Salto Cristal

Yesterday was, an adventure.

We decided to head out with Gil and Renita to see if we could find Salto Cristal (Crystal Falls)
We figured it should be about an hour to an hour and a half from our house. The plan was to meet Gil and Renita (who were coming from the other direction) at a certain intesection and travel together from there. We arrived at what we presumed was the intersection, it was slightly different than our google earth print out, but when google earth is taking pictures from so far away that the map can't be that accurate anyway right?

Gil and Renita told us they had gotten a little lost and would probably be another 20 minutes so we said we would wait for them. We found a nice shady spot and parked the car to wait, 5 minutes passed and all of a sudden Gil and Renita came roaring past us, coming from the left when we though they should be coming from behind us. We quickly called them to let them know they had just passed us. They came back and after looking at the map Gil admitted to being completely lost, he said they would follow us because we weren't "lost".

And off we were again on to see the falls, but wait the road wasn't at all like the map showed any more... What could be wrong? Gil asked a person walking on the side of the road, "which way to salto cristal?" the answer was go back to town and take a different road, this was completely the wrong road. We had all been lost, and just happened to run into each other.


After going back to town and taking another road, and driving through lots of sugarcane fields, we came upon a little sign saying "this way to salto cristal" We came upon a ranch with a gate that had many signs posted to it saying "Park of Salto Cristal" Private property do not enter". Gil enterered anyway trying to find someone at the house. There was no answer so we got our stuff together, entered the gate and started walking down the path to the falls.

After walking about 10 minutes we came upon a clearing in the bush, there were more signs saying "do not make fire" "don't litter" etc... We also came upon the care taker, who evidently had a fire going to cook a barbecue for some people who were down at the falls. The care taker took our money and we had our picnic lunch, packed up our bags, and continued on our way. We went about another 3 minutes and we saw a very steep incline, that we needed to climb down to be able to see the falls. We all decided that we didn't need to carry terere, I mean who needs terere anyway? maybe our backpacks with the stuff isn't really that necessary either? Maybe it's not really worth even going with Zippy, I mean this is dangerous. Trav and I decided that in the difficult parts, he would hand Zippy to me while I sat down, and once he had good footing again, I would hand Zippy back to him and I would climb down. we went down, and down and down, finally we reached the bottom, and continued climbing over rocks to get to the falls.

They are gorgeous, There is a 40 meter waterfall and at the bottom, a beautiful pool of water, lots of plants everywhere hanging over the rocks, butterflies, and of course bugs. We saw a really pretty fuzzy caterpillar with yellow stars on it's back, but we thought better of touching that one.

After clinbing back up to the top with Zippy screaming on Travis' hip ( she wanted her mama, but was so mad and confused she was calling me papa) We went to Independencia to go out for supper with Gil and Renita, We found a really nice restaurant and had a very amazing meal. What a great day!