The Ladies of Lencois

What happens when your flip-flops turn into jandals and your mid day snack consist of chips and beer...you know your are traveling with kiwis. A few days ago our travel posse grew and Laurie and I began trekking through the Bahaian mountains with some great girls from New Zealand. Our latest adventure took us inland a few hundred km to the Chapada Dimanitina, a stunning national park spanning an area larger than the Netherlands.

Our home base was the picturesque little town of Lencois And within 24 hrs it was like cheers (everyone knew our name). Be it Juan the Argentinian hostel owner who sorted us with everything from a packed lunch to love advice; our
capoeira professor who is apparently a local movie star and one of the most talented capoeristas I've ever seen; David the Spanish Socilogist who is teaching English and Music in the favelas of Salvador; or Anderson and Eric the 4 year old twin boys we played paper airplanes with outside their grandmother's resteraunt that was more amazing each time. I don't event think she had a menu. You chose between chicken or beef and some 30 min later (remember everything runs at the speed of molases here) a fabulous 3 course meal arrives for the whoping price of $2.50.
Each day in the chapatada was better than the next! Long walks out of town led us to delicious natural swimming pools with waterfalls that double as watersides to hiking up over 1500 feet to the top of cachoeira da fumaca the tallest waterfall in Brasil!

Our capoeira professor

As many of you know I tend to be a bit accident prone...and after three days of sliding down rocks (both intentionally and unintentionally) alternating my ankle brace on both ankles, and band-aids on random scrapes from hiking and capoeira we figured it was time to quit while we are ahead and head back to the beach.

So Laurie, myself, the three Kiwis, Ryan from Trinidad and Lars from Germany self medicated with caparianas and jumped on a 9 hour overnight bus to Imbasee a sleepy beach town in the north.
To be continued....