Chapada Diamantina, Brazil

Gem-stone Bahia


View of Pai Inácio Hill
The plateaus of Chapada Diamantina seen from the top of Morro do Pai Inácio.
About Pai Inácio Hill
Brazilian couple are studying a deep canyon in the Chapada Diamantina.
At the base of Chapada
Low meadow covers one of the canyons of Chapada Diamantina.
pretend jump
Guia Negão pretends to jump after telling visitors the legend of Pai Inácio.
Swimming in crystal clear water
Visitors swim in Pratinha, a lagoon with a marine view despite being more than 300km from the Atlantic Ocean.
natural arch
Visitors bathe in a pond on their way to the Sossego waterfall.
vacation yoga
Forasteira exercises yoga poses in Ribeirão do Meio.
Millennial wall
Old rock formation in front of Pai Inácio Hill.
Repair
Native changes tiles of a typical house in Igatu.
Igatu street
Colorful houses in the mining village of Igatu.
Angel
Angel sculpture at the entrance to a cemetery in Igatu.
twilight catinga
Sun sets over the capinga of Chapada Diamantina.
Gruta
Guia illuminates the entrance to the Lapa Doce grotto.
Until the end of the century. In the XNUMXth century, Chapada Diamantina was a land of immeasurable prospecting and ambitions. Now that diamonds are rare, outsiders are eager to discover its plateaus and underground galleries

The walk proves to be much shorter than we expected.

Favored by his thinness and the training of countless climbs, Negão reaches the top without gasping, settles down on a rounded stone and leaves us at ease to explore the nooks full of cacti on the plateau.

From there, we had the first of several 360º panoramic views of Chapada Diamantina and the inaugural notion of its unexpected magnificence. A canyon covered with meadow stretches as far as the eye can see, well marked by the slopes of the small opposite plateaus.

Other elevated canyons of the vast Sertão announce themselves in the distance in a sequence that seems to have no end. Scenarios of this type are almost always sculpted by high intensity erosion.

Chapada was no exception.

View from Morro Pai Inacio, Chapada Diamantina, Bahia Gem, Brazil

The plateaus of Chapada Diamantina seen from the top of Morro do Pai Inácio.

The Geological and Diamond Genesis of Chapada Diamantina

More than 600 million years ago, long before the fragmentation of the supercontinent Pangea, this region was adjacent to the current zone. Namíbia, still today one of the most important diamond reserves in the World.

Local diamonds were crystallized in that area, mixed with pebbles and dragged into the depths of the sea that covered what is now hiinterior of Brazil. Over time, the sea receded.

Its bed turned into a layer of conglomerate stone that trapped the gems. Later, this layer was raised by tectonic movements and exposed to intense wear that deposited the diamonds in the riverbed, waiting for the lucky pioneers.

Ancient rock, chapada diamantina, bahiagem, brazil

Old rock formation in front of Pai Inácio Hill.

A little drier – perhaps in a season of rare rain – the scenery we have before our eyes could have turned out to be perfect for hosting scenes from “spaghetti westerns”. The Chapada Diamantina region has remained a true “western” for centuries on end.

During this period, it was populated by the Maracás Indians.

These, attacked the adventurers and settlers who arrived attracted by news of the first of the riches found, the gold.

Later, with the discovery of diamonds, it didn't take long before thousands of pioneers and prospectors, merchants and settlers, Jesuits, smugglers and prostitutes from the most varied origins flocked there.

Villages without king or law appeared with dimensions and a growing concentration of inhabitants.

roof repair, chapada diamantina, bahiagem, brazil

Native changes tiles of a typical house in Igatu.

The bullets resolved any conflict that arose.

Accordingly, the colonels with the most influence and the jagunços at their service concentrated power and imposed their will by force of violence and torture.

The Story Told Times Account of the Slave Father Inácio

The episode that Negão tells the visitors of his smoothed mound comes to us as a theatrical proof of the rudeness of that era. The tone of your sentences is warm. The accent, from the hinterland of Bahia: “Hi guys, gather there near the cliff to hear that the story is good!”.

Composed of the audience, the narrator says that in bygone times, a slave lived in Chapada whom they called Father Ignatius. Father Inácio was secretly dating his master's daughter.

Yoga pose, chapada diamantina, bahiagem, brazil

Forasteira exercises yoga poses in Ribeirão do Meio.

But this one did not take long to find out about the case. He sent several henchmen in pursuit of the offender who had to take refuge on the same hill we were on.

