A few of us from the Isla de la Plata trip decided to go on a "short" adventure trip to Cascada de Alex (Alex´s Waterfall) so we met up this morning at 8am at a bike rental shop in Montanita. It was estimated the round trip would be 3 hours, but it turned out to be a bit more adventurous then we´d imagined!!
Mike (Austria) Crystal (California) Me and Derek (USA) (Andrew, USA, is taking the pic)
We set off with five bikes and promises to me of a casual ride...but I still found myself pushing harder than anything I´d call "casual" to keep up with everyone. (I later learned that the other 4 people on this journey regularly ride bikes for long distances...thus the difference between my "casual" and theirs.) The first leg of our journey took us up some nice hills for a bit...thankfully that didn´t last too terribly long! We then turned off the main road onto a very bumpy dirt road. The scenery was BEAUTIFUL and I again found myself wishing I´d brough Julie´s camcorder along. Not that any video would have turned out that well, because it was such a bumpy ride I thought my teeth might bounce right out of my gums! As it turned out, the bikes didn´t like the road very much either. Despite being "mountain bikes", one of them called it quits about 10 minutes down the dirt road (about 30 min into the trip). One of the guys road ahead to the next little house-hut, and the man there said the waterfall was only about another 5 minutes, maybe 15 with one guy running-walking. Sweet!! Since the bike shop had given us two locks, so we secured the bike to a power poll and and continued on our journey, with one guy running along side the four bikes. (This hardly slowed us down at all, but it was just enough that I could now more "casually" keep up with everyone. So secretly, I wasn´t that upset about the fiasco.)
In the middle of NOWHERE. Andrew is changing into his running shoes, what a good sport!
I thought it was odd that we were riding down this lonely road and every few minutes we´d pass these HUGE piles of poop. They were all over the road! I didn´t get it at all...we´d barely had one car pass us the whole time. Well, soon enough we came across a herd of cattle meandering down the road towards us. That explains the poop! I thought it was pretty cool until I stopped to take a picture, and in those two minutes of me pausing to get my camera the herd had spread across the road and were now between me and my friends. Yikes! Do I look at them? Do I avoid eye contact? Do I stand here like a statue until this herd passes me? They weren´t nearly as "cute" up close, and those horns looked pretty sharp. I ended up peddling VERY slowly through the herd, trying not to make direct eye contact, but it was frightening only because I had to pass within 6 inches on both sides sometimes depending on where they were wandering. I was terrified one of them would consider me a threat and charge me. I was just glad to be wearing light colors and nothing resembling red, haha!! Thankfully, they let me pass unscathed and once I was safely through the herd I peddled like mad to catch up with my friends. (They were oblivious to the whole thing, as I hadn´t wanted to yell out for them to wait, and risk startling the cattle into a stampede with me in their way!)
When the safe looking herd was marching in a nice row to one side of the road.
We road down the dirt road about another 30 minutes when a few young boys road by in the opposite direction. We asked them if they knew where the waterfall was, and they cheefully told us they did, and we again heard the line "about 5 minutes!" Since we were already 25 minutes past our last 5 min deadline we were skeptical, but hopeful. We did end up turning off the road about 5 minutes later, onto a smaller dirt "road". I use this term lightly. Within a minute or two we came to our first stream crossing, which was no problem for the others as they were wearing flip flops. But I, the prepared one, had worn tennis shoes for a bike ride and hike. Duh, safety first! Well, now here I am the only one stuck wondering how to cross without getting wet. In the end we decided I´d get a fast start and then the boys would try to pull me across so I wouldn´t have to peddle. This almost worked, but about 3/4 of the way across I started to tip and put my feet down to catch myself. As it turned out this was for the best, because then I simply sloshed through the next 7 streams without hesitation. Eventually the streams were too frequent to make the bikes sensible, so we used our second lock to lock the 4 remaining bikes together, and then to a tiny branch. We had to guess a few times which way to turn, which was fun and felt very adventurous. Sometimes there were old wooden signs for the falls, but sometimes they were fallen on the ground and we had to guess from the flow of the water which way the arrow had probably been pointing.
