To pick up where we left off. Canoa. The pousada we stayed at in Canoa Quebrada was probably the best one yet. Ocean views with our own private room and bathroom, a hammock on our balcony, and windows that opened up to let in the first cool breeze we`d experienced in Brazil. After checking in, we decided to walk through town and quickly realized how touristy it was. Every other vehicle is a dune buggy blasting music with a driver just waiting for the next sucker who wants a ride to the dunes for 200 bucks or something. And, while Brazil has a strict zero tolerance policy in regards to drinking and driving, apparently that only applies to licensed vehicles as we saw several buggy drivers pounding cold Skols (Brazil`s most popular beer) as they drove around town. As we walked through town we found our first open French bakery and ate a delicious croque monsieur and a quiche followed by some chocolate cake. Canoa was pretty much a hang out at the beach kind of a place and so we made several hikes from our pousada up on the cliff down to the beach and back up, always after the sun was mostly down so we could avoid antother serious sunburn. On one particular trip back from the beach we found a large group of locals out on a cliff dancing/working out by stepping on and off some purple blocks to some exceptionally loud American pop music led by a rather flamboyant man who was urging people to join. While neither of us were very keen on that kind of thing, we did stay for a while and watch this La Jolla soccer moms - Canoa Style kind of event because it was pretty entertaining.
On a bridge over the cliffs above the beach with
After a couple of days of enjoying ourselves on the beach swimming and hucking disk, we began our long bus journey to Lencois. No amount of mental preparation could have prepared us for the bussing we were about to embark on; a one hour van ride to Aracati, 4 hour bus to Fortaleza, and then a 23 hour bus ride to Salvador followed by a 6 hour bus ride to Lencois. Yikes! We were fortunate enough to have a 7 hour layover in Fortaleza, so we left our bags at a luggage storage place at the bus station and headed for the beach. We were both very low on calories for the day, so made an attempt to find a seafood market our guidebook mentioned. After walking for "500 meters" which felt suspiciously more like 2 miles and in the hot sun on the beach we got to a small group of locals playing cards on what looked to be a bunch of sales booths that were completely closed down. Damn! I guess we aren´t getting any garlic shrimp. So we walk back the direction we came from and stop at the first restaurant on the beach where the waiter recommends something that includes fish and we sit down to cold beer and wait for the food. About 10 minutes later the waiter brings out a whole fried fish. We´re both stoked and Acacia kind of looks at it and then with a slight look of concern on her face says "I don´t know how to approach eating a whole fried fish?". So I pull most of the meat off the fish and divide it onto our two plates. After the first taste, we both realize it needs some hot sauce. Acacia struggles a bit getting the hot sauce out of the bottle because the lid isn´t really attached. So when I get it, the rate of hot sauce expulsion from this bottle is way to slow and I proceed to squeeze the bottle hard with the hopes of extracting hot sauce a couple drips faster in order to start eating 30 seconds faster than if I had just patiently used the hot sauce like a normal human being. Pop! Instead I ended up with a plate, both hands, my phone, the guidebook, and both shorts and shirt covered in hot sauce. That didn`t really slow me down however, and I just used a couple napkins to clean myself and then dug in. Afterwards, we walked down the beach for a bit, dreadfully gazing at all the people doing cardio in the humid heat, and enjoying our last few hours off a bus for the next day or so. 5:20 rolls around, and Acacia realizes that we have to be back to the bus station soon and we´re not even sure the best way to get there. We proceed to walk to where we think the local bus will pick us up, which takes about 30 minutes, and jump on the first one that says rodoviaria, the bus station. Well, 6:15 must be rush hour or something because this bus got so full it was kind of like standing at the front of a Metallica concert. With little control of where we moved, and being driven by a raving maniac, we were crammed into the bus next to a bunch of other sweaty people just kind of swaying as part of a giant mass of people as the apparently brakeless bus rounded corners on its way to the bus station. After about 25 minutes, the bus station comes into view and Acacia and I fight our way to the front, literally reaching over people to grab the hand railing and pulling/slithering our way through the crowd to get to the exit. At the stop, we kind of shot out from all the pressure. Anyway, we made it to our bus with 10 minutes to spare, got on, and tilted the chairs back in an attempt to sleep through the night. 23 hours later we arrived in Salvador at 6:00pm, and immediately went searching for tickets to Lencois because we did not want to be stuck in the Salvador bus station overnight. We found tickets for 10:15, so spent the next few hours eating Subway, which makes for particularly difficult ordering in a foreign language, and McDonald`s while playing cards. Again, we tried to sleep on this bus, but the winding mountain roads made that all but impossible.
Whole fried fish
Acacia reading on the beach in Fortaleza
We arrived in Lençois around 4:30am and had not booked a hostel or anything. Sitting behind the bus station in the middle of the night, I had no plan, and Acacia´s big plan was to go to the front of the bus station, which we did (Acacia´s edit: waiting in front of the bus station would definitely have worked, that´s where Jao Paulo was heading). I considered getting a hotdog from the hotdog stand that was open (why is there a hotdog stand open at 4:30am and who eats from it?), but opted not to after some convincing.We ended up following some Dutch girls who were also plan-less and wandered towards the center of town. While crossing the bridge into downtown, a friendly English speaking guy on a bike, who we later learned to be a trekking guide named Jao Paulo, asked if we needed a place to stay. Jao Paulo to the rescue! He took us to a room in a pousada he was somehow affiliated with, said we´d get to stay for 1 night free if we went on a trek with him, told us to rest and that he would find us in the morning to talk about possible treks in the national park nearby. After a few hours of rest, we woke up to a wonderful breakfast of cake, juice, fried eggs, and ham and cheese sandwiches prepared by the pousada owner, Lurdinha, who told us that tomorrow would be a grande breakfast. Awesome. We walked into town and went to a couple of guiding agencies to get a feel for the options and prices of different treks to make sure we weren´t getting screwed over by Paulo. Paulo saw us walking out of one of the guiding companies` storefront and quickly came over to start talking about treks he could take us on and some prices. He bought us juice and a coconut bar, like a macaroon, to sweeten the deal. We decided on a 3 day trek to 5 waterfalls that was ´strenuous`. He showed us around town a bit, and then took us to some swimming holes and a waterfall just outside of town. It was great to be in the mountains finally!
