River Krupa Canyon is one of the most spectacular things I have seen and experienced lately. Despite me being a person who travels very often and who has seen many natural beauties, I was left speeches at canyon Krupa River. You could say that I looked like a small child presented with a toy that I wanted to get for some time now.
River Krupa Canyon is located on the outskirts of Zadar. The distance to an old town of Obrovac is exactly 20 kilometres.
The Krupa River is quite short and lengthwise it is only 7 km long. It boasts with a wonderful canyon and 19 magnificent waterfalls.
The Krupa river flows into the Zrmanja River, which many still know by the name Krupa. Zrmanja River also prides itself with a fascinating canyon. Did you know that the film Vinetou was filmed near the river Zrmanja?
If you’re interested in visiting Zrmanja River, I highly suggest you try rafting or kayaking down the river. It’s a blast!
It would seem that River Krupa is not visited by many people. So far, I have been there on six different occasions and on only one of those occasions I saw a young family there. If you enjoy the quietness I highly recommend you to visit this place.
The starting point for a one hour hike into the Krupa canyon is on the coordinates 44.193730, 15.844029. Located here, is a really old house, where an old Serbian family lives. How come they are Serbians you might ask? Prior to the war, mostly Serbians lived in this area. An old owner of the house and his wife are very kind and generous people. They invite you to join them for a coffee and don’t expect anything in return. Nearby the house they keep over 50 goats. Now, that’s a vision to be seen!
On the coordinates mentioned above, you can easily leave your vehicle and start your one hour hike down to the canyon. On that part of the canyon, there is over a 100 years old stone bridge. The legend says that the bridge was built by a young boy who had fallen in love with a girl. She lived in a village on the other side of the river Krupa. He wanted to marry her, so he built the bridge to propose to her.
As you are slowly lowering into the canyon, you can admire this magnificent beauty of the nature. Whilst hiking to the canyon you can easily spot many interesting viewing points where you will surely take many amazing photos.
Right after the bridge, the river created a large pool. You can easily swim to the four smaller waterfalls within the pool.
Should you feel hungry while hiking, just help yourself with some sweet figs that grow on the trees nearby. Absolutely no one will mind if you do!
Once you are returning from the canyon, you can choose another path, which is slightly more demanding on one part. Do don’t worry though, it’s only a small part of the way, that is a bit demanding. There is one section, where climbing is needed. Its length is about 20 meters but you help yourself with steel rope and spikes. If you are used to climbing on spikes, you can easily go ahead and continue that way but if you’re not, then I advise you to return and take the path where you came from.
As I mentioned before, I have visited Krupa river canyon about six times so far. My last visit here was back in June, when a friend of mine – Aleks came with me. He is a professional cameraman and a photographer.
Both Aleks and I are the kind of people who enjoy exploring the nature, therefore we took the whole day for ourselves to explore the canyon and to film there.
Obviously we went swimming to the canyon first, to properly test the water. Then we climbed the waterfalls and jumped into the cool pools within the canyon. In short – we truly had a blast. Obviously we took many photos and filmed the waterfalls.
Once we finished with the exploration around the stoned bridge, we decided to walk down the left riverbank. At first it seemed like an easy enough walk but soon the pathway became more and more impassable. Looking to the other riverbank, it seemed better and therefore we decided to cross the river. Since we carried cameras and other filming equipment, we had to find a shallow part of the river to make crossing easier.
Soon we found a waterfall and it seemed we finally managed to find a good spot to cross the river. We had past the thicket but faced a huge obstacle. There was no way to cross the thicket in full. I managed to find a mud wall that was a few meters high! Imagine that! I didn’t think twice but went straight through it! I sank into the mud all the way to my waist. Such an uncomfortable feeling when you do not know what’s in there!
After successfully crossing the mud wall, I called Aleks and told him which way to go. I still remember the expression on his face when he saw that mud and had to cross it.
Just a bit further away there was a lovely pathway and we were able to walk along the river on the riverbank. Our goal was to reach the part where Krupa flows into Zrmanja.
At some point the canyon has expanded itself and there were cows grazing on the meadows in front of us. Quite soon the canyon has gotten narrower again and I was wondering how can farmers even bring cows here?
The evening was getting upon us and we were no way near our goal of Zrmanja and Krupa confluence. We simply decided it was time to head back towards the car. Later in my hotel room, I was studying the Google maps and realized we had turned around just before we could have stumbled upon a beautiful waterfall. This is reason enough for me to come back to this amazing place as soon as possible.
Since we were retreating back towards the car on the right riverbank, we had no idea if we will still see anything worth mentioning but how wrong we were! There, before us, was a breath-taking waterfall. I jumped in and swam! Wow, what an amazing feeling that was! I took my GoPro and filmed the waterfall from the inside out as well. You can see my video below.
We proceeded our way back towards the car with some minor difficulties as we stumbled upon a wall that we needed to climb to reach our car before the nightfall.
Finally, reaching the car, we saw we have some company! There were cute goats all around the car. The owner of the nearby house approached us and invited us for a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, we had to decline, as it was way past 10.30 pm and we needed to get back to the hotel.
The whole experience of the River Krupa canyon was truly mind blowing and absolutely fantastic. In my head, I was already making plans how I’m going to visit this place soon again and continue with my exploration of the canyon. September should be perfect for that as my favourite fruit – figs start to ripen during that month as well. Nothing better than eating a fresh fig you just pick from the tree. I am looking forward to visiting Krupa canyon again.
