Today we woke up and looked out the window… looked like rain…

Oh well, can’t let that stop the fun. We had plans to rent some bikes and go on a self-guided tour of some nearby waterfalls, so that’s what we did! After prepping all our rain gear we headed out to grab the bikes. It hadn’t started raining by the time we started riding, but, soon enough there were small drops coming down. 

The first stop was Agoyan, this one we could see from the road.

Next up was Manto de la Novia. For this one they had this contraptions called a Tarabita which got you a little closer to the fall (it was on the other side of the valley). It looked a little rickety, plus with the rain coming down a little harder now, it didn’t seem like it would be too enjoyable of a ride so we gave it a pass.

The 3rd stop was at Pailon del Diablo, the main attraction. For this one we actually got off our bikes and hiked a bit to go find it. If we hadn’t gotten wet by the rain beforehand, this experience made 100% sure that we would be soaked after checking it out. Completely worth it though! Neither of us had ever been this close to a waterfall that was so powerful as this one. We actually got to go behind the waterfall! Quite mesmerizing when you’re there.

After having a few snacks while watching the waterfall (some left over fruits from yesterday) we headed off to our last stop, Cascada Machay. This one also require a (quite steep) trek down to check it out. The path was also littered with little guavas (guayabas), which we hadn’t actually bought in the market yesterday, so we went ahead and picked some up to continue our fruit sampler. Delicious!

It was a good snack to keep us going to the tallest fall of the trip. Not quite as impressive as Pailon del Diablo which we had JUST experienced, but it was still neat to see. Plus we got the whole place just to ourselves.

Now it was time to catch a ride back to town in the back of a truck.

Once we returned the bikes we were fairly hungry so headed to a restaurant. Wanted to try Cuy again, this time in the much more traditional style of more of an oven roast. Unsurprisingly, not nearly as good as the heavily fried version, but Alejandro was happy to at least have it again. This was accompanied by an avocado cream soup, and some cheest potato cakes (llapingachos) served with fried eggs and sausages. We were both very satisfied.

After this we headed back to the hostel to dry off and prepare for our following day.