looking for madamas

On the 6th of August my friend Olivia and I set out from Brasso Seco to find Madamas Falls. It is of course only in hindsight that I realize that there are no fewer than three waterfalls which might be so named, depending on the source. This, as you might imagine, lent a bit of confusion to our hike.

My principal piece of information came from an outdated T&T hiking book that I have used to get lost in various parts of Trinidad. In short, we did reasonably well in deciphering it's cryptic descriptions and even managed to find some flagging which led us to a river. At this point we lost all trails despite a fair bit of hunting around. I consulted the topo map and bravely declared that we were standing in (really, our feet were soaking) the Miguel river, which joins with the Madamas at a later point. Reasoning that it is difficult (though not impossible) to get lost while walking in a river we planned to head downstream, find the junction with the Madamas river, then head up the Madamas to find the fabled waterfall.

After a considerable amount of wading and some detours to avoid full-on swimming we decided to turn back - we had now been hiking for about 4 hours. On the hike back we decided to check out a side trail, about a half hour walk from where we parked. Sure enough the trail led us to the spectacular Madamas waterfall pictured below.

But the mystery remains and I do need to return (perhaps with a GPS) someday to try to find the other. Doing a bit more digging I have also realized (and perhaps should have realized sooner) that another waterfall named Madamas is usually accessed from Matelot, a long way from Brasso Seco.



the miguel river. maybe.