Chapada Diamantina

Diamond country, with caves cut by the rivers that carried them

Chapada Diamantina means Diamond Plateau. It is a mountain region in the middle of Bahia, the northern end of the Espinhaço range that runs up from Minas Gerais, built of sandstones, pelites and diamond-bearing conglomerates lying over the softer sandstones and siltstones of the Paraguaçu Group. Water working into folds in the softer rock carved huge canyons, where brown rivers run over waterfalls and have cut many systems of caves. Gold and diamonds have both come out of the Sincorá range on the east side of the plateau, a north-south ridge about 25 kilometres wide, and the trails across the high grasslands, the gerais, were once used by miners searching for diamonds. Barro Branco, a hamlet on a cycling route out of Lençóis, was founded by old garimpeiros, the independent miners.

The national park was created by decree on 17 September 1985 and covers 152,142 hectares of the Sincorá. The plateau mostly sits between 500 and 1,000 metres, with peaks of 1,600 to 1,800 and a few over 2,000; Pico do Barbado, at 2,036 metres, is the highest point in Bahia. The range forces moist air moving west from the sea upward, wringing more rain out of it on the eastern side. The park takes in three biomes, Atlantic Forest, Cerrado and Caatinga: dry caatinga scrub lower down, Atlantic Forest along the watercourses, meadows and rocky fields higher up. Endemic orchids include Cattleya elongata and Cattleya tenuis, and the hooded visorbearer, a hummingbird, lives nowhere else.

ICMBio, which runs the park, counts almost 300 kilometres of trails, 33 waterfalls, two caves, ten climbing areas and 16 historic sites, plus the Marimbus, a flooded plain known as the Pantanal of the Chapada. The most famous waterfall is the Cachoeira da Fumaça, about 380 metres from its lip, with drops of up to 420 metres in places. Its trail climbs from the village of Campos in the Vale do Capão, about 5 kilometres and two hours, an hour of it steep. Visitors enter by 38 trails from Andaraí, Ibicoara, Itaetê, Lençóis, Mucugê and Palmeiras, where the park has its headquarters. There are no gatehouses or visitor centres inside the park and no entry fee. Igatu, a district of Andaraí, is one of the best-known climbing spots in the northeast, and the Vale do Pati is widely considered the best trek in Brazil. Lençóis, a well-preserved colonial town 428 kilometres from Salvador, is the usual starting point.