Only someone informed the henchmen at the hideout. When he least expected it, the slave found himself between the persecutors and the abyss. The situation called for a drastic, preferably brilliant, exit. Pai Inácio lived up to the demands.

Under the pressure of rifles and pistols, he shouted that he would rather die in freedom than be slaughtered at the master's hands.

He opened his umbrella, jumped off the hill and continued his flight, unharmed, never to be seen again.

Negão always took his work to heart and at a certain point, the narrative already asked for something to illustrate it. The guide found an artifice to match the outcome of the soap opera.

When he reaches the climax of the action, Negão throws himself down and leaves the audience awestruck.

Salto Negao, chapada diamantina, bahia gema, brazil

Guia Negão pretends to jump after telling visitors the legend of Pai Inácio.

Moments later, some of the visitors approach the precipice and discover that the jump (repeated several times a day) ended in a ledge a meter or two below that the group could not see.

According to legend, the slave was gone for good.

He left Chapada to his increasingly soulless prospecting.

Feno meadow, chapada diamantina, bahiagem, brazil

Low meadow covers one of the canyons of Chapada Diamantina.

Diamonds and Prospectors that Subsist in Chapada

In the riverbeds, browned by iron, greedy miners found gems in surprising quantities.

They opened new paths to previously inaccessible areas around the towns that were growing before our eyes: Sheets (from Bahia), Mucugê, Palmeiras and Andaraí, among others of equal colonial elegance but lesser size and importance.

We descend from the hill and head towards the narrow valley of Mucugêzinho. There, we have the first contact with the beds still filtered by the most persistent prospectors in the region.

At Poço do Diabo, the water reveals iron-like gradations of orange. In that and other tight flows, we passed by miners.

sossego waterfall, chapada diamantina, bahiagem, brazil

Visitors bathe in a pond on their way to the Sossego waterfall.

They work leaning over the banks, stirring gravel over their sieves, like souls semi-retired from the world, moved as much by social disengagement as by the hope of getting rich and contradicting the past.

Success stories are rare. Most Chapada residents prefer bets with higher odds of success. At the moment, tourism proves to be the most assured.

In 1995, under pressure from the same environmental groups that managed to create the national park and waged long-standing destruction of the local ecosystem, the government banned non-traditional diamond mining.

Although not everything is still perfect, nature has come to be treated as the most precious asset in the area.

And Brazilian and foreign visitors and travelers flocked to Chapada Diamantina in large numbers.

Casal Canyon, Chapada Diamantina, Bahia Gem, Brazil

Brazilian couple are studying a deep canyon in the Chapada Diamantina.

The New Touristic Paths of Chapada Diamantina

After the long period of stagnation, migration and poverty that followed the end of mining, the local population welcomes this new invasion, in competition with other parts of the coast of Bahia such as the Morro de São Paulo.

He also wants to profit from the revelation of his blessed homeland.

Pratinha lagoon, chapada diamantina, bahiagem, brazil

Visitors swim in Pratinha, a lagoon with a marine view despite being more than 300km from the Atlantic Ocean.

On the days we dedicate to it, we walk dozens of kilometers a day.

We arrive at the most emblematic places in Chapada: Ribeirão do Meio, the Lençóis river and the Primavera waterfall, the Salão de Areias, the Sossego waterfall, the Lapão cave and the Marimbus swamp and its Quilombo Remanso.

Other adventurers try even harder.

They follow exhausting but rewarding guided itineraries such as the one that leads to the Fumaça waterfall, the longest in Brazil, 420m high, which they reach three days after departure.

Or they surrender to the Grand Circuit, which covers 100km, completed in five days, eight, if you want to investigate the old diamond-producing village of Xique-Xique Igatu.

Casario Igatu, chapada diamantina, bahiagem, brazil

Colorful houses in the mining village of Igatu.

Certain natives don't need to go to this trouble.

Scientists have come to the conclusion that part of the water in the Amazon basin, placed under pressure against the Atlantic Ocean, ends up finding and excavating alternative paths.

It feeds aquifers that reach the Brazilian Northeast. This water is released.

It irrigates the Chapada more than the surrounding area because the characteristic rock there is almost impermeable but conducive to the formation of “structural” breaches.

Incursion into the Underworld of the Lapa Doce and Torrinha Caves

As a matter of probability, the entrances to some of these gaps are found in the “sites” of lucky residents. We ended up following two of these promoters into the depths of Lapa Doce and Torrinha.

