Catarata de San Luis

14 March 2009

On our last day in Monteverde, we visited a “lesser” sight — the waterfall of San Luis. To get there, we took a taxi about 5 miles out of Monteverde, descending well over 1000 ft into a valley below. The top photo depicts the valley and at the top middle of the frame, one can just make out the waterfall as a white vertical band. The trail is about a mile long, but it is quite rugged and also beautiful so it took about an hour to walk each way. The trail passed through lush tropical forest, not as dripping wet dense as the cloud forest but spectacular in its own way. The waterfall was tremendous — of US National Park caliber. It was a two-tiered falls, each section extending perhaps 30 m. The trail left us at the bottom of the lower section where the water spilled into a pool. The upper cascade could just be seen through a gap in the rock wall and it was generating considerable spray and mist. We ate our lunch beside the pool and were the only visitors at that time. We hiked all the way back to Monteverde. The first half was along a lovely, traffic-free dirt road across the valley floor. (Interesting side note: We passed a branch of the University of Georgia along the way.) The second half of the hike was a steep climb up lightly trafficked variably dirt and paved road back up to Monteverde. The first photo was taken from the roadside on the return climb.

The weather was delightful, as it has been for the past few days. So it was an excellent way to wrap up our stay here.