kopacki rit nature park

Wonderful! What else to say? The entrance fee isn't high, we had great weather conditions, it's just too bad we couldn't see many animals due to floods that were a few weeks ago...Advice:1) when visiting in summer, you better go there in the morning because there are less mosquitos.2) take some of the boat tours, it's amazing!

for a nature lover this was great experience; i was with my friends and we had so much fun studying about all those birds, frogs, turtles, stunning Slavonian nature, beautiful little boat that was giving us a ride through swamp and I actually felt like Bear Grylls :Pregards

Beautiful wildlife preserve..Visiting swamp and lakes vith the boat is magical..you get to see all kinds of birds up close.. Short drive from the city of Osijek make this park a perfect day trip in nature.

If you ever find yourself in these parts of the world, Nature Park “Kopacki rit” is definitely a place to spend a day in. It is not, however, a highly developed tourist place where restaurants, souvenir shops and children entertainment areas jump at you every way you turn. Also, it is not a circus or petting zoo where animals come out and pose for the camera. It is a nature park and its main purpose is preservation of the swamp area for wild birds and animals. Amazingly enough, the rangers are doing a good job here and the park has so far remained an untouched piece of pure nature.You have two places where you can buy tickets to the park, both reachable by car and with large parking lots. One is in the woods near Tikves Castle and the other is the reception area near the pier and the boats. As the other reviewer said, the original reception burned down and temporarily a container serves as replacement. Even though there are no toilets in the container, there are plenty of movable toilets in the parking lot next to the pier. My suggestion is to buy the tickets at the reception and proceed to the pier for a boat ride. It is difficult to use only words and properly describe the beauty and serenity of the place, so I have attached several photos taken during our boat ride. Our visit was in March and the trees were still without leaves, but I really loved it and am looking forward to coming back some other time in the year. After the boat ride you can go and visit the Tikves woods with the castle. The castle used to be a hunting lodge for various people (Tito being one), but during the last war it was broken into and interior destroyed. There are plans to make it into a hotel in the future. It is connected to rather newish building which was built during the president Tito’s time when foreign presidents would visit to go hunting (supposedly there was a rule which prevented two presidents to sleep under the same roof, so they had to build an additional building connected to the castle itself). Even though it is forbidden to go freely walking around the swamp area of the nature park, there is at least one nature trail you can follow from Tikves castle and the staff highly recommends taking it since you can enjoy unspoiled nature and maybe even encounter wild animals in their natural habitat.

Relatives wanted to take us out for the day, so they took us here - 23,000 square hectares of swamp.... whoops they call it a National Park. After a long drive, I needed to go to the toilet. Unfortunately, the administration building had burnt down and with it went the toilets. Nice cafe nearby that has a toilet. The area is all wetland swamps with white oak trees. We took the boat tour (1.2 km from the entrance) for one hour; we saw 4 water snakes, 1 eagle and lots of cormarants. Yes, you are right - cormarants are not native birds to Croatia but yet the park boasts about them! They destroy the trees on which they nest and they eat 'mega' amounts of fish can't be good for the ecology. Yet the guide insisted the ecology was well researched in the park and that it is well balanced stating that "the 21 species of mosquitos, 9 species of frogs, 12 species of fish and 3000 pair of cormarants are all part of the circle of life." From the boat tour, you drive 12 km to get the castle. A villa - yes, but a "castle" - not quite. You watch a 15 min. crappy video (nice time to close your eyes and rest for a while). Then the tour guide takes you on a walk 'around' the villa and guest house. The poor villa really needs major restoration work but instead the authorities decided to build a ridiculous modern 'extention' attached to the delapadated villa. Its sad....The tour guides and grounds staff are doing their best and are trying to make this swamp as touristically attractive as possible, but they still have a long way to go. Perhaps start by replacing 'senior management'? The cafe at the entrance was my highlight, the kids said seeing the snakes was cool other than that pretty average.