Salvador de Bahia and hiking at Chapada Diamantina

Arriving at the old town center of Salvador, we were like usual met by some guys who wanted to show us their Pousada or hostel which is of course the best in town (all of them!). As it was still very early we decided to go with the cheapest of them, which was quite a good choice, because like this we got the room for 60 R which would normally have cost us 65R, but it seems that he didn't know the price correctly. The people in the hostel were angry at him and didn't give him any money for bringing us there, we pretended to not understand what the whole problem was and in the end got the room for 60R.

Before coming to Salvador I was really looking forward for it, because everybody was talking about how beautiful it is, which is true but unfortunately only for the small part of the old town center and the beach area. The rest of the city is kind of a no-go-area for tourists which makes restaurant and hostel prices rise in the touristy areas. Still we spent a nice sunny day walking around the colourful center, eating local food (too spicy for me, too many prawns for Flo) and listening to bands playing on the street.

From Salvador we took the bus to Lencois, to visit the famous Chapada Diamantina. As the park is also very touristy and none of the trails is marked, we hd read that you needed a guide to go hiking there. As you all know I'm oposed to guides and tours because it's always annoying: too many people, too little time, not enough time to take pictures in the places I want to, being urged to takes pictures in places I don't think are special....

So in the first day we tried to find our way to some waterfalls in the nearby area of Lencois of our own, which didn't work. So in the end we did go with a guide, but luckily it was not too expensive as we could negociate and didn't go with one of the overpriced agency in the town center.

That evening Flo downloaded a hiking app and I really have to advertise it here: It's called ApeMap and it's awesome. The next day we took a taxi to Pai Inacio, a famous mountain that you can climb and then walked all the way back to Lencois (18km), only using the app as a map. If we had taken a tour it would have cost us 90R/person. Now it cost us 30R for the taxi and we could walk at our own pace and take pictures and do breaks whenever we wanted. In the end 18km did become a little bit too long, so when two guys on a trucks showed up and offered us a lift, we glatly took it. And it was also really good fun to ride on the loading platform of the truck, having to watch out for branches.

After this nice experience we decided to stay one more day and hike 7 kms to a waterfall nearby. The hike was quite challenging as you had to climb over rocks and cross the river and the water was freezing cold (not as cold as in Karijini though), but it was really good fun and we were happy we had decided to stay another day.

Recife and Praia do Frances

So we arrived in Recife and met my friends Marthas host sister Raphaella who organized accomodation for us in their neighbours house. The guys living there were really nice and it was good to get to know some locals again after being only normal tourists for a week.

On sunday the city of Recife close some of the car lanes in the city and turns them into bikalanes which seems to be a pretty new thing in Brazil, so everybody is crazy about it at the moment and cycles three bike trails that connect diferent parts of the city. It was funny to see how some people struggled riding a bike and there were also some accidents due to unexperienced bike riders, but it was good fun for us finally being able to ride a bike again.

On the bike ride we also saw quite a lot of the city and especially the city center was surprisingly nice which dutch colonial style houses (the dutch invaded the noth coast of Brazil in 16-something and stayed there only very little time but still influenced the architecture of whole cities), well cared for riverside park and little markets dotted thoughout the city and probably making good business considering the crowds of people in and around the city center on sundays.

One day we also went to Recifes neighbouring city Olinda which has lots nd lots of colourful colonial style houses. There wasn't really a lot to do so we just talked around, took pictures and enjoyed the view from top of the mountain.

We took a bus to Maceió, but being a bit sick of big cities, we decided to stay in a nearby town called Praia do Frances and just enjoy a few more days of shark-free beach holiday. Actually Florian was the only one to reall enjoy it, because I had to work, therefor spent most of the time in the hotelroom, but I managed to go to the beach at least on the last day for a few hours and get a sunburn.

-Sandra