About a 20-30 minute ride out from the community town of Mindo we came across the trail head for the specatcular Cascada Laguna Azul (Waterfall Blue Lagoon). The entrance is not well marked from the road and it appears that you are riding onto private property. Unless you were specifically looking for this hike you would definitley just ride on past oblivious to the beauty that can be accessed here! Which actually was a good thing for us – we didn’t meet a single other person either on the way there or back and were able to enjoy the hike, both pools and the waterfalls in peace. Just relaxing and taking it all in 🙂
As we dismounted, a kindly old fellow wandered down to us from the house that stands just back from the road and he tried very hard to explain everything to us – unfortunately we had a major communication breakdown!
Eventually we worked out that, for a fee of $7, we could park up, leave the bike and all our gear on it safely under his superviaion and hike off on the trail to the pools. He pointed in the general direction and then left us to it! From the broken conversation and hand signals, I (mis)understood that the whole hike to the 2nd pool was approximately 20 minutes…hmmm, read on to see how that turned out!
I had correctly interpreted the hike time to the first pool! That was an easy 5 minutes and it was all downhill. We started to hike down rough steps and were immediately thankful that we had planned ahead regarding bringing clothes and shoes to change into. There was no way this could have been done in our riding gear!
The first pool was stunning. We rounded a corner and there it was! For people planning on staying there a while and swimming, a little changing hut was just across the river. There was a rickety bamboo bridge, which did not look either stable or inviting to cross, however, there was further to go and more to see and so I had to pull up my big girl pants and get my butt over it!
Things got a tad more dificult after this, lots of steps, some steep ones, some well defined and others just cobbled together…any how, they all made for some nice pics and nothing really unmanageable, although I did land on my ass a couple of times as it was slippery in places!
Finally, after having to hold my breath and scramble across another, even more rickety bridge, we rounded the final corner and were met with another spectacular pool and falls.
We hung around and played a while before iain had to drag me away to continue with our ride for the day….full story of the day’s ride here 🙂