Cactuses in Brazil?!
We spent a few more days in Salvador after New Years, mostly awaiting the famed Tuesday night parties the city puts on every week. Every week, can you imagine, they set up stages and tear them back down, showcasing local musical acts. It was really great, and worth the wait of a few days of doing nothing in Salvador. Well, not exactly nothing…we did search out and buy some local music, tried to meet up with the 11-year old Lais from the ferry (but were stood up), took a crowded boat back and forth to some crap beach, and spent the nights watching “Stick Man” walk with his stick up and down the street below the hostel patio selling drugs and pimping prostitutes, at least that’s what we gathered he was doing…
So, after a good Tuesday night of stage-hopping from plaza to plaza, mixed occasionally with following whatever little samba group was marching down the street, we left early the next morning to go to a town called Lençois, the jumping off grounds for a national park called Chapada Diamantina, which had been highly recommended. The bus left at something like 6 in the morning, so I promptly fell asleep as soon as we boarded. I woke up a short while later, looked out the window, and, well, I felt more like I was in Arizona than Brazil. Outside the window, there were cactuses, like the really big ones, spewn across the large, sandy landscape. I didn’t know such a place existed in Brazil…I just thought of beaches and/or jungle. It was pretty cool, although I was too tired to take any photos and vowed to do it on the bus ride back…
The town of Lençois is pretty centered around tourism into Chapada Diamantina, which was evident the second we jumped off the bus and were swarmed by people trying to get us to go to their pousada and do their tour. In the end, the pousadas all offer the same thing, all charge about the same, and all the tours are grouped together and cover the same route. Rather put off by all the people and their offers (how do you choose one over the other when they’re all the same and everyone wants you just as badly?), we decided to walk around ourselves to find something and ended up at 0ne of the places anyway. We spent the rest of the day sitting in the local river that forms little waterfalls and swimming pool, and signed up for the main one-day tour the next day, which we assumed would suck, just given the mass-tourism feel of it all.
The next morning, the bus picked us up, and it was one of those big tour buses, like a small school bus, which we were expecting. However, we were happy (and surprised) to find out there were only 3 other people on the tour, though they were all Brazilian and the tour was done in Portuguese, so I was the translator, for what I could understand of it.
We first went to a series of two waterfalls, the first one being not all that interesting, but the second one a bit cooler. The walk there was nice, too, over some rocks and along a river. I was glad to be doing some walking…we thought it would be a get-out-and-look, take-photos-back-in-the-car tour. This place had a zip line, where you could jump and zip down into the water, and also a rappelling harness set up, but I declined either one, as I thought their prices were too high for what it was on top of the cost of the tour.
9:30 in the morning and already our tour companions started drinking…hmm, this would be interesting; two women, one man. The women each had one, the man downed something like three. We drank water.
Next stop was climbing up one of these big rock formations (photos are up on the link on the left to see what I mean). It looks like you’re out in the desert in the States, with plateaus and all that, but while the ground is covered with sand, there’s lush foliage everywhere – it’s very green. So, we climbed up one, with Mr. WhoopWhoop (our alky friend started talking in this whoop-whoop voice…bad enough we couldn’t understand Portuguese), drinking some more, and jumping up and down the steep rocks. I was surprised (and dare I say, slightly disappointed) that he didn’t fall. The view from up top was pretty cool, and I was just in love with all the different sorts of plants there were, still amazed that this was Brazil. I had always thought of beaches and jungle when I thought of Brazil, and this was totally different.
We drove for a while next, stopping for lunch (and beers for WhoopWhoop, who I thought Vanessa was going to kill at this point), and then off to the next stop – a series of two caves with lakes. The first one was a little disappointing – it was really small and had blue water, but that was it – a cave with blue water. The second one was better, with another zip line into the lake below; this one I took advantage of… I waited for Vanessa to go below to take some photos and, all in my harness, jumped off the side of this cliff with a big WHOO-HOO-HOO-HOOOOO!, as I’m sure I got the attention of all the people below. Pretty cool 10 second rush, with the first 2 seconds a bit of a free fall before you start riding the line down. Was enough to put a smile on my face for a while.
Finally, we were taken to the last site on the bill. We had been running a little behind the rest of everyone on the tour the whole day (with that, I mean our tour group was the last of many doing the same circuit), which was really nice because we did get to enjoy the places for some time without the mass crowds there. For the last stop, though, our guide asked if we minded gong to another cave that was better, but we couldn’t mention this back at the tour office. Well, the guy hardly had a problem with us saying anything, as it took him about five times to explain himself until I understood what he was saying!
The final cave was a proper cave, with stalagmites and stalactites (if that’s what makes a proper cave, I suppose). We had a prtty nice tour in there, going pretty deep down into a small little cavern. There’s lots of photos on the shutterfly site of all the different cave formations. Sorry if they get boring.
We stayed in Lençois just one more day, opting just to hang around town, where I sat in the little river pools again, and played with features of my camera. We had been hoping to attend a candomblé ceremony in Salvador, but hadn’t been able to while we were there, because the lady the hostel recommended had been on vacation. However, she was now back in town and there would be a ceremony on the following night. So, after sitting, soaking in the pools all day, we took the night bus back to Salvador (causing me, incidentally, to miss the shots of the cactuses in Brazil I mentioned about, but you’ll see I did get enough).
Tags: Brazil, Tag Index
Tania