Climb every mountain

Trip Start May 17, 2006

118

Trip End May 2007

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Flag of Croatia Starigrad Paklenica, Croatia
Monday, July 3, 2006

We travelled from Ancona to Zadar on Friday night, sleeping on the deck of the ferry. It was pretty windy and we nearly lost our pillows! We arrived at 7am and motored to Starigrad which is the nearest town to the Paklenica national park. The campsite was very windy and putting up the tent was a real challenge, we nearly lost the whole thing into the sea! We actually managed to use all our guy ropes and had to fashion extra ones from some string and a pair of tights!

The national park is a huge limestone ridge with two deep gorges cut into it, there are loads of marked walking trails and it is very popular with rock climbers. We watched lots of people climbing the sheer cliffs.

On Sunday, the weather was cloudy and mid 20s so we took the opportunity to climb one of the peaks, Crni Vrh (1110 meters) (bizarre language)

01 waking up on deck

. It took us 8 hours in total but the view from the top was stunning with the sea to the west and the higher mountains to the east, topped in cloud which appeared to flow down them.

On Monday we walked up to a cave (manita pe�) about 600 meters up in the mountains. You had to pay to join a tour to go in. We were expecting a small cave with a few stalactites but this place was massive, 180 meters long and 32 meters high with some gigantic stalagnites. One was called the organ and it did look exactly like church organ pipes. The one called "Father Christmas" took a little more imagination!

Getting fed up with having to walk at 45 degrees into the wind and having dust blown into everything, we decided to move on.

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