About Frecha da Mizarela
Frecha da Mizarela is said to be one of the tallest waterfalls in the mainland of Portugal with estimates varying from 60m to 97m in cumulative height.
It’s situated in the Arouca Geopark (in mountains of Albergaria da Serra), where the park also encompasses the popular Passadiços do Paiva Trail.

Given its fairly close proximity to the city of Porto, it’s understandable that this place sees its share of visitors though it’s nowhere near as busy as the Passadiços do Paiva.
In any case, this waterfall seemed to present quite a few two-edged sword characteristics or challenges.
First, as you can see from the photos on this page, Frecha da Mizarela tends to have lighter flow, especially since our visit happened in mid-June 2024.
So I can totally see the waterfall not being very impressive (or not flowing at all) later in the Summer.

However, if you try to time your visit for when there’s likely to be higher water volume due to storms, then the waterfall’s position at higher elevation means it might be obscured by clouds under such conditions.
So the best timing in terms of waterflow would likely be after a clearing storm where there had been significant precipitation but with less fog or low clouds lingering around to block the view.
Another conflicting characteristic was that this waterfall faced west so it had the best lighting in the afternoon (assuming it was a sunny day).
Unfortunately when we made our visit on a sunny Saturday morning, we pretty much had to look against the sun, especially when we viewed it directly (more on this later).

At least Frecha da Mizarela was lightly visited during our excursion so we didn’t have to contend with crowds (which might be the case later in the afternoon).
Anyways, this waterfall features sweeping panoramic views in the Serra da Freita mountains as it felt quite like we were on top of the world.
To extend the experience, it was possible to take one of the strenuous upside-down trails descending deep into the gorge to reach the base of the waterfall, but that was something we didn’t do on our visit.
Experiencing Frecha da Mizarela
The easiest way to experience the Frecha da Mizarela was from the miradouro (lookout), which was pretty much next to the turnoff for the single-lane road down to the hamlet of Aldeia da Ribeira.

Depending on where you park (see directions below), this could be as little as an almost roadside excursion or as much as a 300m (600m round-trip) walk along the M621 Road.
There were trails that seemed to steeply descend beneath the lookout to get closer to the Frecha da Mizarela Waterfall, but we wound up deciding not to do it given the steepness of the terrain.
However, we did go another 250m downhill on that single-lane road for Aldeia da Ribeira towards a more direct cross-canyon view of the waterfall.
Unfortunately, from that position, we pretty much looked right into the sun at the waterfall, which didn’t make for great photos.

Nevertheless, from there, we noticed that there was another trail that appeared to descend to get closer to the base of the waterfall, but again, we didn’t pursue that either.
So overall, we wound up spending probably less than an hour around this scenic area encompassing both of the aforementioned views of the waterfall.
Certainly, we could have extended our visit to do the upside down hikes to get right up to the falls, or even go all the way to the end of the road to the hamlet of Aldeia da Ribeira.
But that will have to be for another time.
Authorities
The Frecha da Mizarela Waterfall is in the Arouca Geopark near the town of Arouca in the Aveiro District of Norte Region of Portugal. It is managed by the Municipality of Arouca. For information or inquiries about the area as well as current conditions, you can try visiting the Arouca Geosite website.
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