The waterfall a curse kept secret

Here's the Gocta story that might be my favourite in this whole series. This waterfall, one of the tallest in the world at 771 metres, stayed completely off the map until 2005, despite locals in the nearby village of Cocachimba having known about it since the 1950s.

The reason it stayed hidden for so long is the good part. Local legend held that a mermaid lived at its base, and that anyone who revealed the waterfall's existence to outsiders would be cursed by her. That belief kept Gocta a closely guarded secret for decades, until a German economist named Stefan Ziemendorff, taking a break from an entirely unrelated wastewater project, went hiking through the Utcabamba valley and stumbled across a two-tiered waterfall that appeared on no map anywhere. He returned with measuring equipment and confirmed it as the third tallest waterfall in the world.

I painted Gocta in watercolour and ink, that thin white ribbon dropping into the river below. There's a poster with a letter home and a postcard if you'd like one.

Shop the poster here: Gocta Waterfall, Peru · Travel Poster