards on the trail led to some viewpoints above Skradinski Buk as well as a nice landscaped park area. We ended up having our picnic lunch here, just listening to the sounds of the waterfall.
I think this part of the park really highlights the differences between Krka and Plitvice to me. Krka was very well maintained, and the area around Skradinski Buk felt almost like a landscaped city park that happened to have a giant waterfall in it. In contrast, Plitvice felt a lot wilder and more natural, with the dirt paths winding through the forest and not much manmade interventions at all besides the boardwalk paths along the lakes. Exploring Plitvice was a lot more hiking, with elevation changes from climbing up and down the hills. Following the 2km loop of Krka is a stroll in the park; it's pretty much all flat and on the boardwalk - you could easily do it in flip flops in the summer!
We took our time strolling through the park, taking lots of pictures along the way. There weren't too many offshoots from the trail here; we only came across one that led to a lookout of the waterfall. So not too much exploring to be done in Krka; you don't need to spend more than a couple hours here. Oh yeah, the other big difference between the two parks is that you can swim at Krka while that's forbidden in Plitvice; it was too cold while we were there though so I'm not sure exactly where around Skradinski Buk is the swimming area.
The end of our loop led us to a series of small waterfalls tucked away to the side of Skradinski Buk. You can do the loop in either direction, but if you don't start with Skradinski Buk, then you'll pass by these smaller ones first and do a small uphill climb; whereas going in the other direction (as we did), it was all flat with a slight downhill at the end.
We took one last look at Skradinski Buk and then said our goodbyes.
As I mentioned earlier, Krka actually has several waterfalls, just not all directly connected via hiking paths. After leaving Skradinski Buk, we got in Fi and drove a bit further north to Roški Slap and the "necklaces."
When we got to Roški Slap, it was a bit of a disappointment. There's an area with some shops (which were all closed) and a view of the waterfall, but it was super far away compared to Skradinski Buk or any of the waterfalls at Plitvice. We then walked around to see the "necklaces," called that because of the series of small terraces that cause the water waves to look like pearl necklaces. This was also a bit of a letdown because you walk around and over it, but it's hard to get the depth effect to really see the necklaces. We got some cool lighting as the sun went down though.
There are another 2 waterfalls further north of Roški Slap, but it was nearly sundown so we didn't end up going to those. Btw, I think all the different sites of Krka are all included in the admission price. Just like Plitvice though, there were several parts of Krka that are closed for the winter season, namely Visovac Island (which has a Franciscan monastery on it), the Krka monastery and Oziđana Pećina cave. So if you visit in the offseason, plan on just seeing Skradinski Buk.
So you're probably wondering which park is better? Well, it's hard to say as they're similar but also so different! It's also a bit of an unfair comparison since we had sunny blue skies when visiting Krka and cloudy skies at Plitvice. Krka is a perfect way to spend a nice sunny day outdoors, while Plitvice is worth visiting multiple times. How's that for a non-answer? ;)
