When we got there, the road ended at a small river, with the main bridge completely washed out. Luckily, there was a cool foot bridge across the water.
The "12 person maximum" sign on the bridge was pretty generous, I think. With the three of us, the bridge was swinging pretty good. Granted, the water wasn't very deep and the bridge was only about 12 feet off the ground, but still.
After the bridge, we were trying to find the waterfall we had read about, but with the road washed out, the alternate route was pretty made it pretty difficult to find. The random woman we talked with near the Museo de Carlos Gardel suggested we keep walking the 2-3 km up the road we were on, and we could find a smaller, more private, but slightly less impressive waterfall. We figured that was as good of an adventure as trying to find the bigger one, so we kept going on foot.
A ways up the road, we passed by a shack of a house at the end of the road. A guy came out and asked where we were headed. He said the waterfall was pretty hard to find, but he would take us through the field behind his house and up the "trail" to the waterfall. So we were joined by two local barefoot tour guides - our first time with Uruguayan hippies. They were very friendly, extemrely knowledgeable about the area, and very helpful about leading us to the waterfall.
The waterfall was pretty awesome. It was probably only about 10 feet high, but was flowing over a small cave area. We never would have found it on our own - the "trail" was pretty invisible, and even then, part of it was inaccessible because a recent storm had downed a couple trees. We followed the barefoot hippies all the way to the waterfall and actually around it to the top of it, where you could see the entire valley.
It was so nice to stand in the cave area, where it was cool and damp. The weather was usually pretty muggy in Uruguay, and even a short hike made us sweaty (well that, and the fact that our leisurely field work and Sonia's cooking didn't exactly keep us in shape).
Our hippie tour guides were very gracious, and took our money at the end of our journey with gratitude and politeness. I was constantly impressed with the people of Uruguay, especially around Tacuarembo. People seem genuinely nice and always had time to chat or show us around. Even the woman at the helado stand near the foot bridge was very excited to meet us. She had us sign her guestbook and seemed to incredibly happy to have tourists at her stand.
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