They lead us through these gigantic galleries, in the light of a robust Petromax-style lamp that they move from one shoulder to the other.

Cave, Chapada Diamantina, Bahia Gem, Brazil

Guia illuminates the entrance to the Lapa Doce grotto.

At the same time, shy and somewhat pressured by the weight of their new profession, they give us newly memorized encyclopedic information and the name of each underground section: “Here, you can see the Sugar Loaf.

This one is the “Curtain” and now we have the “Living Water”.

When we return to the surface, a blazing sunset ridicules the dim light that had revealed that piece of underworld.

It reddens the landscape and darkens the silhouettes of the “mandacarus” cactus forest of the great Sertão, plant forms characteristic of the Chapada Diamantina.

Sunset, Chapada Diamantina, Bahia Gem, Brazil

Sun sets over the capinga of Chapada Diamantina.

Sheets of Bahia, Brazil

The Swampy Freedom of Quilombo do Remanso

Runaway slaves have survived for centuries around a wetland in Chapada Diamantina. Today, the quilombo of Remanso is a symbol of their union and resistance, but also of the exclusion to which they were voted.
Sheets of Bahia, Brazil

Lençóis da Bahia: not Even Diamonds Are Forever

In the XNUMXth century, Lençóis became the world's largest supplier of diamonds. But the gem trade did not last as expected. Today, the colonial architecture that he inherited is his most precious possession.
Chapada dos Guimarães, Mato Grosso, Brazil

In the Burning Heart of South America

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Goiás Velho, Brazil

A Gold Rush Legacy

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A Polis in the South American Pyrenees

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Fazenda São João, Miranda, Brazil

Pantanal with Paraguay in Sight

When the Fazenda Passo do Lontra decided to expand its ecotourism, it recruited the other family farm, the São João. Further away from the Miranda River, this second property reveals a remote Pantanal, on the verge of Paraguay. The country and the homonymous river.
Serra Dourada, Goiás, Brazil

Where the Cerrado Waves Golden

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Pirenópolis, Brazil

Brazilian Crusades

Christian armies expelled Muslim forces from the Iberian Peninsula in the XNUMXth century. XV but, in Pirenópolis, in the Brazilian state of Goiás, the South American subjects of Carlos Magno continue to triumph.
Passo do Lontra, Miranda, Brazil

The Flooded Brazil of Passo do Lontra

We are on the western edge of Mato Grosso do Sul but bush, on these sides, is something else. In an extension of almost 200.000 km2, the Brazil it appears partially submerged, by rivers, streams, lakes and other waters dispersed in vast alluvial plains. Not even the panting heat of the dry season drains the life and biodiversity of Pantanal places and farms like the one that welcomed us on the banks of the Miranda River.
manaus, Brazil

The Jumps and Starts of the former World Rubber Capital

From 1879 to 1912, only the Amazon River basin generated the latex that, from one moment to another, the world needed and, out of nowhere, Manaus became one of the most advanced cities on the face of the Earth. But an English explorer took the tree to Southeast Asia and ruined pioneer production. Manaus once again proved its elasticity. It is the largest city in the Amazon and the seventh in Brazil.
Pirenópolis, Brazil

A Ride of Faith

Introduced in 1819 by Portuguese priests, the Festa do Divino Espírito Santo de Pirenópolis it aggregates a complex web of religious and pagan celebrations. It lasts more than 20 days, spent mostly on the saddle.
Kolmanskop, Namíbia

Generated by the Diamonds of Namibe, Abandoned to its Sands

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Safari
Amboseli National Park, Kenya

A Gift from the Kilimanjaro

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Annapurna (circuit)
Annapurna Circuit 11th: yak karkha a Thorong Phedi, Nepal

Arrival to the Foot of the Canyon

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Architecture & Design
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The Design that Came from the Cold

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Adventure
PN Canaima, Venezuela

Kerepakupai, Salto Angel: The River that Falls from Heaven

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Dragon Dance, Moon Festival, Chinatown-San Francisco-United States of America
Ceremonies and Festivities
San Francisco, USA

with the head on the moon

September comes and Chinese people around the world celebrate harvests, abundance and unity. San Francisco's enormous Sino-Community gives itself body and soul to California's biggest Moon Festival.
Cable car connecting Puerto Plata to the top of PN Isabel de Torres
Cities
Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic

