These mini travelogues are the result of an exercise I once tried; writing one hundred words a day for one hundred days, the point being to gain discipline and economy with the written word. Once started, it became addictive. A terse sort of prose is the usual result; in which one tries capturing the essence of time and place. Although I may have been a little liberal with the facts in some, it’s only to better express the spirit of the experience. Some over the one hundred word parameter have been added, just for mischief. Maybe you’d care to count?
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After a week spent in the Eden of Lencois, Chapada Diamantina, Brazil it was time to go, continue with our journey: on to new places, new faces, new experiences but…. a mystic wistfulness held us back. We stopped the car half way out of the village and sat silent, both aware of what the other was feeling; a rare moment of true synchronicity. Should we stay or should we go? Three places yet to explore, more than four thousand kilometers to drive and only two weeks left but once Paradise has been found it is hard to simply drive away. |
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I wave the boy on and alone again glance up, acknowledge there is light yet! Battling my demons and the heat, creeping ever-upward, going only forwards, never daring to image the downward return, I am calmer, starting to think about how to find the others up where eagles alone once landed. On the summit flat we wander dazed, surreal, words pointless, abandoned; our mouths silenced in the solitude. The sun now in irony takes forever to set, and we snatch back time. This life is mine but the Leviathan has demanded I stand on the very edge to understand that.
The Leviathan scaled |
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Tropical sunsets come quickly and we reach our monolith with little time to spare. Across vast empty plains, these leviathans stand; remnants of ancient islands dotted across what was once tempestuous seas. Absolute terror assails me as I scale almost vertical walls to stand on a table top a thousand meters above. Up, up I scramble alone now but for one, abandoned in haste by companions I insisted should go ahead. Why should they miss out? Heart pulverized, lungs filtering through sandpaper, I falter, collapse on dusty boulders; the last a child, loyal still, tugs anxiously at me, ‘Vai Papa!’ |
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Paradise reached: Chapada Diamantina, Northeastern Brazil. Days exploring follow: doors left unlocked, friendly locals, lissom children of slaves long-ago abandoned by ruthless Portuguese diamond hunters. The tastes, smells, sounds of Africa surround us under palm trees; waters so turquoise I disbelieve them amidst the red-earthed cacti spotted desert. Unmasked for my feng shui and whisked off to building sites we are attacked by clouds of terrifying mosquitoes the size of hornets. The female architect just squats where she is and pees. Back at the posada, a handsome Swiss blond, lolls in a hammock, swinging his sun-gilt legs in flickering lamp-light.
The beauty of Lencois |
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Escaping the pretentiousness of the township, one glides up through refreshing alpine forests to the summit. Hovels line the road to the top; local black kids wave, smiling as we pass. From the peak one is immediately swept up in the grand vista of rolling grasslands and vast hulking bluffs spreading away as far as the eye can see. One imagines the first explorers here on horse back, these lands simply there for the taking. What must their first thoughts have been? I wanted to get on a horse and just ride away, sharing that freedom. Of course I didn’t. Instead we climbed back into the car and went for coffee in one of the ridiculous make-believe Swiss Chalets in the town.
Swiss style architecture at Campos do Jordan |
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Travelogue