Vilcabama - Hike to the waterfalls

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On this trip I went again with Chris and Luc. From the hostal we went down in the direction of the village, but then went East to the small village of San José. From there we followed a partially hidden water canal, through yet again very beautiful landscape. At some places we had to search for the trail, and it was occassionally a bit dangerous, with a very narrow path dropping down at one side very steep some 30 or 40 m. However, we managed, and after a while reached the official trail to the Cascadas. We followed the river Yambala for a while, and always stayed at the left side of it, as we had been advised. After a while the path stared to climb up high. Here we ran into two locals whom we greeted friendly. However, they started questioning us, why we were walking here, who had told us to come here, and they said it was private propoperty. We said we came by ourselves, and that we did not believe that was privsate property. After sume arguing and after we had reassured them that we are always closing all cow gates, they finally let us go.

We got down to the river again, and were searching for the place where we had to cross. However, we just could not find the place and were scrambling though a lot of thick d i cki cht. I was finally bleeding from arms and legs due to all the thorns on the plants. Finally Luc seem to have found th eplace which was to be just after the congruence of two rivers. We crossed the river m ue h sam . Just to find that we had not actually reached the other side, but were on a little island! So we had to go cross back.... We finally agreed to give up and to go back the same way we had come, without ever having seen the waterfalls. However, just when we reached a place at the river where we had searched before for the crossing, we saw two people standing at the other side! And they told us that there was the crossing. One could neither see a path at the other side (in fact, it was very steep there, all covered with dick icht) nor another river. So we crossed (as our shoes were already wet, we just walked through the water without paying much attention). On the other side it was indeed very steep climbing up through soil and pant and under plants and trees and one could see very little traces of anybody having walked up there before. Anyway, it was the correct place and we finally found our waterfalls! I was the only one went down to the falls, and there were three local men with long black hair only in their underwear and artesania necklaces, doing some strange ceremony with music. It looked somwehat unreal, like from a movie.

We went back high above the river on the side of the waterfalls, and what can I say it was again gorgeous. After a total of eight hours we reached Vilcabamba.

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