Prior to coming to Costa Rica Megan and I did our research on La Gran Vista and had seen pictures of people swimming at a waterfall. We both desperately wanted to go swimming there. We talked about it all week and hoped it wouldn't rain on Saturday so that we could go. Saturday was also going to be a big day for the kids in the area. The ninos were going to come by the farm at 9am and then we would go to the waterfall after they left.
Xiani prepared breakfast around 8 and then we waited for the ninos to show. Of course they weren't on time. Eventually Megan got bored waiting and went hiking around the farm. When she returned Donald told us it was time to go to the waterfall and we shouldn't wait on the children any longer. We rushed upstairs and put on our suit suits, packed our backpacks, grapped our cameras, put on our flip flops and waiteddoor Donald. I even yelled to him that we were ready when he was! A couple minutes later he yelled for us to go to the store down the street and ask them for directions to the cascada. Now I knew we had the day off from working but somewhere along the way both Megan and I missed the part of being completely on our own. And not only were we on our own but Donald wasn't giving us much guidance other than telling us not to climb on the rocks because they are slippery. We tried to clarify the directions and only got that it was a 15 minute walk.
Totally clueless, and forgetting the word cascada almost immediately, we set off on our adventure. It did take about 15 minutes to get to the store where we were able to say 'cascada'. We didn't pronunciate it correctly but the lady behind the counter figured out what we were asking. We thought we said the same word that she did. She walked outside and pointed to a road that turned left just passed the store. I asked if it led to the waterfall and she nodded yes; however, I have no clue if she knew what I said.
We started the walk down the road that the lady pointed out and could hear water so that was a good sign but we still weren't certain we were on the right path. We walked down a long hill and the noise got quieter and quieter. There were some farmers with oxen at the bottom so we knew we could at least ask them. Of course when we asked he pointed us back up the road we had come from. We were clueless on what we were supposed to do. Fortunately on the walk up we noticed a little path to our left and felt hopeful it was what we were looking for. Once we figured out how to get on the path we headed down to the river and Jackpot we found the waterfall! It was massive and flowing strongly and didn't look like what we had remembered in the pictures. The water was also brown which we knew was from all the rain. Not to be too discouraged we climbed down and stuck our feet in the water and it was muy frio! We walked around and took lots of pictures but decided we did not what to get in the water. We speculated, correctly, that the picture we had seen previously was taken in the summer time when there was no rain. Despite not going swimming we called the adventure a great success and worth the hike. Unfortunatly going back up the path was not as easy for me. My flip flops were wet and kept falling off my feet. I eventually just took them off and walked barefoot up the hill. This was the second time this week we had the wrong type of shoes on for our activities.
Once we made it back to the little store to buy beer but they didn't sell beer. we decided to make the long hike down the road to the bottom of the hill to get to the Super Weber. Although the farm website said alcohol was not allowed Donald had said it was ok for us to have some since we were adults and we werent in a big group (another advantage to being individual volunteers!) I had timed driving the hill to the farm the previous day and found that it took about 12 minutes by car to the top of the 720 meter hill. We decided we didn't have anything else to do so walking to the bottom for cerveza sounded like a great idea. The walk took us 30 minutes of climbing up and down the dirt and rock road. We were very excited when we reached the bottom and purchased 2 six packs of Imperial and ImperiaL Light. We then started back up the long rocky road in our flip flops. About half way up both Megan and I started complaining about the bottom of our feet hurting but we kept on. We didn't really have a choice but kept thinking about how good the beer was going to taste later. It took us 50 minutes to make the entire climb back up to the top. The entire adventure took us 3.5 hours and even though we did not go swimming we were absolutely drenched and exhausted when we got to the casa. Sadly we were even too tired to drink and had to shower and nap before enjoying our reward. But when we did finally pop open the can it was muy bueno!