The Dominican Home Silver

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Beverage Machines, Japan
Meal
Japan

The Beverage Machines Empire

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Culture
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The Village at the Top of Azerbaijan

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Sport
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2000 meters in Aussie Style

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Traveling
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Towards the Nepalese Braga

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Ethnic
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The Deep Mexico of the Barrancas del Cobre

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Portfolio, Got2Globe, Best Images, Photography, Images, Cleopatra, Dioscorides, Delos, Greece
Got2Globe Photo Portfolio
Got2Globe Portfolio

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Where Tel Aviv Settles Always in Party

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Islands
Plymouth, Montserrat

From Ashes to Ashes

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Winter White
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The Geothermal Coziness of the Ice Island

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Kukenam reward
Literature
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Time Travel to the Lost World of Mount Roraima

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Train Kuranda train, Cairns, Queensland, Australia
Nature
Cairns-Kuranda, Australia

Train to the Middle of the Jungle

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Sheki, Autumn in the Caucasus, Azerbaijan, Autumn Homes
Autumn
Sheki, Azerbaijan

autumn in the caucasus

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Natural Parks
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The Maori coastline on which Europeans landed

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Traditional houses, Bergen, Norway.
UNESCO World Heritage
Bergen, Norway

The Great Hanseatic Port of Norway

Already populated in the early 1830th century, Bergen became the capital, monopolized northern Norwegian commerce and, until XNUMX, remained one of the largest cities in Scandinavia. Today, Oslo leads the nation. Bergen continues to stand out for its architectural, urban and historical exuberance.
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Characters
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The Writer Who Succumbed to His Own Plot

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Balandra Beach, Mexico, Baja California, aerial view
Beaches
Balandra beach e El Tecolote, Baja California Sur, Mexico

Seaside Treasures of the Sea of ​​Cortés

Often proclaimed the most beautiful beach in Mexico, we find a serious case of landscape exoticism in the jagged cove of Playa Balandra. The duo if forms with the neighbour Playa Tecolote, is one of the truly unmissable beachfronts of the vast Baja California.
Armenia Cradle Christianity, Mount Aratat
Religion
Armenia

The Cradle of the Official Christianity

Just 268 years after Jesus' death, a nation will have become the first to accept the Christian faith by royal decree. This nation still preserves its own Apostolic Church and some of the oldest Christian temples in the world. Traveling through the Caucasus, we visit them in the footsteps of Gregory the Illuminator, the patriarch who inspires Armenia's spiritual life.
The Toy Train story
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Siliguri a Darjeeling, India

The Himalayan Toy Train Still Running

Neither the steep slope of some stretches nor the modernity stop it. From Siliguri, in the tropical foothills of the great Asian mountain range, the Darjeeling, with its peaks in sight, the most famous of the Indian Toy Trains has ensured for 117 years, day after day, an arduous dream journey. Traveling through the area, we climb aboard and let ourselves be enchanted.
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Society
Inari, Finland

The Wackiest Race on the Top of the World

Finland's Lapps have been competing in the tow of their reindeer for centuries. In the final of the Kings Cup - Porokuninkuusajot - , they face each other at great speed, well above the Arctic Circle and well below zero.
Visitors at Talisay Ruins, Negros Island, Philippines
Daily life
Talisay City, Philippines

Monument to a Luso-Philippine Love

At the end of the 11th century, Mariano Lacson, a Filipino farmer, and Maria Braga, a Portuguese woman from Macau, fell in love and got married. During the pregnancy of what would be her 2th child, Maria succumbed to a fall. Destroyed, Mariano built a mansion in his honor. In the midst of World War II, the mansion was set on fire, but the elegant ruins that endured perpetuate their tragic relationship.
Transpantaneira pantanal of Mato Grosso, capybara
Wildlife
Mato Grosso Pantanal, Brazil

Transpantaneira, Pantanal, Mato Grosso Ends

We leave from the South American heart of Cuiabá to the southwest and towards Bolivia. At a certain point, the paved MT060 passes under a picturesque portal and the Transpantaneira. In an instant, the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso is flooded. It becomes a huge Pantanal.
Passengers, scenic flights-Southern Alps, New Zealand
Scenic Flights
Aoraki / Mount Cook, New Zealand

The Aeronautical Conquest of the Southern Alps

In 1955, pilot Harry Wigley created a system for taking off and landing on asphalt or snow. Since then, his company has unveiled, from the air, some of the greatest scenery in Oceania.