National Park Paklenica
The most beautiful part of Velebit mountain surely is Paklenica national park, located around coastal city of Starigrad. The park got its name after the word "pakline". Pakline is a black pine resin used by locals in traditional medicine for healing wounds and later on in shipbuilding, for coating ships. Just like origin of the word points out, Paklenica is a place of rejuvenation and peaceful nature. It is spread around impressive canyons of Velika and Mala Paklenica, canyons of once river and now a stream that grows in the spring making the area spectacular and breath taking. Velika Paklenica is a 14km long canyon carved in the cliffs that fearsomely rise up to 700m in height. Canyon's width ranges from 50m in Bunkeri area up, with most of it being 500-800m wide. Mala Paklenica is a bit smaller, 12km long and usually 400-500m wide, with the narrowest gap between the cliffs only 10m wide. Its cliffs are still impressively tall, up to 650m.
  |
The park stretches high up, over the Velebit mountain with Vaganski vrh being the summit at 1757m. Wild and hardly accesable, it is also extremely rich under the ground, having over 70 speleological objects in the area, 39 pits and 37 caves, long up to 300m and deep alomst twice as much! There are many cold water springs in the park, too, providing high quaility drinking water.
Paklenica is an area of an incredibly diverse flora, having over thousand species growing and 79 of them being endemic. Same goes for animal life, countless butterfly species, birds, mammals and many other inhabit the park, mostly rare and proteced species.
Paklenica is a place of adventure and sport, too. In a single day you can test out your free-climbing or mountain-biking skills, take an off-road journey in 4x4, swimm, water ski, wind surf, jet ski, scuba dive and much more!
  |