About Cascata de Mourao
Cascata de Mourao (or Cascata de Mourão) consists of a couple of waterfalls on the Ribeira de Mourão Creek situated near the village of Anços (so it’s also called Cascata de Anços).
Of the waterfalls that I encountered here, the upper one featured a vertical drop of around 10-15m with a large plunge pool and lots of tree vegetation fringing the body of water.
The lower tier further downstream was much shorter as it went down a multi-tiered sloping shelf over a height of perhaps 3-5m or so.
According to a sign near the trailhead (see directions below), the valley containing this waterfall also happened to be inhabited by Moors before Christians took over.
In fact, the word “Mourão” apparently means “Moors”, and thus this would be the waterfall of Moors given that they were apparently one of the first inhabitants of this valley.
Conditions of Flow
Our visit to the Cascata de Mourão took place in early June 2024, which also happened to be a year where the Mediterranean countries seemed to be grappling with persistent drought.
So you can imagine my surprise when I managed to witness this waterfall still having a light but satisfactory flow.
As you can see from the photos above, this waterfall probably didn’t have too much life left as the Summer would progress without appreciable precipitation.
Thus, if I had to extrapolate from this limited sample size of observations, I’d say that Spring and early Summer would be the times to visit the Cascata de Mourao Waterfall.
These seasons seem to have the best of both worlds in terms of more stable, cooler weather without the extreme heat that European countries have been suffering from further exacerbated by Global Warming.
Of course, this time frame has to be caveated with how much precipitation fell during the course of its Winter season.
A disappointing Winter season (i.e. lack of precipitation) could reduce this limited time frame of visiting the Cascata de Mourao even more.
Accessing Cascata de Mourão
It appeared that Cascata de Mourao could be accessed from two different starting points.
The first one was near some fencing where there was signage in Portugese saying not to block that area to allow cars to turn around.
That limited parking even more because the area beyond that fencing was pretty much reserved for private driveways and local traffic passing through.
The hike from this starting point to the waterfalls comprising the Cascata de Mourão was on the order of about 1.4km round-trip.
The second starting point was at what appeared to be public street parking (though there was no signage or anything) situated by some residences belonging to the village of Anços.
Strangely enough, when I hiked to the waterfalls from the first starting point, I actually walked by this one-way street containing the unsigned street parking spaces.
The GPS apps like GoogleMaps actually misled us to the wrong side of this one-way street, which was why we didn’t start the hike in this manner.
Anyways, after the one-way street, the road then peaked before descending by some some signed trail junction deviating from the road (I encountered signage that pointed the way to “cascatas”).
I’ll provide more details of doing the longer version of this hike in the next section.
Overall, I spent a little over an hour away from the car to cover a distance of around 1.4km round-trip.
Note that the second starting point might shave off half of that overall distance (or 700m round-trip).
Cascata de Mourão Trail Description
Assuming I started from the further trailhead (i.e. the first starting point described above), I’d hike down along the Rua dos Moleiros.
Then, I kept right at the fork to continue along the Ribeira de Mourão on the Rua do Pego before crossing the creek to get onto the Rua do Rio.
Next, I followed the Rua das Cascatas in the wrong direction towards the Rua da Laranjeira, which then became unpaved after cresting near the end of someone’s farm or residence.
Shortly after the road started to descend, I encountered a signed trail veering to the left towards the Ribeira de Mourão again.
Going down this trail, it encountered forks in the trail, especially where the steps and some railings ended.
Going right at this fork, it eventually led a short distance downstream to the lower tier of the Cascata de Mourão and its 3-5m drop on a shelf that can be reached by a very narrow ledge.
Other trails continued further downstream along the Ribeira de Mourão towards some stream accesses, but I went no further down the trail.
Backtracing to the trail fork at the end of the railings, I then followed the leftmost path, which went upstream along the Ribeira de Mourão.
This path went by some gear-like remnants strewn about the trail next to what appeared to be the ruins of one of the mills described by the stone sign at the start of this hike.
Eventually, after a brief scrambling on the creek bed, I skirted by an intermediate cascade before doing some mild bouldering towards a large plunge pool fronting the upper tier of the Cascata de Mourão with its roughly 10-15m drop.
This was a serene spot that I’d imagine could be a nice swimming hole given the size of the plunge pool here.
I shared this place with one other early bird during my visit, but after having my fill of this spot, I saw at least a handful more people (seemingly Portugese-speaking locals) making their way to this waterfall.
Therefore, it can’t be as unknown and obscure as I would have thought.
I then backtracked the way I came to the parked car, where I wound up spending around 65 minutes away from the car to cover the roughly 1.4km round-trip distance.
Authorities
Cascata de Mourao is located in the village of Ancos near the town of Sintra in the Lisbon Region of Portugal. It is not clear if there’s an official governing body that presides over these waterfalls. However, it seems like local landowners and town officials from Ancos, Montelavar, or Sintra have been responsible for signs and trail infrastructure. For information or inquiries about the area as well as current conditions, you can try visiting the Sintra Tourism website.
The Cascata de Mourao resides in the rural village of Anços near the well-touristed town of Sintra.
Thus, for the directions here, I will do the routing as if we were coming from the Sintra Train Station and public parking.
So from the P3 lot by the Sintra Train Station, we’d drive east on the Avenida Mario Firmino Miguel (N249) for about 1.7km to the A16 going north.
Shortly after getting on the A16 north, we’d then go about 850m before taking the next exit leading to the N9 Road.
Following along the N9 for about 7.2km, we’d then keep to the right to take the southbound ramp to continue on the N9.
After going straight on the first roundabout, we’d then turn left onto the Rua das Piçarras (there’s a traffic light here), and follow this road for another 1.6km towards the easy-to-miss Rua dos Moleiros.
At this easy-to-miss turnoff, there’s also a small sign pointing towards Mourão as well as an even smaller trail sign pointing to the Cascatas de Mourão.
Take this turnoff and drive roughly 150m to a space where you can park near a bench, but please don’t block the fence where there’s a sign saying in Portugese to not block it so as to allow people to turn around.
There’s very limited parking space here (maybe room for 4-6 cars or so).
Overall, this roughly 13km drive should take on the order of about 15-20 minutes.
In order to access the second spot for an even shorter hike, instead of turning left onto Rua dos Moleiros, continue driving another 500m more to an easy-to-miss turnoff on the left for the Rua da Laranjeira.
This is a limited use road so it might be tricky to turn onto this single-lane one-way road.
Then, continue driving on this road for another 100m on Rua da Laranjeira before turning left onto the Rua das Cascatas, and it’s here that you might be able to street park next to the walled fencing on the left.
For context, Sintra is about 29km (about 30 minutes drive) northwest of Lisbon, about 18km (under 30 minutes drive) north of Cascais, 330km (over 3 hours drive) south of Porto, and 320km (over 3 hours drive) north of Lagos.
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Starting off with a right to left sweep of the lower falls before walking right up to its base to do a back and forth sweep from there
Right to left sweep of the upper waterfall showing its nice calm plunge pool as well as vine-covered cliff to the waterfall's left
More direct look at the upper falls while also panning around the surroundings to provide greater context to this spot
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