Safe Return Doubtful

I was last in Croatia in the summer of 2018, but it was memorable only for being poisoned by a dodgy lasagne at a restaurant I used the night after coming over the border from Bosnia. I was biking the Balkans, from Thessaloniki to Nuremberg over 32 days. That trip has been an inspiration for this one. I had deadlines. I was working still and had a job to get back to, and so covered as much distance as possible each day. I saw places that I wanted to spend more time in, to hike and explore, but on that course was not able to. I’ll refer to the journey a few times no doubt in the next weeks.

The food-poisoning took me about 4 days to get over. Croatia was really a blur, as I rode when I probably shouldn’t have done, cramped up, and just looked forward to sleeping. It wasn’t until I was in Ljubljana until I recovered.

So this time, I’m determined to appreciate the country more, and it has started well.

Here in the north of the Risnjak National Park it must be the perfect time to visit. The forecast is a cloudless sky all week, with highs about 24C and lows at night of about 12C. I feel a bit guilty tonight while Storm Agnes blasts Cumbria.

Today I hiked to the Kupa river source, which doesn’t sound particularly special, but it certainly is. It is is one of many unsolved karst riddles, one of the most powerful, most extended and deepest of European wellsprings, 321 metres above sea level, with the water emerging as a turquoise green and blue lake, like nothing I have seen before. It’s best shown on the second and third photos below. A circuit hike isn’t possible at the moment due to a bridge destroyed in a May storm.

There’s an entrance free for this National Park, at an information booth that is staffed until the end of October. It is 7 euros for two days. I got chatting to the guy in the booth, the same age, give a few days, to me. There’s a small museum there also. Razloge thrived before the split for former Yugoslavia, with a school, and population of 800. In 1991 Croatia declared independence, but not the whole of the country as it is now, Razloge was initially not part of the new republic, and it took two years for it to be. In that time most of its population left, many to other parts of the country, but quite a few also to Norway, for some reason that the guy staffing the booth didn’t know.

It was a four hour trip, if you factor in a half hour swim for Roja. Downward for 300 metres or so initially to the valley, and all in, about 14 kilometres. A very entertaining day, with an afternoon spent on a few jobs around the van, and the Uruguay Namibia game.

Two nights away from a full moon, and the peace of the night here disturbed only by the bellows of the rutting stags.. Wolf, bear and lynx lurk nearby also, but thankfully, more quietly..