After arriving in Mocoa, i just cycled the little distance out of town to the “Casa del rio” hostel, which seemed like a nice spot for a rest day. But instead of resting, i set out with Jesse from Canada, who was staying in the same dormitory. Goal for the day was the ‘fin del mundo’ waterfall. We started walking along the road, but soon got a ride with one of the ‘colectivos’ to the beginning of the trek. Later while returning, we found out that we managed to stay on the ‘right’ path for only twenty steps before we went off towards some other trail up the hill. Once there, the forest was gone, no waterfalls were to be seen and we had to admit we were thoroughly lost. Luckily there was a house nearby and we could ask for directions.
The only living soul up there was a sturdy woman, which we could win over as a guide to another waterfall, the ‘ojo de dios’, after being convinced that we were nowhere near the ‘fin del mundo’. It was an adventurous path leading back to the stream, which we rather slid than walked down, as it was steep as a ladder. Once back at the water, we waved goodbye to our guide and made our way to the eye of god.
Not too difficult to see why it was given that name, the waterfall, after an initial step, roars through a hole in the rockwall. We had a quick swim and then continued downstream in a last attempt to reach the goal we had, when we set out in the morning. Our guide had warned us that there was no path, and not being that impressed by our sense of direction, once we showed up at her doorstep, we would certainly get lost again. So we followed the stream as our new guide instead of some path. We had to cross the stream several times and not always could we find some stones or a fallen tree that we could use as a bridge. Our shoes slowly filled with water and we had several spiderwebs and parts of plants in our face and dangling from our hair when we finally reached a path. The one we would have come along if we wouldn’t have erred earlier. And after passing other pools and waterfalls we finally reached the cliff, from which the ‘fin del mundo’ waterfall roars down over seventy meters.
And here another one with Jesse sitting on the edge.
Taking the long way probably helped to appreciate it even more and there were no regrets. Taking another colectivo back towards the guesthouse, we were soon busy putting together a good dinner combining what food we had. Before breakfast the next morning, we watched the monkeys in the garden getting their share of bananas and still managing to look rather grim.
Jesse set out that day to some retreat and myself would soon enter the road to Pasto.