Our “Weir”d and Wonderful Day on the Vltava River

Our first day in Český Krumlov was spent on the river. We rented a three person raft and rode down the river to avoid the tourist-packed hours of the day. The rafting company told us to go on the more rural route because it was less crowded and had amazing scenery. One amazing part of the boat trip was all of the birds: a behemoth flock of white-winged terns, a family of ducks that followed us down the river for at least a mile before giving up, two common kestrels, and a hugely beautiful great grey heron with spectacular plumage. We also saw tons of dragonflies zooming around mini lily pads, like an airport of metallic blue four-winged hover planes on time lapse. Another interesting sight was a green dragonfly stuck to the tail of a blue dragonfly.

Another amazing part of the trip were the weirs, which are boat waterslides enabling you to cross the dams in the river without capsizing. The dams are there to slow the flow of the water in the Vltava River to stop the river from flooding. These weirs are the best part of the rafting trip, and the bigger the better. Going down a weir is basically like going down a wet slide in a boat.

The only tough parts of the trip were that we accidentally got the raft stuck on the rocks three times, but we just pushed off and kept going. By the end, my butt was starting to hurt so I kept changing positions, but in the end it was very worthwhile. My advice is to start your rafting trip at 10:00 in the morning and paddle 9.3 miles to Zlatá Koruna, just like we did. This route will almost certainly give you enough time to avoid the tourist-packed mid-day hours.