Intro
Day 246. After weeks of pushing pedals through the Andes, today was about a different kind of friction. The sky over Cocachimba was finally clear, a mostly sunny canopy that revealed the full 771-meter drop of Gocta in two distinct, silver ribbons. I traded the bike for hiking boots, trading the hum of tires for the crunch of gravel and the roar of falling water.
The Legend and the Log Bridge
- The morning started over tea and bread at La Rivera Gocta. The hotel owner stood by my table, gesturing toward the horizon where the falls bisect the green cliffs. He spoke with a quiet pride about the ‘discovery’ of the falls in 2004. He told me about the German, Stefan Ziemendorff, who mapped the height and brought the world’s eyes here, though the locals had lived in the shadow of that water for generations. It felt like walking into a piece of liquid history, a landmark that was technically ‘new’ to the map but ancient to the earth.
- I wasted forty minutes on a detour to the village tourist office for a permit, only to find out later I could have paid at the trailhead. Once I finally hit the dirt, the path was a masterpiece of maintenance, winding through dense foliage that smelled of damp earth and rotting leaves. About five kilometers in, the trail threw a challenge: a dry riverbed spanned by an improvised bridge. It was nothing more than a few thick logs tied together with rusted wire, with a single rope strung at hip height for a railing. I could feel the logs shift under my boots, the wire-wrapped logs creaking as I balanced my way across. It was the first of many reminders that out here, infrastructure is often just a suggestion held together by tension and grit.
The Icy Plunge at the Second Drop
- By 10:45 AM, I reached the base of the second, lower drop. Standing at the bottom of a 500-meter wall of water is a lesson in atmospheric pressure. The waterfall creates its own weather system—a violent, swirling gist of freezing mist and sudden, localized winds that flattened the ferns around the pool. The roar was absolute, a low-frequency vibration that I felt in my teeth. I was already a mess of sweat and dust, so the chill didn’t deter me. I stripped down, exchanged my short for a bathing trunk and waded into the pool.
- The water was sharp and aggressive, the kind of cold that makes you forget your own name for a second. I didn’t have a towel, but it didn’t matter. My t-shirt was already a heavy, sweat-soaked cotton rag from the hike in, so I just wiped the worst of the lake water off my skin with my hands and pulled the damp fabric back on. My shivering seemed to act as a catalyst; two other travelers who had been hovering at the edge saw me survive the plunge and decided to jump in themselves. We shared a brief, teeth-chattering nod before I turned my attention upward to the first tier.
The Sweat-Soaked Ascent
- The map showed a 1.4-kilometer trail connecting the lower pool to the upper cascade. What the map didn’t convey was the 500 meters of vertical gain required to get there. The trail turned into a series of brutal, tight serpentines cut into the cliffside. The sun was high now, baking the moisture out of the forest and turning the air into a thick, humid blanket. Within twenty minutes, I was drenched again. This wasn’t the clean mist of the waterfall; this was the heavy, salt-stinging moisture of a body redlining. My sweat-soaked cotton shirt clung to my ribs like a second skin, making every breath feel restricted.
- It took an hour of steady, rhythmic climbing to reach the viewing platform near the base of the first fall. I looked like I had just walked through a rainstorm. I sat there for twenty minutes, letting my heart rate settle before launching the drone. Seeing the two tiers through the lens—the sheer scale of the drop and the way the water seems to turn into smoke before it hits the middle ledge—put the morning’s struggle into a different perspective. There were no other hikers up here, just the sound of the upper falls and the faint buzz of the rotors as I captured the dual-drop scale from the air.
The OSB Finish in Luya
- The return hike was a blur of gravity and quad-burn. I made it back to Cocachimba, grabbed my gear, and managed to negotiate a ride in a tour van heading toward Chachapoyas. The driver was waiting for his clients to finish dinner, so I sat on a stone wall, watching the light fade off the cliffs. We eventually made it to the main road at Caclic, where I caught a local colectivo van bound for Luya. Traveling by van feels like cheating after weeks on the bike, but with Karajia on the agenda for tomorrow, I needed to gain some ground and my bike isn’t with me anyways.
- Luya is a quiet town, a sharp contrast to the tourist hum of Cocachimba. I found a basic hotel right on the main square. The room is a strange mix of new construction and raw materials; the floor is made of unpainted, rough OSB floorboards that creak and splinter under my weight. I ended the night at a small restaurant nearby, eating a plate of potatoes topped with a thick, savory peanut sauce. I’m sitting on the balcony of that restaurant, drinking a glass of fresh maracuyá juice, the tartness cutting through the exhaustion. The sound of my boots on the OSB floorboards is the last thing I’ll hear before I pass out.
Overnight
I stayed at a basic hotel on the Luya main square. It was a brand-new room but curiously unfinished, with raw OSB-plank floors that gave off a woody, resinous smell and creaked with every step.
Reflection
Trading the bike for a 1,100-meter vertical hike is not a rest day; it just moves the soreness from the calves to the glutes.
Route summary
- Date: 2026-04-07
- Distance: 18.59 km
- Elevation gain: 1101 m
- Elevation loss: 1101 m
- Duration: 9 h 1 min
- Time in Motion: 4 h 46 min
- Average Speed: 3.9 km/h