Salvador and Lencois

Day 1:

Salvador has been known to be our most dangerous port due mostly to petty theft and the fact that Brazil has one of the largest divides between rich and poor in the world. The Semester at Sea Staff made sure to make us completely aware of the fact that crime is an issue here and that we should be careful especially since we were going during Carnivale. Taking their advice I hid money on me and was very careful as to where I took my camera out. I did not have a single problem of being pick pocketed even though many other students did.

I spent the first day in port by going to the market and buying a few souvenirs from the port. Getting off the ship was interesting cause Candomble ladies met us and placed ribbons on our rest and there were drummers there to greet us. I joked that the ribbons were placed on us to make it easier for the criminals to identify the tourists. Everywhere around us were people doing Capieora and playing music. The city is divided into upper and lower parts and one of the only ways to go between them is through this huge elevator so me and a group did that to get up to the Pelourihno district. The whole area was covered in decorations for carnival and was heavily monitored by police. You couldn't look anywhere without someone trying to sell you something but aside from that the city itself was beautiful and was painted using a lot of pastels. Some of the group left but I stayed with another kid in order to eat dinner in port. We had a traditional dish of soft shell crab moqueca it tasted interesting but I am not running to try it again. After that I returned to the boat to prepare for Carnivale

A large group of students met up so we could all go to Carnivale together. I was placed in a smaller group of 4 to get there and the rest of us would meet up in order to be safer in numbers. Carnivale in Salvador is listed in the Guiness World Record Books as the largest party in the world. There were 2 million people dancing in the street starting from 7 and ending at 5 in the morning. The highlight of the Carnivale are the Trios Electricos these huge floats that are loaded up with enough sound equipment to make the ground shake and famous musicians on top like Shakira and others. Being in the crowd was incredible every couple minutes we would turn to each other nad just be like I cant believe we get to do this for credit. Unbeknownst to us where we stopped to watch Carnivale just so happened to be right in front of the police station so we didn't have any problems of being harassed or robbed. It was interesting cause we were the only white people in the crowd so whenever one of those floats would come by they would stop and give us a private concert and throw us beads. We headed back around 12 because a lot of us had to wake up early to go on trips including me which leads too…

Day 2:

Lencois is heaven. It is just the most beautiful little town that works perfectly with its environment. 27 of us were on the SAS trip to Lencois and our guide was an American named Roy who came to Lencois for a week or two for the peace corp and never left in the 70's he ended up writing to the government and having the whole area (Chapiada Diamintina) turned into a national park and served as its first director, he knew the area well lets just say (he also looked like Don Quixote). Our hotel was a 5 star eco-friendly gem named Canto das Aguas. We didn't think we were allowed to stay somewhere nice like that. The first day there we spent hiking up the Lencois River and walking through all the weird rock formations. It ended in us swimming in a waterfall that you could actually get behind. The weather wasn't so great since it was raining but the rain just made things more interesting.

Day 3:

We had a 10 mile hike ahead of us today through the valley near the town. Throughout the hike we faced periods of torrential rain then baking sun. It was actually nice because it got really hot. Because of all the rain all over the valley and in the hills waterfalls started up and the river below us was raging. We had to cross the river which normally is just at our knees but know it was roaring and we had to use a rope to cross it. One of the highlights was eating lunch on top of these rocks overlooking the whole valley we were about 1000 feet up eating sandwiches it was surreal. We continued our hike until we got to a large cave that you could go inside which we did. A big group of us went as far deep as we could and turned off all the lights and sat inside the pitch black cave (the cave would play an important role later in my Lencois experience). Finally, we headed back into after 7 hours of hiking, all of our feet were covered in blisters and we were dead tired.

We headed to the pool and steam room to relax our aching bodies. While in the steam room we met a 21 year old Brazilian who spoke really good English who lived in Salvador but was from Lencois. We wondered how anyone from this town could have the money to live in Salvador if his family was from Lencois and why he would be staying at this relatively expensive hotel if he was from the area. We found out at dinner that we were staying at his parents hotel and then we talked about Brazil to try and learn more about the country.

That night a bunch of us including John headed into town to the local bars. John introduced me to a couple of his friends and even got me some local drinks to try out.

Day 4:

This was the best day in Lencois for me…

Towards the end of the day Roy took 8 of us to a rock slide in town. The rock slide basically is a solid sheet of rock where a waterfall rushes down it and you can go down it pretty safely. Because it had been raining for the past week there was a lot more water going down it then normal which means it was that much faster. It was about 40 feet long and you couldn't only do it two or three times before your butt got sore from bouncing over the rocks. After we did that we saw that locals were diving into the water so we decided why not. All of us jumped off a cliff into the water which was about 25 feet high. It was really safe cause the water at the bottom of the rock slide was really deep but it was still a rush to jump from that high up. The locals were all great cause they directed us where to jump and would demonstrate for us. I think it's a real treat for them to see American teens. This was our last night in town so instead of going out into the town we brought the party to the hotel. We bonded as one big group over drinking games the whole night.

Day 5:

This was our last day in Lencois and Brazil. We started the day off with a hike up to a plateau that overlooked the whole area called Pai Inacio. We basically went up there and spent the next hour just taking fun pictures and goofing off on top of the mountain. After that we headed back to Lencois to grab our lunches and drop off our guides. To some up this beautiful place all I could tell the Guide Roy was Thank you for letting me fall in love with your home. I hope someday that I can come back and get to see this town again.

The 6 hour bus ride back seemed to fly by but we would be getting back too late to head into Salvador one last time. So I ended up having dinner on the ship and then watched the boat pull away