Gocta Cataracts

Gocta falls in two long white ribbons down a sheer wall of the cloud forest in northern Peru, with a combined height of about 771 metres. The upper cascade drops some 231 metres to a ledge; the lower one, around 540 metres, plunges from the lip of that ledge to the valley of the Cocahuayco river. Seen together from the trail between the two, with mist drifting across the cliff and the green of the montane forest pressing in from both sides, the falls look almost too tall for the landscape — a thin line of water from the sky to the floor of the gorge.

The strangest part of Gocta's story is how recently the wider world learned of it. People in the surrounding villages had always known the falls, but kept away: local tradition speaks of a beautiful fair-haired mermaid living in its pool, a spirit whose long pale hair is the water itself, and of a curse on those who come too close. In 2002 the German explorer Stefan Ziemendorff, working in the area, saw it and set out to measure it, and after his third expedition he announced its height at a press conference in March 2006, with the measurement confirmed by the Peruvian authorities. The claim that it was the third-tallest waterfall in the world did not hold up in later rankings, which place it lower on the list, but the effect of the view is not diminished by any of that.

The falls lie in Bongará province of the Amazonas region, a country of steep, forested ridges on the eastern side of the Andes. They can be walked in two ways. From the village of Cocachimba a trail of about six kilometres leads through the forest to the foot of the lower cascade, where spray fills the air long before the water comes into view. From San Pablo, on the other side of the valley, a path of similar length runs to the base of the upper cascade; a full circuit of about 15 km links the two, passing a viewpoint where both tiers can be seen at once and crossing a suspension bridge below the great lower drop. With the climbs in and out of the valley, the circuit takes a full day.

Getting there

The falls lie about 23 km in a straight line from Chachapoyas, the regional capital. Chachapoyas Airport (CHH) is about 20 km away. From Chachapoyas, minibuses heading to Pedro Ruiz stop at the Cocahuayco bridge on the main road, about 45 minutes away, where mototaxis wait to take hikers up to Cocachimba (about 5 km) or San Pablo (about 6 km), the starting points of the trails.