About Chorro de Dona Juana (Dona Juana Waterfall)
The Chorro de Dona Juana Waterfall (or Catarata Chorro de Doña Juana) is a convenient roadside attraction along the PR-149 that cuts right through the center of Puerto Rico between the towns of Villalba and Ciales.
I’ve found that it’s a nice spot to break up the winding and narrow mountain driving though parking around the bridge fronting this multi-tiered waterfall is quite limited.
In addition to this waterfall dropping three tiers (which I’m guessing is at least 35m or more) into a nice swimming hole, I also noticed that there was an additional hard-to-see drop below the other side of its bridge.
So its cumulative height could very well exceed 50m or so, which would make this one of Puerto Rico’s tallest, but I’m sure you’d need a drone to truly appreciate its full scale.
On our April 2022 visit, we showed up pretty early in the morning on a rainy weekday, and we were the only people who bothered to get out of the car to check it out (everyone else just passed by).
That said, I can easily envision this place being busy on weekends or on holidays, where traffic and parking could make it difficult to stop for it.
We had showed up a few days after the end of Semana Santa or Easter Week, and I’m sure it would have been a totally different story had we been here during the holy week.
As far as the parking situation goes, all the spaces nearest to the waterfall were on the west side (left side as you go north or right side as you go south.
I’ve found that navigating with a GPS can be pretty helpful in anticipating when to stop for the falls, but without it, you’d need to pay attention to the KM markers (see directions below).
Finally, just to underscore how slow going this drive is, we encountered plenty of blind corners and traffic in both directions, and this road even made my daughter throw up from car sickness.
Nevertheless, if you are self-driving in this mountainous part of Puerto Rico, we’ve also combined this visit with the Taino petroglyphs at La Piedra Escrita as well as another waterfall in Cascada Las Delicias (both near Jayuya).
Authorities
The Chorro de Dona Juana Waterfall resides within the Toro Negro State Forest (Bosque Estatal de Toro Negro) in the municipality of Orocovis (though it’s right on its border with Ciales and pretty close to the town of Jayuya, Puerto Rico. It is administered by the Puerto Rico Department of Natural and Environmental Resources (Departamento de Recursos Naturales y Ambientales). For information or inquiries about the area as well as current conditions, you can try to visit their website (in Spanish).
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