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The Rio Quijos incises a gash between some tree-fringed cliffs before crashing down a drop of 145m - the La Cascada de San Rafael , Ecuador's biggest waterfall - sending great clouds of spray wafting up from its base. Some 61km from Baeza, the entrance is marked by a concrete bus shelter on the right of the road (ask the bus driver for the stop). Behind the shelter take the dirt road a few hundred metres down to the guard house, where, if anyone's around, they'll charge you $1 for entrance. Beyond the guard house, you'll see some simple prefabs, built by INECEL, the state electricity company, but now a tourist accommodation complex calling itself the San Rafael Lodge , bookable in Quito with Via Natura, Av Gonzalez Suarez 2500 and Av 12 de Octubre (tel 02/236879, fax 567284, www.altesa.net/srfalls.htm ; $61-85); they can also arrange hiking and bird-watching trips in the area ($100 for a specialist guide, $20 for a local guide). Each pastel cabin has a sitting room, two bedrooms and a bathroom, but the sparse decoration does little to disguise their utilitarian past. Substantial reductions are possible for the cabins if you arrive unannounced ($6, camping $0.5), but you'll have to forgo electricity and hot water for all but a couple of hours per day and the restaurant service entirely, which, when open, charges $5-8 for breakfast and $14 for lunch and dinner. The area's only other place to eat is a basic, nameless salon with grimy walls and a dirt floor, on the right just over the Rio Reventador bridge, about ten-minutes' walk uphill from the bus stop, though this closes at 7pm. About 50m before the salon , on the left, you'll find a swimming pool , the Agua Azul ($0.40), fed by the streams from the slopes of the Volcan Reventador, rising to the west.
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