Acacia in one of the swimming holes near town
Me near the river that runs through town
Delicious mango shrimp ravioli
The next morning we woke up, packed our bags, ate a huge breakfast with these little fried cheese pesto balls that were amazing, and met Paulo at our pousada who informed us that a different guide would be leading our trek. Questionable? Anyway, we hopped on some mototaxis and had the best ab workout ever trying to stay on those things with backpacks as we zoomed over dirt roads to the beginning of the trek. There, we officially met Sparrow, a pretty haggard looking guy, who spoke English and was to be our guide for the trip. We learned that he was originally from the jungle, but moved to a big city elsewhere in Brazil and had come to Lencois to visit and loved it so much that he moved out to Lencois. He was apparently also the son of a shaman and knew a lot about the plants around as well as a fair amount about the mining history of the area. Although he was a bit of a chatterbox, he was pretty funny and a great guide. Anyway, the trek started out with a pretty big climb up from the valley to a ridge, and then dropped down to our first waterfall.
Acacia in our first waterfall
The water was the color of tea because of organic matter and a pretty great temperature to cool off in. We swam while Sparrow made lunch, which ended up being an amazing vegetable salad with bread, cheese, and tuna. After lunch we carried our bags about 3 minutes further to the top of the waterfall and dropped them there, at the spot that would eventually become our campsite. We hiked packless about a mile further up the river, mostly hopping from rock to rock. At this point the river was flowing in a pretty steep canyon, so to avoid swimming up the river we climbed on the edge of the canyon wall. The rock was pretty crumbly in some places and we were definitely higher than I (Acacia) would have normally climbed, but if we fell it would have been into the water below us that looked pretty deep. John somehow managed to drop his sunglasses into the water, so climbed down and attempted to dive for them. Since the water is so dark, and there was pretty much no sunshine reaching the bottom of the canyon he didn´t have any luck.
John trying to find his sunglasses
We continued climbing on the side of the canyon until we reached the waterfall. It kinda felt like we were in a cave. There were steep rock walls on three sides, with water pouring over most of them, and since it wasn´t midday, it was fairly dark.
Us at the next waterfall
We stayed until we got cold (what!? cold in Brazil!?) and then backtracked back down the river. After a few attempts at some climbing routes that weren´t gonna happen, we made it back to our campsite and played some frisbee, met some guys camping across the river from us from Italy, and ate an epic fish curry made by Sparrow.
The next day we had a tasty fruit salad with granolla and honey from the Chapada and then river rock hopped for less than an hour to the next waterfall. This one had some huge chunks of conglomerate rock that had fallen off the top that looked like manmade concrete with smaller rocks stuck into it. After this morning break we hiked back up to the ridge and then along the ridge above the same river and then back down again (about 2 hours in total) and breaked for lunch-more vegetable salad- and then river rock hopped up a new river for not more than 2 hours again to the next waterfall, where we would be camping that night. We swam under the waterfall and lounged on the still warm rocks in the shade before setting up our tent on a rock outcropping above the river. Sparrow made us pasta for dinner with biso chocolate for dessert.
Acacia swimming in the pool below the 3rd waterfall
Our last day we had fruit salad, and then walked up a ways to our last waterfall for a dip before a bigger climb up to the ridge. We reached a lookout where we could see pretty much everywhere we had been on this 3 day trip (we certainly were not covering ground) and then began the descent towards town. Our last stop was at a rock waterslide where there were loads of people (locals and tourists) swimming. John went down the waterslide once, almost turning sideways with a look of terror on his face the whole time. Acacia decided she liked not having a bruised tailbone, so skipped it. After one last Sparrow lunch we walked the easy 4 km back to town.
The next day was fairlñy uneventful, we rested and planned to leave the next day for Rio, but couldn´t make any real plans because the bus station was closed. When that day came, turns out the bus wasn´t actually running as posted, which meant we would miss one of our nights we had reserved in Rio. Bummer. We went back to the waterslide and played cards and watertreading frisbee all morning. In the afternoon more people came to the waterslide and we witnessed how not to go down the waterslide (on your knees, outside of the water channel) and how the locals do it (standing up backwards and then backflipping into the pool). We hung around with some other backpackers from the States and Canada and then went back to happy hour in the evening.
The next day we had a big breakfast, John wrote a blog and we prepared to leave, cutting it kind of close with our packing. As I finished packing the google bag, John went to pay Lurdinha. What a disaster. Apparently Jao Paulo had not told Lurdinha about our one night free deal and was conveniently away on a trek. We were in a huge rush to catch our bus, but Lurdinha was blocking the door. Between Lurdinha´s English speaking son, every other guest at the hostel, and some man who we assumed was there as muscle, we finally made it apparent that we were giving her all the money we had (enough for staying for 3 days, the 2 extra breakfasts we ate, and the $12R we had for snack money), which ended up being totally okay with her afterall. We ran down the hill to the bus station, and made it just as the bus was supposed to be leaving, but it wasn´t there yet. Figures. 45 minutes later we were on the bus to Rio.
What an adventure! Hoping your tailbone is okay and that you don't run into any more "musclemen". Love you!
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