So I left Salvador and my interesting friends behind and arrived in Lençois after a really bumpy bus ride. The buses are surprisingly comfortable but the roads and the crowd made it difficult to sleep at all. Accordingly, I spent my first day sleeping and fighting off the various tourist agents trying to sell trips to everywhere and anywhere in the region. This town is in the mountain region called Chapada Diamantina, where - as the name gives it away - lots of diamonds were to be found at some stage (the British Queen´s crown apparently sports some of them). It has become a very popular tourist destination for Brazilians and foreigners alike so they cater for everything here: from hikes and trekking equipment to bikini waxes and shiatsu massage. Of course, there are the obligatory fraudsters as well, who hold themselves out as guides and then leave you stranded in the middle of the mountains on an unmarked trail, but it is pretty easy to avoid them.

Before embarking on the various hikes, I hung out in town with a bunch of Israelis for half an evening and that turned out to be a mistake. All the Israelis I have met so far have reaffirmed the stereotype: "honest" (translation: rude) and "straightforward" (annoying). As long as I have a superficial relationship with someone - which you almost always inevitably do while traveling - I choose "superficial" kindness over the ostensible promise of a deep an honest friendship 20 years down the line...

As a way to see whether I would be able to take the really difficult three-day hike, I organized a one day hike for the following day. It was not easy, you had to jump from stone to stone without falling into the water and a lot of climbing was involved but for some reason I did pretty well, so much so that the guide thought I was an experienced hiker. It seems that, even though I have lately become the girl who calls a 30-minute walk on Hampstead Heath a hike, all that hiking in the Pyrenees with my French family between the ages of 9 and 14 did have an effect after all. Fully confident, I agreed to go on the three day trek.

Our group consisted of a Brazilian-Japanese woman, her German "friend" (the nature of the relationship has remained a mystery) and our guide, Joao, a very friendly local who did not speak English. The first day was pretty hard, we had to climb very steep hillsides with pretty heavy backpacks but the guide was nice and helpful and I was the star of the group (which, of course, did not mean much: another group, consisting of only men whizzed past us several times at a much quicker pace but that did not affect my sense of satisfaction). The first night, we slept under the stars, which I had only done once before (15 years ago when my parents got our travel budget wrong and we had to spend the night illegally (!) in an olive garden near the Lake Garda) and it was fun up until the rain started to fall. Last year, during our African trip we had heard a lot about the benefits of sleeping under the stars from our Norwegian cowgirl friends (being from the city was not "in" on that trip) but they never mentioned anything about dealing with the rain...In any event, we survived the rain and the second day was relatively easier: we climbed up to the bottom of the Cachoeira da Fumaça, a huge 400 meter waterfall, which was the main attraction of the trek. The climb through the jungle was amazingly beautiful, and by then I have also extended my Portuguese vocabulary with very useful words such as waterfall, slippery, stars, taking a piss (fazer xixi), blisters, etc. Along the way we had seen many smaller waterfalls and bathed in the natural pools at the bottom of them so even though it was pretty chilly, when we arrived to the big one I put on my swimming costume and followed our guide to the pool only to notice from inside the water that the other 15 tourists were all staring at me from the shore as if I were a raving lunatic. Yes, it was cold, but certainly no colder than the pond on Hampstead Heath in June, but apparently I had been the only tourist to go in in a long time. We spent the second night in a cave, which was quite painful because the bumps on the stone floor were such that only one, carefully designed, position enabled me to sleep at all. (Never mind, my main reason for doing these adventurous things is so that I am able to tell my future children that their mother was cool at some stage, so it is definitely worth it!) The third day involved more steep climbing to the top of the waterfall, in the rain this time, on extremely slippery stones. By then I could feel how my thighs are turning into thighs of steel and Andreas, the German guy tried to motivate me by saying that I will look like a Baywatch babe soon...not quite, but I could have certainly fared well in a wet T-shirt competition at least. After more rain and more climbing, the sun began to shine and the last bit of the trek down to the village was possibly the most beautiful part. The rival group ran past us again (you could practically smell testosterone), which was a shame for them, because this way they missed out on just gazing at the landscape.

By the time we got back I was exhausted, full of blisters (bolhas), cuts and bruises but very happy about the trek and about not being as big a whimp as I always imagine myself to be. This trek is supposedly the second hardest in Brazil, a good preparation for Peru. Now I am back in the village and might hang out here for a couple more days -- new and "old" (from Salvador) friends are here and, as usual, it is hard to leave and face yet another new place.