Krka National Park has fantastic karst formations and travertine waterfalls. Karst is a special type of landscape that is formed by the dissolution of soluble rocks, including limestone and dolomite. Karst regions contain aquifers that are capable of providing large supplies of water – and there were definitely large supplies of water in Krka National Park!
We walked through town and down a shaded road next to the Krka River to the park’s entrance where we explored the park's extensive waterways.
The area has a complex history dating back to late 10th century and the first Croatian kings. We visited the place where the second hydro plant in the world was built, Jaruga Hydroelectric Power Plant, just a few years after the one on Niagara Falls.
Both Krka and Niagara generators were based on a power plant design by Nikola Tesla, a Croatian born less than 100 miles from the Krka site.
The Krka River was an important former commercial source of power. From the 12th century until the the 1970s corn, barley, and wheat were all ground commercially in the small village here. Because it took up to three days to complete the process, people stayed in the area and socialized.
In addition to the grinding house, there were cloth scutching and fulling mills. Almost every family produced cloth from sheep's wool. The freshly woven cloth was processed in the scutching and fulling mills so it would soften and become more compact for the production of blankets, bedding, bags, and before the 1940s, clothes. The 6-7 foot deep pools of water were used first to wash the cloth and then hammers, powered by water wheels, pounded the cloth until the fibers matted into felt up until the 1960s.
After the commercial 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 pictured below.
Presumably they removed their garments much sooner than the fullers would have done, to prevent them being turned into felt.
The processes were abandoned in the 1970s, but even a decade after the inhabitants without water supply networks still washed their clothes on Krka falls and afterwards rinsed them in the fulling mills!After our six mile hike through Krka Park, we took the boat back to town where we loaded up in the REI vans. A short drive and we took another small boat to the Visovac Monastery on Visovac Island.
Visovac is a little island situated in the area of the lower flow of the Krka River between two waterfalls in Krka National Park. It got today's shape thanks to the work of the priests that brought dirt to build up the land in the shallow water and separated it from the water with a wall. In that way the little island with its vegetation became "a little paradise on Earth".
The island is owned by the Catholic Church and was settled by Augustinian monks who built a small monastery and church in the 14th century. Later on, the island was inhabited by Bosnian Franciscans taking refuge from the Ottomans. Visovac is a unique place, abundant in natural and spiritual beauty. The island symbolizes a detachment from daily routine. It is a place of novitiate – preparation of theologians for monastic service and ministry.
The monastery library includes one of the three original copies of Aesop’s Fables which was printed in 1487. There was also a collection of the Turkish documents “sultan’s edicts” and a sabre belonging to Vuk Mandusic, one of area’s best-loved heroes of Serbian epic poetry.
Thousands of people travel to this sanctuary every year from the 2nd of August (Our Lady of Visovac) until the 15th of August (Assumption). We were told that when you come to the island to pray during that time, all of your sins are forgiven. Since we were in June maybe SOME of our sins will be forgiven!
Our day concluded in Trojir, Croatia which I will tell you about in another post.
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