Waterfall wonders

Last week we were in Chachapoyas and were told that the nearby Catarata Gocta was the thid highest  waterfall in the world. Naturally, we added it to our list of things to do. We have seen a fair few in the sixteen months we have been away, on walks in Australia and New Zealand, a visit to the fantastic Iguazu Falls as well as from buses throughout the Andes. I have been looking forward to seeing the world´s tallest, Kerepakupai-Merú (known since 1933 as Angel Falls), in Venezuela on this trip.

At the registration point for the falls was posted a Washington Post piece which stated that there was some disagreement about the status of Gocta, due to there not existing a universally recognized standard of waterfall measurement. It turns out that lots of factors need to be taken into consideration when considering what can even be defined as a waterfall (or what type of waterfall it can be defined as). Vertical height is one of those, slope is a second, volume a third. Finally, the question of whether non-bedrock cascades should be included in the measurement of a waterfall is an important and too-long-to-go-into-here element.

Wikipeda only deepened the confusion. On the waterfall page it said Cautley Spout in Cumbria was England´s highest. On Cautley Spout´s page, it said Gaping Gill in North Yorkshire falls a greater distance (but into a pothole). The waterfall page also names Gocta and another waterfall as the world´s third highest. Seems to me, I could do a better job of measuring them than that.

Anyway, further research suggests that Gocta is actually only the third highest waterfall in Peru. Catarata Yumbilla at 870m or 896m falls in four tiers, while the Three Sisters Waterfall has three tiers and reaches about 914m. The World Waterfall Database has Gocta at 16^th. Somehow, I don´t think this information is going to change the marketing strategy of the agencies around Chachapoyas´ Plaza de Armas.