Pailón del Diablo
Cascada el Pailón del Diablo
Interesting facts
- After the San Rafael Falls collapsed through erosion in 2020, the Pailón del Diablo came to be regarded as the largest waterfall in Ecuador.
- Local man Ángel Lascano said he helped coin the name in the 1940s, and was reportedly excommunicated by the parish priest for insisting on 'Diablo'.
- From 1992 the Guevara family spent about 14 years cutting the longer route, Grieta al Cielo or 'Crack to Heaven', largely by hand.
- Stairways hewn into the cliff lead to a narrow passage where visitors can stand behind the falling curtain of water.
- The shorter route with its viewing balconies was developed in the 1990s by Donald Wolfram, who first called the site Isla del Pailón.
- The surrounding Andean cloud forest, thick with mosses, ferns and orchids, is home to spectacled bears and pumas, though they are rarely seen.
Why it is worth it
The Pailón del Diablo, the "Devil's Cauldron", is the waterfall of the Río Verde as it throws itself towards the Pastaza River in Ecuador's Tungurahua province, beside the road that runs east from Baños towards Puyo. The river drops about 80 m in a thundering column into a pool some 20 m deep, and the force of it is the point: this is less a veil of water than a cauldron of spray and noise. The name comes from a rock formation beside the falls in which people see the face of the devil.
Local folklore gives the place a companion. A short way off is the San Miguel waterfall, said to stand for the archangel Michael, who keeps watch so that the devil stays trapped down in his cauldron. Between the two lies the Encañada del Duende, a small hidden lagoon of emerald water ringed by tropical plants.
Two separate paths lead down from the village of Río Verde, and they show the falls in very different ways. The shorter one leads to a pair of asymmetrical suspension bridges that give the classic panorama of the whole fall. The longer route goes down to the river and works its way right up close to the base of the falls, among the spray and noise, though without the full view from the front.
Getting there
The falls lie in the village of Río Verde, about 17 km east of Baños de Agua Santa on the road towards Puyo. This stretch of road is the Ruta de las Cascadas, the "waterfall route", popular by bicycle, which passes several other falls before ending here; tourist buses and the open-sided chiva buses also make the trip from Baños. Pelileo is about 29 km away, and the nearest airport is Cotopaxi International Airport (LTX), about 66 km in a straight line.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Pailón del Diablo is one of the most famous waterfalls in Ecuador, located near the town of Río Verde in the Tungurahua Province. It remains as Ecuador’s largest waterfall as of the 2020s, after the San Rafael Falls disappeared.
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