For the past week I've been travelling through inland Brazil, taking in a few national parks the Chapada da Veadieros and Chapada da Diamantines.Our first stop was a little town Alto Paraiso near the first national park. It was quite cute with little hippy shops around the place. The first day there we did a massive hike down through the savanna scrubland to check out some waterfalls. It was bloody hot which made the swimming that much more lovely when we arrived. We stopped there and had lunch and sunbaked on the rocks before heading upstream to another swimming spot with a few little mini waterfalls and some rapids. Of course the boys had to show off in the rapids and our tour leader Rudi scored a cut to his forehead, silly man. No sympathy from nurse Erin!
After Alto Paraiso we went to a community in Kalunga. The founding of the community was quite interesting, first forming several hundred years earlier from slaves who had escaped work in the mines and other labour. The community kept themselves isolated and only in the past few decades have they been connecting with the rest of the country and getting government services etc. I just had a chilled day there cos I had been a little sick, hanging in the hammock playing ukulele and resting up.
The next day we had a long drive to Lencois, gateway to the Chapada da Diamantines. Its a gorgeous old colonial town with the brightly painted houses set on a river. The first day a few of us from the group (Kate, Jarod, Sarah and Sarah, Chas and Tyler and I) went exploring upstream, traipsing across some strange pink marbely-rockyroady rocks then swimming in a few little interconnected pools. After lunch we walked through the forest downstream to a natural waterslide - the river streaming down a flat rock at about a 40 degree angle - that was SO much fun. A tad scary cos you do pick up some speed, plus its a little bumpy:) There were some guys at the waterhole who had strung up a slackrope across the water and very impressively walked across it. They made it look so easy in fact that I thought I'd try my hand at it - totally hopeless! One of the guys was holding my hand but before I could even let go I was shaking all over the place and promptly splashed in the water as soon as he let go. That guy was crazy actually, kept singing really high pitched Bob Marley and ''you can get it if you really want" as people tried the slackrope. On the way home we stopped for coconuts: they just chop the top off and stick a straw in, its great, the most refreshing hydration ever!
The following day was friggin brilliant. We did a tour all around the national park. We began with a huge cave which had tonnes stalactite and stalagmites plus all these drapey bits, it was so beautiful as we walked along shining our torches on more and more of these amazing formations. We stopped halfway through the cave, turned off our torches, went silent and had a short little meditation. Which was good once I got "Ïf you like pina coladas" (Which for some reason has become the tour theme song) out of my head! Next stop was this amazing blue pool/river with crystal clear water - I jumped off the cliff on a zip-line and flew across and into it - that was awesome fun. We walked upstream to another cave where the water was bright blue, then drove to another spot and hiked to a cool waterfall for more swimming. The day finished with a hike up one of the mountains where we could see all around the park. The views were just stunning, looking across the valleys to all these tabletop mountains as the sun set, it was lovely. That night we found a weird party with some performance dancing and a couple bands and had a good dance, then a few of us went for a spontaneous moonlit trip up to the river pools again and swam and listened to music late into the night. All in all a pretty awesome day.
Since then we've been in Salvador which is a big city where we've been walking the streets sightseeing, checking out markets, and last night watched this incredible dance performance with some amazingly athletic local dancers. The culture here is much more African influenced, with Capoeira demonstrations in the street so this performance involved some amazing jumping and twisting to some intense percussion based music, it was great. I cant wait to see what the next leg of the trip has in store, we're now on the coast and will be making our way up to Belem at the mouth of the amazon - no doubt even more swimming woohoo:)
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