One of the little wooden signs, at a very pretty turn in the path.
One of the first places where we were up against the wall of the mountain...it was so beautiful.
The boys crossing one of many, many streams.
We continued to hike on foot about another 45 minutes before we FINALLY came to the entrance to the falls.
There was a pretty little garden area and it seems this Alex fellow, who bought the land and named the waterfall after himself, had a nice little operation going. Which he wanted to charge us $5 per person to enter, which around here is insanely expensive. Also, we´d been told it would be $5 for the group. But after 2 hours we weren´t about to just turn around and not see the falls. We made like we were leaving so we could discuss what to do, and we eventually pooled all our loose change and a few small bills and told them this was all we had. We crossed our fingers because if it didn´t work we couldn´t very well suddenly discover another $10 in a pocket somewhere...but it worked!!
You could watch these ants carrying these massive bits of leaves (compared to the size of the ants) down the entire tree from several branches. Then there was a parallel line of empty-handed ants marching back up for more.
Hard at work. We wondered why they chose to destroy this particular tree (some branches were almost entirely bare with just shreds of what had once been huge leaves). They were walking a long long ways, past many other seemingly identical trees.
He told us there was a 20 minute hike up to the lookout, and then a 10 minute hike on a different path to the waterfall. After all this way, we figured we may as well see all there was to see. The 20 minute hike to the lookout was INSANE though!! It was very very steep, very very narrow, and very very muddy. It took us quite awhile to get up there, but it was very very pretty at least! We had a heck of a time getting pictures of us because of the lighting and propping out camera up on a backpack with the self timer, but these are my two best shots.
If you look closely, right in the middle is the dirt road we rode our bikes down. If the weather was better, past the last bit of land you´d be able to see the ocean.
Derek, Andrew, Crystal, Mike, Me
Coming back DOWN from the lookout was even harder than getting up, due to all that mud. In the end, the best approach was to take tiny running steps and just aim for a tree at the end of each diagonally cut path. It was extremely hazardous, but we all managed to make the journey unscathed.
We then headed down the other path towards the waterfall. They told us that they were taking photos and we couldn´t disturb them, which we agreed to, but were a bit confused about. I was the least experienced with Spanish, so the others would usually translate a summary for me after each little conversation, but this one about "photos" they just shrugged. We headed up another muddy path, but not nearly as steep...in fact we started by going downhill. Of course about 5 minutes into this I took a step SLIGHLY too big because I was reaching for a tree, my foot slid in the mud, and I fell hard...but caught myself around the trunk of the very tree I´d been reaching for. Ouch. After standing and pressing each rib on my side to make sure nothing was broken, I declared myself okay and we continued on. We came to a small little waterfall, which to the side had a steeper climb to the main falls.
Small falls
This path was clearly more maintened than the lookout, because there where rocks placed to make a very nature-made staircase, plus a bamboo railing. We climbed for another 10 minutes or so, and suddenly we came up on the photo shoot. And then we understood why we had to stay out of the way. It was a model shooting pictures in front of the waterfall! It was really fun to watch while we caught our breaths. It was all in Spanish, but the photographer would give her directions and she would pose, pout, change positions, etc. It was all I could do not to take a picture of the scene, but I didn´t want to ruin any of his shots with my own flash. After a few minutes the photographer stopped and surprised us all by speaking to us in English. It turned out he was from Ecuador, but had been living in the US for 10 years. He was back in town and was using the scenery for a book he was working on. He said they´d take a break for a bit, and we could swim in the pool below the waterfall. After swimming a bit I decided to test my spanish, and asked the model if she wanted to take a picture with us. To our complete surprise she said yes!! We couldn´t believe it. We gave our cameras to the photographer, who carried them back to where he´d been shooting his own photos. He squatted down and everything, taking very careful aim. I guess professionals never point and shoot...or this guy was just REALLY nice!!
It took the photographer several times of telling us to squeeze in to get us this close to her, haha. Especially the guys, believe it or not!
Love the story! Sooo funny! Seems like you are having a blast!
ReplyDeleteWhat a work out!
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