The day after meeting our guide, Ba, we were off for our three day trek through Chapada Diamantina National Park featuring Brazil´s highest waterfall, dozens of swimming holes, several smaller waterfalls, beautiful valley views, and sleeping in caverns(very painful actually).
The first day actually began in a bus to get us to the park entrance. From here, we would literally just walk home.. the scenic way of course. The first stop was Brazil´s highest waterfall. At 1386 feet, the view down was amazing.. and a little dangerous near the edge of the cliff...no guard rails in this country! From here, we spent the rest of the day hiking to our first camp sight...a cave. It was as comfortable as you probably imagine it to be...(not at all comfortable). But it was home sweet home for the first night.
Day 2 began with breakfast followed by a 2 hour hike to the bottom of the waterfall we saw yesterday. After lunch we rock-hopped our way down river to our second camp sight. Not so much a cave as just a rock ledge over-hang. It would have to do, however, since the rain moved in and never stopped for the entire next day. We were not dry for a single minute on day 3. With so much rain overnight, we had to wait 3 hours for the river level to fall so we could attempt to cross and finally head home. And even that wasn´t enough to cross in the normal location where ordinary river levels would permit us to rock-hop and wade across. This option being too dangerous, we had to chop down a tree, climb down a small cliff, build a makeshift bridge, string rope across a narrow section of the river(with help from others on the other side), and cross the fun way...balancing on our tree-bridge. I photographed much of this even though I was sure my camera would burn out from the soaking rains. Fortunately it still works and plenty of pix are posted here.

Now I have to go back to Salvador and extend my passport stamp... still lots to see and do here in Brazil.