Krka National Park

This is our main reason for being here, and Camp Marina is right next door. In fact, Mr Marina and Son of Marina run mini-bus tours into the park. We take a tour with them, and it is excellent. We also go back, ourselves, several days later and explore in more detail. The blog description combines both visits.
Krka Park covers the lower reaches of the Krka river valley. The river is set in wooded hills and falls through several series of waterfalls within the Park. It is incredibly picturesque.
Let’s look at some of the scenery. The waterfalls were created by the erosion and depositing of limestone and so flow in multiple levels rather than one big drop. The next three photos are examples.

Going upstream 10 miles or so is an island monastery, again in an idyllic setting. It’s currently occupied by only 6 monks.

The Krka Serbian Orthodox Monastery is perhaps the more interesting and is a fully working teaching establishment. These are its serene cloisters.

It was badly damaged during the homeland war. As in other parts of the country, this damage was repaired so well as to be mostly undetectable. The only parts that give the game away are the wall paintings, which were renewed. Their colours are too fresh to be more than a few years old.

The Park supports a tremendous variety of wildlife. This is not surprising with such an abundant water supply for trees, plants and animals. The water is also very clear and supports a large fish population. The next photo is looking down into one of the pools, but could have been taken in an aquarium.

The park is serviced by a network of wooden walkways that thread through the watercourses and through the trees and undergrowth. We didn’t see any of the wolves or wildcats claimed to be around somewhere- but how about an iridescent dragon fly

At a practical level, the Krka River was an important former source of power. There were mills of every description, and cloth fulling. In fulling, the water was used first to wash the cloth and then hammers, powered by water wheels, pounded the cloth until the fibres matted into felt. The next photo shows the washing area. It could be the witches’ cave in Macbeth.
Interestingly, after the cloth fulling business ceased, the locals used to come to wash their own clothes here, and then dry them using the fullers water-powered hammers. Presumably they removed their garments much sooner than the fullers would have done, to prevent them being turned into felt.

Here's a photo of those hammers located in the chamber next door to the washing. Mind your fingers when putting your clothes in!

Now, what have we got here? Looks like a set of giant dumb-bells. It’s actually a turbine from the hydroelectric plant that was installed here, and is about 2 metres tall. Not knowing much about Croatia, we vaguely think that they’ve done well to catch up with our technology. Not so: the hydroelectric generating station at Krka was commissioned in August 1895, only 2 days after the Niagara Falls plant that was the world’s first. Both Krka and Niagara generators were based on a powerplant design by Nikola Tesla, a Croatian born less than 100 miles from the Krka site.

Krka was a truly captivating place.