Author: richwest3

June 13, 2012

After the hike we were exhausted.  See for yourselves…

And yet we had to stop by a local resident’s house for “coffee” – she wouldn’t take no for an answer.  It was fun.  The coffee was good and hit the spot.  She also made some little pancake-like things.  We even ended up going back the next day for a delicious breakfast.

After coffee, we had to cross the river one more time to get back to our side of the bay.

Only to be met by these two lovely horses on our beach.  A perfect end to a perfect day.

June 13, 2012

The pools and falls themselves were hard to photograph as you couldn’t see the entire falls from in the pool nor nearby.  The falls were great, but maybe not quite as amazing as the hike to get there.

This is the first pool.  Climbing over some boulders gets you to the second pool where the fall drops.

Here’s Cyndi in the second pool adorned with her stylish yellow hardhat.  These hardhats were under a big blue bucket along the path – put there for hikers to use to protect themselves from the occasional falling rocks.  We also kept to the edges of the pools to avoid the big rocks from which these hardhats would offer little protection.

This was just about all you can see of the falls from the pool.  Most of the height of the falls is hidden from view behind this closest cliff face.  The water was cool but comfortable and refreshing on a hot day.

June 13, 2012

We crossed the river fed by the waterfall several times on the way to the falls.

This was the most dramatic crossing.  Mostly we were able to wade across in ankle-deep water.  One wrong step here and it would have been waist-high in a very strong current.  This is a group that was leaving as we arrived.

There were these amazing blue pools of water along the way.  We have no idea why the water was so blue.

June 13, 2012

We’ll just let these pictures from the two and a half hour hike to the waterfall speak for themselves.

So much of the path was decorated with these beautiful flowers – dropped from trees above.

Our first glimpse of the waterfall in the distance.

June 13, 2012

It was rumored to be long, but we decided to do the Vaipo Waterfall hike from Daniel’s Bay. Here are some pictures to show you what it was like (though, pretty as they may be, they really don’t do it justice.)

Maybe this Blair Witch gate should have caused us to turn around but thankfully, it didn’t.

Even from the very beginning, we knew this was going to be a very special hike.  The small town you pass through on the way is landscaped like a world-class botanical garden.