Paradise Blogged

After a few days in Salvador we took a short 6 hour bus journey to a small diamond-mining town named Lençois in the Chapada Diamantina National Parkin Bahia, Brazil. We were here on a recommendation from Amy, who we had met in Arica in Chile two and a half months ago, who had stayed here for 6 months. It turned out to be a very good recommendation.

Having arrived early afternoon we headed off to explore the town. Not that it took long, we soon found that it was a pretty sleepy sort of place, especially at 3pm when everything was shut (except for a small cafe where we were able to get lunch) – including the bank. This was especially important as the only ATM in town was refusing to give us any money (this was a common theme throughout Brazil!) and the hostel required payment in cash. Fortunately, the ATM started working for a few lucky minutes later in the evening – we quickly withdrew as much cash as we could for the day in the hope that this would cover us for our time there (fortunately it could).

We headed back to the hostel to book our tours for the following days – the park is big and the guidebooks suggest going with a guide if you are heading out – and decided that we would do a tour of the local caves the next day. We then headed out for a quick look around the shops before returning to the hostel once again for a weekly Capoeira  (a Brazilian marshall art / dance) display by some children from the local school, as was advertised on a poster in the hostel to raise money for the school. When 8:15, the start time, had come and gone Clare asked the reception staff what was happening. “Oh no, they were here at 7pm” they said, which they obviously weren´t as we had been there at 7pm. “But the poster says 8:15 anyway”, Clare replied. Well, we could go up to the school and watch them practice if we wanted. We decided not to and headed out once again for dinner (the poster remains in the hostel, despite the show not actually happening any more…!).

The following day we headed out on our first trip, to visit some caves and grottos of the National Park. We stopped first at a small waterfall, took some photos and then watched as a couple of Norwegian guys on our tour climbed up to the top of the falls in order to jump from the top into the pool below. It looked rather scary, we didn´t follow suit. We then moved on to a cave named Lapa Doce (and got bitten by a number of mosquitoes on the way) where we were joined by a local guide for a kilometre or so walk though the cave to view the stalactites and stalagmites. Our guide duly pointed out each formation that had some phallic or otherwise sexual image resemblence (see if you can spot them in the photos!), before we moved on to our lunch spot.

Lunch was at a grotto named Pratinha. At Pratinha it is possible to snorkel within the cave and see the local fish and, as you leave the cave, you arrive in perfect turquiose waters filled. With a lack of prescription snorkelling kit I had to remain at the side, filling the time by trying to get the photos to show the water as blue as possible. Clare did do he snorkelling, despite the complete lack of health and safety awareness as they expected people to share a torch one between two in the pitch black of the cave. They eventually got a torch each and everyone made it out of the cave (we think!). Clare and another girl in the group followed this up with a quick zip-line into the lake (something which looked terrifying to me – I´m not the best for high-adrenaline activities!) before heading off to another cave, Lapa Azul, that glows deep blue in the right light. We finished off the day climbing a small hill called Pai Inacio for some stunning views of the surrounding countryside.

Our next day was a 14km hike to the Fumaça Waterfall. At 400m high it is the highest in Brazil and only accessible by foot. We had been told that the first 2km were really difficult – steep and slippery and tiring. Having bounded up them in about 30 minutes we confirmed that, although it was mostly uphill, it certainly wasn´t as difficult as some poeple made it out to be. Of course, our standards (and abilities) may have changed since doing the Inca trail!  The rest of the walk was almost completely flat, taking us through some beautiful countryside with some diverse flora and plenty of butterflies and drgonflies to capture our attention. We arrived at the site fo the waterfall to find you could only view it by peering tentatively over the edge of a rock ledge. Holding onto glasses (didn´t want to lose another pair!) and camera we slid forward lying on our fronts. It was a pretty big drop though as it hadn´t rained in a while the waterfall had mostly dried up, leaving only a little mist where the water fell over the edge, not reaching the bottom. The views of the surrounding park were spectacular, all making the trek worthwhile. We then trekked back to the start where we quickly downed a couple of cold bottles of water (it was a VERY hot day!!) before we headed off to another waterfall and rock pool for a quick swim to cool off (or just dip feet in – the water was really cold! )

We spent our last day in Lençóis heading out to another natural pool, a 40 minute walk away, this time with a natural waterslide as well. We arrived and went for a swim (I made it in this time!) but weren´t sure about the waterslide. We were even less sure when a few of the locals turned up and started sliding down the 20 metres of bare rock on two feet before be thrown into the pool below – it didn´t look entirely safe! We decided to give it a pass and headed back to town (to buy more from Clare´s favourite jewellery store) and to get a drink. We found a stall selling juices and some Brazilian cocktails, but went for the chocolate milkshake to cool down. We realised something was up when, having put some milk in a cocktail shaker he then added what appeared to be half a bottle of Smirnoff Vodka before adding chocolate powder and topping off the glass with a little more vodka for good measure. It wasn`t what we expected, but was very nice anyway! We had dinner and headed back for an early night – 7:30 am bus for another 6 hour journey back to Salvador the next day.

And that pretty much concluded our time in South America. We had a final afternoon in Salvador (mostly spent trying to find a working ATM in order to pay for our Airport Taxi the next morning – eventually had to change some US Dollars for a very poor exchange rate as we couldn´t get money anywhere else!). The next day we would take a flight from Salvador to Rio before catching another flight from Rio to Santiago, Chile (stopping off in Sao Paulo on the way).

Our final, final day in South America was spent doing a bit of last minute shopping in Santiago, eating more ´Doggi´s` (the Hot Dog, Chips, Cheese and Grease combinations we had had in Santiago a couple of months previously!) before a late night flight to Auckland in New Zealand (a mere 13 hours, but with a 16 hour time difference we are about to lose an entire day on the flight!). We´ll be back soon with more tales from the lands down under….

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 1:19 pm and is filed under Brazil, Chile, South America. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.