Blogs from Lençóis, Bahia, Brazil, South America

This blog and more photos are available on my website. https://heatherjasper.com/brazil/lencois Lençóis is one of the most adorable little towns I’ve ever seen. It’s very much a tourist town, where streets are empty during the day when most visitors are out on tours of the waterfalls and caves. There are dozens of quaint restaurants and even more boutique hotels and quaint bed & breakfasts. It has a half dozen corner shops but no real grocery stores. Souvenir shops tend towards handmade crafts and art. Lençóis is also the best town from which to base your explorations of Chapada Diamantina. There are over a dozen local tour agencies in Lençóis, as well as an association of guides which offers much lower prices than the tour agencies. I did all my tours with ZenTur, a fantastic ... read more

I was picked up promptly for my trip today. There were six of us - a trio of French speakers, two of whom were living in Brazil long term and a visiting cousin. The cousin spoke little English and less Portuguese but I managed to have a chat with the other two, mainly in Portuguese. Everybody loves the fact that a tourist has made the effort to learn some Portuguese and thy are always interested to know where I learnt it - which makes all that hard work worthwhile. The other pair were Brazilians and they mainly spoke to the guides. The main agency guide spoke limited English and Portuguese. In contrast to the scenery yesterday, which was a sort of scrubland with the occasional cactus today, we were surrounded by jungle. We were not travelling ... read more

Had to get up at 5.45 a.m. today to catch the 6 am bus for Lençois. Wouldn't normally choose to get up at that time but, quite honestly, I was glad to see the back of Salvador although I do have to do an overnight there en-route back from Lençois to Parati. Getting this bus would also give me time to fix up a tour for the following day. Rita said she would be up in time to see me off - she normally gets up early which I was glad about, if only because she seemed to have occasional problems getting any of her sets of keys to open the door. As It turned out, she ordered another taxi for me when the one I thought I had ordered failed to appear. She also made ... read more

I have been travelling for 3 months now and have now decided to start writing a blog. I cannot guarantee the quality of my writing, or whether this may interest you at all, but I would like to update this once a week – even if it is only one sentence…..ok, maybe a damn good sentence – but it counts! This could be an interesting challenge, considering I have not kept up with the Facebook & email posts to date – but I have to start somewhere. Better late than never, right?! Let’s renegotiate for once a month then... So since Aaron left at the end of January, I have travelled up the east coast of Brazil between Rio de Janeiro & Salvador. And they are 2 very different cities and the cultures which thrive amongst ... read more

After running (and almost missing) our bus from Rio, we spent a leisurely 18 hours on a bus to Brasilia, Brazil´s capital. Despite having bought the cheapest tickets, the bus was great with ample leg room and good drivers. We soon discovered, however, that Brasilians have a bad habit of listening to music from their cellphones at any volume level and at any time of the day or night.We arrived in Brasilia to what reminded me of a bit of India - a chaotic bus terminal and no one really knowing what was happening. Our Ruigh Guide book let us down by leading us to a closed down hostel, another that didn~t answer their doorbell and a third very pricy one. We finally found something. Brasilia is a hot, dry, dusty city and we were both ... read more