Circuito Inferior

The Upper Circuit gives you perspective. The Lower Circuit takes it away, which is the better deal. I came down the steep switchbacks into the canyon on my second morning, and within five minutes the sound had enclosed around me completely — not the thunder of the Garganta del Diablo but something more intimate: individual falls with individual voices, water hitting rock and water hitting water at different pitches, the bassline of the Salto Unión mixing with the higher registers of the smaller cascades. The boardwalk skirts the base of the falls close enough that the handrail was permanently wet, and my jacket was soaked through before I’d walked a hundred metres.

What distinguishes the Circuito Inferior from the upper walkways is the sense of being inside the falls rather than above them. The canyon walls on both sides are draped in ferns and mosses that grow in the perpetual spray, and the light that filters down through the canopy catches the mist in a way that makes the whole scene glow from within. I stopped at the Salto Dos Hermanas — the Two Sisters falls — and just sat on the wet railing for a while, watching a family of birds I couldn’t identify picking insects off the wet rock. The falls were not a backdrop here. They were the room I was sitting in.

The optional boat excursion from the landing partway along the circuit is something I initially resisted — it felt touristy, the kind of add-on that dilutes experience — and then did because a fellow traveller whose judgment I trusted told me I’d regret skipping it. She was right. The inflatable Zodiac goes directly under the Salto San Martín with no apology whatsoever. There is a count of three, then you are simply inside a waterfall, which is so much louder than you expect and so much colder and the pressure of the water on your shoulders is genuinely surprising. You come out the other side laughing in the specific helpless way that happens when the body overrides the brain.

I wrung out my socks on a sunny rock afterward and ate an empanada from my bag that had somehow survived the soaking in a ziplock I’d had the foresight to bring. It tasted exceptional in the particular way that food tastes after your body has just been through something. The walk back up through the jungle, steam rising off my wet clothes, was one of the quieter and more contented half-hours I’ve spent in a national park.

When to go: The Lower Circuit works in any conditions but is most rewarding in the morning, when the light comes in from the east and illuminates the spray from behind. Go early to beat the tour groups, who tend to arrive in force between 10am and 2pm. Bring a dry bag or heavy ziplock for your phone and anything you want to stay dry — you will get wet whether or not you do the boat.