Salto de Yanigua – A secret waterfall in the Hato Mayor province – Page 2

How to get to Salto de Yanigua?

If you don’t do an excursion with a horse, you definitely need a motorized vehicle. Either a stable off-road motorbike or an SUV/Jeep with a 4×4 engine. Be sure, that the way to Salto de Yanigua won’t be easy though. Experienced drivers with advanced driving skills are needed to reach the waterfall. Why? Because the way looks like that:

Way to Salto Yanigua — That’s how the way to Salto de Yanigua looks like. And the surface got much worse.

The closest city you can find to Salto de Yanigua is a community called ‘El Valle’. You better orientate yourself with El Valle as a point of reference. Google Maps describes the way to Salto de Yanigua from El Valle as follows:

According to Google Maps, you drive 7.1 kilometers (4.4 miles) and approximately 17 minutes. If you wonder why it takes so long, please look again at the photo with the road conditions above.

But especially the last part of the route looked a bit suspicious to me. It appears actually a little bit, that you have to climb down or walk the rest south-way ?!

And that’s quite a walk. Looks like 700 meters (0.4 miles) more or less. Not a really trustworthy route.

As I found out, Google Maps is not always a big help. I used it as well during the trip. But remember the wrong locations and difficult accuracy when it comes to route descriptions? Salto de Yanigua isn’t connected to a steady road, so Google Maps leaded us to the nowhere in the mountains. Shit!

Do you see the little white dot with the black circle? That’s more or less the position of the small green sign that leaded to Salto de Yanigua. Don’t go right there or you’ll end up nowhere. Drive left, although it looks at Google Maps off-road and non-charted. Left is definitely the correct way and after not more than 3 minutes you’ll arrive at your desired destination.

Google Maps would lead you according to their logic to the right pathway. But if you ever happen to reach that moment, definitely turn left to not end up in the mountains like I did. It didn’t took too long to get back. Maybe only a loss of 10-15 minutes time. But the street conditions are extremely bad up there and you drive literally over huge rocks. Better not risking an axle fracture or flat tire. Therefore…

DRIVE LEFT – LEFT – LEFT

Traffic sign to Salto Yanigua — The only ‘traffic sign’ that leads to Salto de Yanigua. And you barely can see it from the street

You could see it already in the photo above. There is a little green sign, that describes and leads the way to Salto de Yanigua. But it’s so tiny and with the driving speed of your vehicle, you barely see it. Remember when I wrote earlier about the accuracy of the information in the Dominican Republic? This is the ONLY sign, that you will see on the whole 7.1 kilometers (4.4 miles) which would help you.

Next page: What welcomes you at Salto de Yanigua?