Dobra River Gorge

Below the town of Vrbovsko, the Dobra river disappears into a spectacular 200-metre-deep limestone gorge — one of Croatia's most dramatic and least-visited canyon landscapes. The Dobra is famous for a bizarre karst phenomenon: at the village of Ogulin the river simply disappears into a huge sinkhole (the ponor of Đula's Abyss) and re-emerges 15 km further west, having flowed entirely underground. Downstream of that re-emergence, the river carves this magnificent gorge through hard limestone: sheer cliffs draped in ivy and moss, an emerald pool at every bend, and — most spectacularly — the 30-metre Skradski Slap waterfall in the gorge's most inaccessible middle section. A newly-installed and beautifully engineered 4-km hiking trail from Vrbovsko now allows visitors to walk the upper rim of the gorge, with several dramatic overlooks and one steep metal-staircase descent to the river level. Wild swimming in the crystal-clear pools is superb on hot summer days, though the water rarely exceeds 15 °C. The gorge is a haven for peregrine falcons, kingfishers and the extremely rare black stork — bring binoculars.