Karfiguéla Falls are a broad staircase of sandstone in the Cascades region of southwestern Burkina Faso, near the town of Banfora, where the young Comoé river splits into dozens of cascades stepping down the banded rock, with calm basins at the top where the families of the region gather to swim, and they are walked to under an avenue of mango trees and climbed beside on rough steps cut into the rock. The falls sit on the western edge of the Banfora cliffs, a long sandstone escarpment, and the river that starts here goes on south through Ivory Coast to the sea; the approach runs the last stretch beneath a corridor of mango trees and through kapok forest, deep in shade and loud with birds, and comes out at the foot of the staircase, where in the low light of early and late the sun crosses the finely banded rock and cuts every step into relief, the reds and greys of the sandstone in layers. The rough steps lead about fifteen minutes up beside the cascades to the still basins at the top, where local families swim and picnic at the weekend and the water runs clear over the rock in the dry season.
In the rainy season from June to September the young Comoé swells and the falls thunder across the full width of the rock, running the colour of red earth, the water at its fullest and loudest, and the pools are off limits. Karfiguéla is the best known of several waterfalls near Banfora, and together they give the whole province its name, the Cascades region, with the domes of Fabédougou, the hippo lake of Tengréla and the peaks of Sindou on the same roads, so the falls are one stop on a day around the town, reached by a dirt track through sugar cane from the road. The sugar plantation of the valley draws its water from the river above the falls. Karfiguéla is a staircase of rock that a river steps down, and the pools at the top are the bath.