May 25, 2023
25 - 28 May, Split: No cycling
Day 1 of 4
After my short walk around the old town last night I realised that the this really needed a dedicated morning, afternoon or even a whole day. So I decided that I would use day 1 for a tour to the very well known Krka National Park. This is located about 90 minutes away close to Sibenik where I stayed 2 nights ago. A quick look on the web and I found a tour leaving Split at 0945. This covered a coach to the national park, a guided tour, a short boat trip and a coach back. Not bad for £30. I'll do the old town tomorrow using the National Park as a rest day.
I woke early but still managed to lounge on until 0830 leaving me just over an hour to get dressed, pack a day bag, grab a breakfast from somewher unknown and be at the meeting place.
If I have learned one thing on this trip it's that I don't need to shower every morning. It takes a lot to make me unsociably smelly and that it is ok just to throw on last night's clothes and go out (we wash our clothes too often). So I did. I was sittiing, with a coffee and a couple of pastries, near the meeting place by 0910.
A start time of 0945 soon turned into boarding the mini bus (coach overspill) at 1020. I guess Croatian time turns more slowly than UK time. It wasn't a problem. It was warm, I was well fed, I had company, I had music and I was going somewhere new but not by my leg power. What's wrong with all that?
Krka water falls are stunning. We had a basic, no frills, I am not trying to sell you anything tour which was great. We were also left to wander around at our own pace which was lovely other than they had underestimated how many people were going to trun up. Apparently the park was closed last week due to flooding (remember all that rain I mentioned) so there must have been a backlog of visitors and this week was seeing it be relieved. Part of the day is a 30 minute boat trip to a small village downstream. You take the boat after you have walked the falls. We were given two times for the boat departures. Our fellow passengers duly made their way to the wee jetty only to find enormous queues. There was lots of grumbling about missing boats and worries about not being at the coach on time. Our guide suggested that we could walk to the village. It was 4.5km away on a forestry track.
Having missed the first ferry I was not about to spend an hour standing in the baking sun so I opted to walk. By the time the second ferry was picking up the next load of disgruntled passengers I was on my second beer and tucking into chicken salad and chips. Some still didn't get onto that boat and had to wait another hour. They couldn't risk leaving the queue so probably missed lunch too.
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