Croatia- Vir and Krka National Park

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I arrived in Zadar around 9:30am, and Hayden was waiting for my arrival. He's a traveler from New Zealand that I've been communicating with- we decided we'd team up to explore for a few days: I'm sharing my home exchange apartment in Vir and he's renting out a car for us. We plugged in the directions to the apartment, and off we went. We stopped at a grocery store along the way to pick up a few basics, and then continued on our way to the apartment.

Vir is an island connected by a bridge to the mainland, with a cute beach town vibe. Our apartment is just 100 metres or so to the water. It has a lovely covered porch, and little yard with fig trees. We dropped off our things, unpacked groceries, and then went to check out the beach.

It's a rocky/pebbly shoreline, but very calm, with clear water. Too cold for my taste, I just went up to my knees, but Hayden went in for a swim. After a couple hours on the beach, we decided to take a drive around the island to get oriented. The road goes very close to the water's edge, obviously there's not much tidal change. The area feels very new: grid layout of streets, and all the houses and apartments seem pretty recent. It's clean and pretty. We stopped to check out the view on the far side of the island. People had made little piles with rocks, so we added one of our own. Then we drove back home and had a snack and relaxed for awhile.

In the evening, we went out for a walk. First around the neighbourhood, and then we ventured further to the centre of things, and stopped for pizza. By that time, Hayden's feet were bothering him (another victim of blisters!), so we took a taxi back and headed to bed early.

The next day's forecast had looked bad, but when we checked again in the morning, it looked like it would clear by noon, so we decided to head to Krka national park. We hopped in the car and put our destination into Google maps- a little over a 2 hour drive.

There was pretty scenery on the way. Then we spotted some signs for the main waterfall for the park, and found a parking lot. It was a little confusing where to go next- there was a small town, so we eventually found the tourism office, which was 'closed for education', but there was a sign pointing the way to a reception for the national park. We paid our admission there, and found out we'd be taking a boat over to the main waterfall.

Our timing was perfect, as the boat just goes once per hour, and there was one departing shortly after we got down to the dock.

The sun had already come out, and the weather was perfect. I changed into shorts in the bathroom of the boat. The ride was beautiful, with lush greenery on steep hills on both sides of the river. Lots of families with young kids on the boat, as well as a few people with dogs, which I thought was kind of funny. We arrived and followed the crowd to the waterfalls. Very beautiful. We took some pics and walked on the little trail around the area, which included some nice viewpoints, some remnants of a water mill, and several vendors selling food, figs, almonds, and olives.

We had about a 20 min wait for the next boat back. The other sites of the national park that were included in the entry (which was pretty pricey, 40 euro) needed to be driven to. We decided to drive to the highest waterfall, which was 30 min away.

We followed Google maps, and seemed to be heading straight into a storm cloud. Sure enough, 15 minutes before we got there, the rain began. Once we arrived, we pulled into the parking lot to see if we could wait it out. After waiting awhile in the car, we checked the hourly forecast, and it looked like it would be raining for a couple hours, so we waited til the rain was lighter, put on our rain jackets, and braved the rain to go check out the waterfalls.

This waterfalls was even better (I wish we had gone to it first when the weather was good), but the entry is way up high overlooking the waterfalls, so the closest we came was an overlook. There seemed to be a little foot trail to go down lower, but looked like it would be a far walk, and the rain was picking up, so we contented ourselves with just the overlook. Then we went back to the car, ditched the wet coats in the back seat, and headed out to make our way down to the coast line. We thought we'd check out a little coastal town for a late lunch, and then make our way back to Vir following the sea rather than the road that we came on.

What happened next completely changed our plans for our drive home, and for the next few days....

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