News That Stays News

The waterfall August 1, 2014

July 2, 2014

In the vicinity of Bagaces, there is only one waterfall, or maybe only one that people refer to as “the waterfall”. It’s a swimming spot that is free and open to the public, more or less. The waterfall is overseen by a local organization that accepts donations to support the local schools. The parking area is overseen by several men who charge a nominal fee (~$2) to watch over your car or bike while you swim.

There isn’t really a good place to swim at Palo Verde: the river has too many crocodiles, and the lagoons in the wetlands (when there’s been enough rain that the wetlands are actually wet) are too muddy. So when I got back from collecting caterpillars in the morning and the graduate student/naturalist asked if I wanted to go to the waterfall with her, I jumped at it. My assistant was back in Nicaragua, I’d been here for over a month, and I hadn’t really had a day off in all that time.

The creek that forms the waterfall runs through a good deep hollow, so as we walked down the path, it seemed as if we left the dried-out land behind and arrived at what the wet season should be here. The waterfall itself is perhaps fifty feet tall, a broad semicircle bitten out of the rock. The water comes down over an overhanging lip of rock, with a space behind the falls littered with blocks of stone. The water gathers in a large circular pool with a sandy bottom before continuing on its way. The sand has flecks of pyrite in it, so when I scattered a handful through the water, it glittered.

The waterfall was just what we needed. Not just the water, but also the chance to lie in the sun with no mosquitoes and close our eyes or people-watch. In addition to the many people taking photos of each other in the water, there were also quite a few people trying to lure butterflies. The most successful, a young girl, used a handful of the wet sand that the butterflies were puddling at. I could say more about the art of luring butterflies, but that’s for another day.