Worth Every Drop of Sweat-Paklenica National Park

Paklenica National ParkTrek
Started early this morning with our tramping shoes, and trusty drink bottles to trek through the canyons up to limestone caves in the Park. The information at the Park Office said approx 1.5hours each way but it was more like 2 and a bit. The way in was up hill the entire way on well formed cobble stoned track. Initially we had a good tree cover for shade but we soon climbed out off it and the temperature rose to 35-40 degree. We were sure pleased that we had started early.
This park is one off the worlds best for rock climbing and we saw numerous groups of people hanging off ropes on the sheer cliff faces 100’s of metres off the ground.
The park scenery is breathtaking with its rising cliff faces, steep gorges, slabs of massive rocks and shady picturesque paths and gentle flowing streams. This park would be more like the Grand Canyon in the US.
The trip to the cave was rather exhausting but we made it only to find the generator was not working and therefore no lights in the cave so no one could enter. This gave us a good chance for lunch and to meet and chat with some fellow tourists from France, Holland, Germany and Israel. The lights back on and we descended into the caves which were magnificent and well worth the trek. Large stalactites and stalagmites and formations in shades of red hues. Totally different to the caves back in NZ. We went from 35-40 degrees heat outside to something like 5-8 degrees inside.
Now for the trek back down. The temperature had increased because it was now around midday but we were heading down. Passed several rather tired, red faced sweaty people still on their trek up. All asking us as to how much further to go. Thank god we started early. The trek down however was by no means easy. You had to be pretty sure footed stepping from cobbled rock to rock. They were all smooth and slippery and you could go over on you ankle pretty easily.
Safely down we headed straight for the Adriatic Sea a mere one kilometer away for the much needed plunge in to cool off and regenerate before the next adventure. We were both stuffed but had only explored a small fraction of the parks 96 square kilometres