North Croatia Sea Kayaking Adventure
This video was shot during our regular North Adriatic Sea Kayak adventure in May 2015. We as well as our guests like this tour as this is one of the few areas in Croatia where one can expect amazing kayaking without too many tourists and yachts that usually are not very friendly to kayakers because of their waves.
This time it was May so crowds didn’t occupy whole Croatian coast yet, but the beauty of this tour is that even in high season we avoid mass tourism. This is because most of the places we visit are only accessible by boat, of course, there are some boats around, but as we are not on a sailing charter route where all the chartered yachts sail it is very peaceful.
We started from our base just south of the amazing medieval town of Rab. We paddled around the southern Cape to the east side, where we found remote pebble beach with amazing views to the mainland and National Park North Velebit.
It was time to set our first camp base and prepare dinner in our improvised kitchen. Our guides prepared dinner, but due to the nature of such kayaking trip the whole group soon became involved and helped with cooking and cleaning up. This is the beauty of any expedition trip, everyone is involved and is part of the family. This is especially true for sea kayaking expeditions as kayaks are limited with space and everybody needs to carry something to benefit the whole group.
The next day we woke up into a sunny morning, stretched our legs, finished breakfast, cleaned the camp and started kayaking north to the Northern part of island Rab, where we first visited cave Medova buža. To enter the cave you have to jump through the small hole and then climb out. All this is not a problem, but in May the problem is the temperature of the water, while it is not a big deal to swim in the sea, but the cave is in a shade and the water inside is very cold, but there were few of us who accepted the challenge.
After the cave, we visited a bay of Lopar, with its sandy beach, which is one of only a few in Croatia. We enjoyed sand a bit and ate ice cream in a nearby restaurant before moving on to the North side of island Rab to cross the small channel to the island of Sv. Grgur. Sv. Grgur is one of the two prison islands in Croatia. the other one is even more famous, Goli otok or “Naked island” in translation.
Prison islands were established in 1949 when Croatia was still a part of Yugoslavia. The prison islands were closed in 1988, but today it is possible to visit and explore the ruins of ex-prisons, but one can also find around 40 bunkers all over the island. On top of the island, one can still find huge water collector made of stone.
One nice surprise is also deers, that moves totally free all around the island and are not afraid of people, so they come close and we actually fed them directly from our hands just in front of our tents. After this historical lesson, the next morning we continued kayaking towards the biggest Croatian island, island Krk.
To reach island Krk we first paddled to the coast of island Prvič, where we could admire beekeepers at their work. As we reached island Krk, once a blue sky. turned into dark clouds and before we managed to reach our camping site we experienced a decent shower, but the rain was soon over so we could easily set up our camp for the night. Actually, one night turned in to two nights as bura started blowing the next morning and it was too risky for our group to continue that day. Instead, we hiked to the nearby town, Krk, where we enjoyed “civilization” after a few days and also went for dinner in a restaurant.
Like always pizza and a beer tasted even better after such a trip. We had a great time in Krk and the forecast was also promising for the next day. The next morning bura was down and we could continue our adventure, next stop, island Plavnik. Plavnik is a small island between the biggest Croatian islands Krk and Cres – We set our camp on the SW side of this uninhabited island that is today used for hunting. There was a small village once on the island and we went to search for the remains that one can find on top of the island.
Besides the ruins (some still in solid shape) top of the island offered us much more than that. The view from the top is amazing as it is possible to see many surrounding islands and basically you can see the whole route we did, all the way back from island Rab. And seeing the route like this is quite impressive, I must say. In the morning I looked out of my tent and I noticed some company, sheeps. Together with warm morning sun and oil-like sea, it was a nice breakfast company. One last kayaking day remained, so we cleaned the camp, packed our sea kayaks and headed towards island Cres.
East side of the island Cres offers amazing beaches and some impressive cliffs. And the cliffs were hiding something even more impressive than the cliffs itself, the Griffon Vultures. Island Cres is one of the rear nesting colonies for this species. It was impressive to paddle calm seas, below cliffs while this impressive animal was flying above us with its wingspan of almost 3 meters.
After a few amazing days of sea kayaking around and along North Adriatic islands we reached our final destination, beautiful beach just below the town Beli in the north of island Cres. We set our camp and went for a short walk in old oak and chestnut forest in the area called Tramuntana. There we found very interesting things like Roman aqueduct, interesting labyrinths, many abandoned shepherd houses as well as some nice walking and biking trails. Town of Beli is also home of Griffon Vulture rescue center that we were very happy to visit and learn more about this beautiful animal.
If you are interested in sea kayaking holidays in Croatia, please check all of our Sea kayaking tours in Croatia.