Smoke On The Water
The Fumaça, “smoking waterfall”, is some 380 meters high, which makes it - according to our excellent guide Mil - the third highest in the world (after one waterfall in Venezuela, and the Victoria falls). The interesting thing about it, is that the water don’t actually fall in it. When we visited its bottom, on the second day of the trek, the water (it had far less of it then I had expected) caught the wind on the way down, and it actually took them up , like the smoke going up from a cigarette, or rather - with the bright sun reflected from it - like a cloud that just forms above you.
Some of it, at least, do go down eventually. They do it very gently, after hitting the opposite wall of the canyon, and form a small nice pool, which was excellent to bath in at the extremely hot day. The trek had plenty of these pools, which was an excellent feature: you walk a few hours, and just when it gets too hot you arrive at a natural pool, drop your bag and go for a swim. Another feature was the colour of the water. It was a wierd brown-yellow with reddish flavour, probably due to Tanin or other organic matter in them (I had seen one cave in the Pacific with coloured rock formations, due to these organic substances. Really nice). The water also had a wierd flavor, somewhat like lemon, which was wierd when we drank them - brown water with an acidic flavor: at the first day we used iodine to make sure they are fine, but later we just gave up and drank them as they were.
We went to the trek as a group of 7 Israelies: Amit and Nir, two good friends from the army; Barak and Shani, a couple who never trekked before; Asaf, an experienced trekker; Inbar; and myself. Shani and Barak had never slept out of home before (she lives at Ramat-Hasharon, he at Ramat-Gan, and they both never saw the point in sleeping out of home and spent the kind of military service that didn’t give them the opportunity to do it) and were clearly less fit for the trek then the rest of the group. Though they walked well in the first day, their attitude - especially Shani’s - was not sportive enough. At the morning of the second day, when Shani woke up with some 5 ugly mosquito bites on her face, she sort of forced Barak to come back with her, and quit the trek - they came back on the trail we did on the first day, with a different group that came over us on the opposite direction. Not everyone loves hiking.
The hike itself was moderate, at parts even difficult. It involved plenty of climbing up hills and going down slopes, and if it wasn’t for all the water around, which enabled numerous stops, it could be tough. It goes through the Chapada Diamantina park, a place which was a centre for diamond-searching. We, however, didn’t find any diamond (though we looked really carefully!) We did find a lot of pink rocks, trees, ferns, orchids, waterfalls, and other neat natural features.
The first day started with a steep climb, then we reached the top of the Fumaça where we had our lunch break and bent over the edge of the cliff to see the wonderful waterfall - that is, most of the people: I was too frightened (a 400 meter fall, I suddenly remembered my fear of heights). After this we descended to the river far below, when we bathed (much joy for sore knees) and organized for the night.
When I first was in Thailand, around the end of August some 6 years ago, they had a nice feature: every day around 16:30 the sky would suddenly become grey and a strong rain would clear the air. It would last for 15 minutes and then go away. Now, in the southern hemisphere, they have apparently the same phenomenon only opposite: we woke up around 04:30 because of a strong tropical rain, that lasted fifteen minutes and scared us from the waterside into a nearby cave. In the morning there was no sign left of it, and after leaving all our stuff to dry (and saying goodbye to Shani and Barak) we took only water and swimmingsuit, and headed up the river to see the Fumaça from below. I started with its description, so now I could just skip it and tell you a bit about our guide, Mil.
Mil is a Capoeira master, who also knows to play Birinbão (this is the name of the musical instrument I described a few days ago) and works as a guide in this trek for some 16 years now. He is doing it twice a week (poor wife and kids!) and is very good at it. All the things you need to see are always “half an hour” away, every time things are “Todos Sababa”, and he is very trustworthy. He also makes excellent food (I couldn’t believe what he cooked for us. Our diet included fruits, veggies, meat, eggs, everything. Much more than I would carry for a trek, or even eat in a normal day), and is very knowledgeable - he taught me about various plants on the way (”This one is extremely dangerous. If a cow eats it, it dies in 4-5 hours. We use the leaves to prepare rat-poison”; “This one has leaves that are very soft and wide. If we run out of toilet-paper, we use it”; “This is a young palm. If you run out of food, you can cut it and eat the inside”, things like this). He also gave us some basic lessons in Capoeira and Bibinbão playing, for the general joy - especially of me and of Asaf, who are keen students. I highly recommend him if you ever go on this trek, he was very good.
We came back from the waterfall (It was less impressive then I expected, I thought it would have plenty of water falling at great pressure, instead I got this special smoke effect) through a tropical forest; on the riverside grow ferns with patches of orchids between them, and on the top there was the green canopy of the trees - very important at this hot weather. We took our stuff and proceeded to the next camping spot, just an hour away, along another river. After bathing in the river (no need to be smelly at this particular trek. Small delights.) We set our camp - this time, straight under a rock that gave us some shelter. I even used the antimosquito net that Eran Gonen gave me for this travel, at what is probably the wierdest constallation it ever saw - it was quite a construction to place it in the middle of nowhere under as rock, and I used some small rocks, nearby vegetation, additional ropes from my trekking kit, and other stuff to build it. I am very proud I managed to do it - the place really had nothing to support such a construction. Anyhow, this night I didn’t get bitten (but before it, I did get some bites, especially one ugly bite in the back, probably from some sort of spider - it looks bigger and nastier then a common mosquito. Another experience: carry a backpack when you have bites on the back).
On the morning of the third day there was a bit of drizzle. It stopped within the hour, but it came bad - it meant the rocks were wet and very slippery. This made the climb very difficult, especially for Inbar, whose muscles were already very tired. This made it very funny when we reached the last pool, after crossing another two valleys, and saw the big slide. The slide is a big rock, with water flowing over it, which ends in a natural pool. We all climbed to its top and then slid into the pool - pretty much like waterparks, only natural. It was very funny, nice and refreshing - an excellent way to end a trek. From the slide we continued for another 40 minuts or so back to Lençois, where we found Barak and Shani waiting for us. Then we spent today doing nothing, just resting from the hike, and tonight we take the bus back to Salvador, to get ready to the next big event, which starts this weekend.
