Catarata del Toro

“Sunset changes the mood entirely here”

The Catarata del Toro drops ninety metres in a single uninterrupted column into the flooded crater of an extinct volcano near Bajos del Toro, making it one of the tallest single-drop waterfalls in Costa Rica. The falls are visible from the crater rim above — you look down rather than across, watching the water fall away into the green pool far below — and also from a platform at the crater floor reached by a steep set of stairs cut into the volcanic rock wall. The spray from the impact at the bottom is visible from both vantage points. The surrounding terrain is private land operated as a visitor site, with a small fee and a trail system through the cloud forest above the crater. The access road from Zarcero passes through highland dairy farms and cloud forest before narrowing to a single lane near the site. The combination of the volcanic geology, the altitude, the near-constant mist, and the genuinely unusual configuration of a waterfall descending into a crater makes this one of the more visually distinctive sites in the country.