About Cascata da Cabroeira
Cascata da Cabroeira is a seemingly lesser-known waterfall near Portugal’s Eastern Border with Spain in the Portalegre District.
Like the nearby Cascata de Monte Sete, this waterfall sits within the Serra de São Mamede, which seemed to be off the typical tourist path.
The waterfall is said to be about 10m tall (a modest size), but the appeal of this place has more to do with solitude than it has to do with the waterfall itself.
Of course, there was a bit of mystery concerning this waterfall near the village of Rabaça.
By the way, that village is how this waterfall can also be known as Cascata da Rabaça, and there seems to be a neighboring town across the border in Spain called La Rabaza.
Anyways, some of the mystery around this waterfall has to do with outdated information concerning how to hike to this waterfall, especially given private property concerns.
So I’ll seek to clear that up in this write-up after my mid-June 2024 experience here.
Trespassing to Access the Cascata da Cabroeira
There appears to be at least two ways to visit the Cascata da Cabroeira from the M1044 Road – one to the south of the waterfall and one to the east of the waterfall.
During my pre-trip research, conventional wisdom said that the best place to start this hike was from the southern approach (even GoogleMaps labeled it “Estacionamento para a Cascata da Cabroeira).
From this starting point, the hike to the lookout for the Cascata da Cabroeira would be about 1km in length, but I encountered a barricade and private property sign barely 350m into this hike.
In order to go around the private property, I would have had to do a much longer 2.7km detour with even more elevation change (upwards of 150m).
In any case, the trespassing trail descended towards the Ribeira do Cabroeira, ultimately crossing it above the waterfall, before ascending up to an unpaved road past some abandoned-looking buildings that were part of the private property.
After going right from the rejoining of the road, the path then led to a lookout down at the Cascata da Cabroeira, which looked rather puny from this lofty vantage point.
While I had seen more impressive closeup photos of the waterfall, the people taking those shots either trespassed knowingly or accessed the area in the past before the signs and barricades were put up to keep people from trespassing.
Based on this rather disappointing experience, I wouldn’t recommend doing this hike from the south approach.
The Recommended Way to Access the Cascata da Cabroeira
Instead, of doing the southern approach, I found out by doing a shuttle hike (with Julie staying behind and able to drive the car to the other trailhead) that the eastern approach from the M1044 Road is the way to go (see directions below).
From that side, I saw that there were some pullout spaces near a trail leading across the Spanish border towards La Rabaza, and I would recommend parking the car in one of those spaces.
Then, I’d walk briefly up the M1044 Road about 100m to an ascending unpaved road to the left.
This unpaved road looked rather rough and perhaps unsuitable for passenger cars, but after roughly 500m from the M1044, I encountered a bend in the unpaved road that had pullout spaces that could have acted as a trailhead parking.
Of course, that trailhead parking would only be feasible if the car could make it that far, but I’d imagine most rental car drivers probably wouldn’t want to chance it.
Anyways, from this alternate trailhead spot, there was a gradual uphill hike for the remaining 300m ultimately arriving at the miradouro (or lookout) of the Cascata da Cabroeira.
There were no private property concerns doing the hike in this manner, and it was perhaps the same distance as the trespassing approach from the south (the round-trip distance was on the order of about 1.6km).
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that there was a noticeable lack of proper signage around the trailhead areas as well as at trail forks along the way.
Therefore, you’ll want to have some pre-trip notes as well as a GPS app handy so you can tell your position relative to where the waterfall is at.
Authorities
Cascata da Cabroeira (or Cascata da Rabaca) is near the town of La Rabaza, Spain though it’s in the Portalegre District of the Alentejo Region of Portugal. It is not clear if there’s an official governing body that presides over this waterfall. For information or inquiries about the area as well as current conditions, you can try visiting the Alentejo Tourism website.
The Cascata da Cabroeira Waterfall resides near Rabaça by the Portugese-Spanish border in the Portalegre District.
Given all the misinformation concerning access to this waterfall, I’ll only focus on the drive to the recommended trailhead from Portalegre with a passing mention of the old southern approach.
The most straightforward way would be to drive northeast of the town of Portalegre along the N246-2 for about 6-7km or so before veering left to continue along the M522 Road.
Then, we’d follow the M522 Road for about another 7km to its junction with the M1044-2 Road.
At this point, we turned right to go on the M1044-2 Road and then drove nearly 13km remaining on the M1044-2 Road (eventually keeping left and going onto the M1044 Road) before reaching the recommended trailhead parking layby just south of the village of Rabaça.
Note that about 1.3km before the recommended trailhead parking was the trailhead parking for the southern approach (which had a clearing and quite a bit of parking space), but I’d avoid starting the hike from there.
Overall, this drive should take around 45 minutes or so, and you’ll want to be careful driving on the M1044-2 Road, especially around the Cascata da Cabroeira trailheads because the road is single-lane for much of that stretch.
For context, Portalegre is about 22km (about 30 minutes drive) south of Marvão, 103km (about 90 minutes drive) northeast of Évora, 184km (over 2 hours drive) south of Manteigas, about 227km (about 2.5 hours drive) northeast of Lisbon, and about 339km (about 3.5 hours drive) southwest of Salamanca, Spain.
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Back and forth sweep from the lookout showing the panorama in the direction of Spain as well as the waterfalls down below
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