Sights in Paklenica

In eight hours the practised and fit walker can make it from the car park at the great gorge up to the 1,758 m high Vaganski vrh summit, taking a short breather and a snack in between at the Lugarnica hut at 440 m altitude and then continuing along the path over a picturesque stream and past the Crljeni kuk and Babin kuk summits. Yet this tight sporting programme leaves the beauty of nature and the enjoyment of the unique backdrop out of account. Once at the top one is certainly proud and exhausted - but has missed the most beautiful part. To that extent it is more advisable to explore the park in several small stages. The 150 km of walking routes are marked on the maps of the park administration. Anyone who does not want to walk with all the other tourists should not leave their car at the park entrance, but should follow the road a little further into the great gorge or, in good weather, go over into the small gorge and look for their own way there. Here, however, the walking paths are largely left to nature, which makes good equipment advisable. In the hot summer season one has, from the dried-out river bed, a beautiful view of the slopes and the many white-headed griffon vultures that seek out the seclusion here. As soon as the precipitation sets in, however, a hike here is a good idea only with a good travelling companion or after reconnoitring the area in its dry state.

The most beautiful of all the mountain caves is Manita peć, shot through with stalagmites, with its impressive underground halls and passages. The largest hall discovered so far measures 65 x 40 metres and is 32 metres high. The natural vault has already been explored and opened up to a depth of 175 metres, so that it can be visited with a trained guide daily in July and August, and several times a week in the months before and after. Registrations for the tours - individual visits are not possible for safety reasons - are taken by the park administration in the Hotel Alan.

In the trackless terrain of the national park, donkeys are often the only means of transport. What appears to visitors as rural idyll and homage to pre-industrial times is often a nuisance to the population itself. The young are drawn from the stables to the universities, and so the cities grow, while places like Jurline, Veliko Rujno and Ramići, with their little stone walls and pastures, lie abandoned in the nature park for the greater part of the year. Only on public holidays and to escape the hectic pace of the city do the older inhabitants in particular gladly return here. Only a few inhabitants still live all year round in places like Marasovići, where they mainly wait for hungry, thirsty and tired day-trippers, however, and no longer pursue the extremely exhausting land work on the stony, rocky ground.

Particularly fine views are to be enjoyed on a hike to Vidakov kuk, where towers of rock needles rise into the air and their tips already seem almost to be crumbling away. Climbers try their hand at the narrow stone formations; walkers can either look for a path between them and feel as if they were in a petrified forest, or choose the eastern trail from Starigrad and enjoy the view of the karst runnels on the way out. An alternative to this is offered by panorama trail 5, which leads over the Babunjača heights in gentle rises and dips to a hamlet in the Paklenica valley and offers a unique view of all the beauty that has made this park a nature reserve!