Gocta Waterfall, Peru · Travel Poster

Each poster comes with a letter home. Ella writes about the place and its hidden history, and the details that never makes it into the guidebooks.

Gocta, one of the tallest waterfalls 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. Local legend held that a mermaid lived at its base and would curse anyone who revealed its existence, and that belief kept the falls a closely guarded secret for decades. It was a German economist, Stefan Ziemendorff, hiking through the Utcabamba valley on a break from an unrelated project, who first stumbled across it, later confirming it as the third tallest waterfall in the world.

This poster is an original illustration in watercolour and ink, painted exclusively for the Ella's Adventures travel poster series.

No frame included.