DIAMOND PLATED

We return to the road again, after having been in a place as wonderful as Morro de São Paulo.

Once we left the island, our direction was to get to Chapada Diamantina, but before that we wanted to make a small visit to the city of Salvador de Bahía , we arrived at the place where we had to take the ferry to cross, that place is called Bom Despacho I don't remember exactly the price of the ferry ticket, but I do know that they weren't that expensive since we had to cross a couple of times for different reasons. Upon arriving in the city I remember that I was looking for a Wester Union , for whom not You know what it is, basically it is a place or company designed to send money to other countries, in my case I was going to withdraw money, after walking a couple of km we arrived at an area similar to the plaza thinking what we would do, what It was our next move, we were without money and without food, after asking where we could take transportation to get to the Wester Union which was in a mall, we managed to get them to take us there without problems, once the procedure was done we were able to give ourselves a little break The next step was to know where we would stay since the city was too big and there was nothing but cement, the good thing was that the food was very cheap, a kettle cost 5 reales , which in other places could cost up to 15 reales. , we made the decision to return to Bom Despacho, the place where the ferry was taken, since it had a beach and was the best place where we could spend the night.

Already leaving Salvador de Bahía and returning to the route, we headed towards Chapada Diamantina, before getting there we had to stay in different places, most of them were fuel stations, they generally gave free coffee, in some there was free Internet, and on several occasions they gave us food, during the trip we met a truck driver better known as El Profeta , that person dropped us off very close to Chapada Diamantina, without a doubt he was a person who made our arrival to that place much easier, being already close. We stocked up on food to reach what would be a forest place, full of trees, river, insects, a lot of flora and fauna, after taking a vehicle something like a taxi, we arrived at Lençois , place where we would spend our first nights, The food we brought was only intended for 3 days, we went in search of the right place to set up our tents, we had to climb some rocks between rivers, where after a couple of meters we found a place that we believed was the right place to spend the night. , after that we went to the little town of Lençois to see if there was a way to generate money, but we realized that the people and the boom in that place were during the night, so there was not much to do.

We arrived in Lençois with little money thinking that we could generate something in the place, but as we saw that there was not much to do I had to choose to go in search of another Wester Unión, they told me that the closest one was in the next town which was 67km away, its name was Seabra , the money I had left was only enough to go, very optimistic I bought the ticket to Seabra and I was left with approximately 3 Reales , I left with flip flops, a t-shirt, shorts and a hammock just in case, when I arrived at the Seabra bus station that was next to the BR-242 highway, I had to walk approximately 1.5 km towards the center, when I managed to get to the center and speaking with the police, I found out that there was no Wester Union in that place, I was thinking about what to do since I didn't have money to go back, I went back to the main road trying to hitchhike so that someone would take me to Lençois, no one wanted to take me, so I had to make the decision to walk back to a place of fuel that I had seen along the way, 4 km walking with flip flops, shorts, a T-shirt and a sun that had me crazy, when I arrived at the gas station I tried to get a truck driver to take me to Lençois, I was unsuccessful and the night was over. fell, I had to choose to spend the night there, between two trees I tied the hammock that I had brought to sleep, that night it was cold and didn't let me sleep at all, I only wrapped myself in the hammock to try to cover myself a little , and although it didn't help much, I only had to survive there, when it was early I spoke again with other truckers to see if any of them would take me, there was no point, I had no way to get out of that place, I tried with some cars that loaded fuel and I didn't achieve anything either, when I had to have breakfast I bought a cookie to stave off my hunger a little, but it was only for a while, trying to get out of there, lunch time caught me and I had no money left, I had no other option but to ask food at the restaurant that was at that gas station, by the way the place was so big that it had a hairdresser, bathrooms, restaurant, among other things, I was successful and they gave me a kettle , at that moment I was the happiest person with that portion of food, I walked to a small square in the place, suddenly a person arrived with a drink in his hand, it turned out to be the hairdresser, after talking for several minutes he told me that if I couldn't get out of there hitchhiking the He would give me money for the bus, finally I was late and I spent another night in the place, with the difference that the person had given me money to return the next day, after having returned to Lençois there was almost no food left and we had to We had to leave that place because we had no money. Luckily for us, we kept the number of El Profeta, a person who took us in his truck to a gas station that was relatively close to Chapada. When we contacted him, he said that he would pass by that place when The next day heading south, we went to Feira de Santana , where I managed to get money through Wester Union, from that fuel station to Feira de Santana we traveled 282 km , after we finally had some money we decided to return to Chapada , we could not leave without knowing that beautiful place, when we managed to return and after having been in Lençois, we went to the Cachoeira do Pai Inácio , we arrived at the place and decided to go to the Morro do Pai Inácio , we had to climb to 1165 MSNM , without a doubt that it was worth every effort to get to that place and see a wonderful view and sunset, when we went back to Cachoeira, the place where we were going to spend the night, it started to get dark and we could hardly see anything anymore, we set up the tents completely in the dark and we rested in that place, the next day we had a breakfast that would give us the energy to continue through what was Chapada Diamantina.

After leaving Morro do Pai Inácio, we stayed in a place called Río Rodas , this was a place full of rocks, rivers and an infinite number of trees.

When we left Río Rodas, we met a person who lived in a community and he told us that maybe we could leave our things there so we could take the route we wanted, which was from Vale do Capao to Vale do Pati, it was 6 days walking through what we needed to lighten weight, this person finally let us enter his community and set up our tents there, a place in the middle of the forest, finally after several things that happened in that place we headed towards Vale do Pati, we started the route and the We spent the first night in the Cachoeira da Purificação , the next day we continued walking, there is no doubt that where we were walking was an extremely large place, we were days away from traveling through the entire valley, as I said we continued the route and the next night we spent in a place called the Ranch , followed by that we stayed at Cachoeira do Calixto , the valley has too many Cachoeiras, (for those who don't know, a Cachoeira is a waterfall), we continued moving forward and stayed at El Poço da Prefeitura.

We continued moving forward and we found the Posada do Guina , it was a hostel in the middle of the valley, they sold food and it was a more comfortable place you could say, but we didn't stay there, we just did some food shopping and left our backpacks to go up to the Morro do Castelo , I think it took us 2 hours to climb the Morro, we also didn't manage to get to the top since we got lost, we found a snake outside a large cave, it was still, it was like it was waiting for us to approach, it was already It was getting dark and we had to return, by the time we got to the bottom it was already dark, we took our backpacks and camped a little further away from where we bought the food, because we were inside a valley, many times we had to drink water directly from the river, I remember that It was our last place in the valley where we stayed, it was 6 days walking, the valley has so many Cachoeiras that it would be impossible to name them all, however each place we visited had its charm, you learn a lot being there, you appreciate many things and above all you You realize that you don't need that much to be able to live, Chapada Diamantina was a place that I never thought I would reach and that in some way taught me that I could reach the place I set my mind to, thank you so much for Chapada Diamantina.