APRIL 18 CACHOEIRA DO DIABO…………..

Some 20 mins drive from Lencois on the main route leading to Brasilia (680 miles further inland) you pass a small lay-by with an unimpressive sign advertising a poussada with the word ‘Cachoeira’ added at the bottom, almost as an afterthought.

A path leads steeply down and West through a thick tree line and, after a walk of around 500 metres, you hit the first and largest of some dozen shallow pools that feed the Cachoeira do Diabo..(Yes it does mean ‘Devils Falls’..Why Oh Why Oh Why? Couldn’t, just once, a waterfall have been discovered by someone with an imagination?)

Anyway, enough of my ranting…

Each subsequent pool is a little harder to get to, the pathway a little more tortuous, but to make up for it the further you go the more beautiful they get, until finally, after a good half hour of stumbling and sliding, you arrive at the pool in these black and white shots, right at the head of the falls.

Everything you read about the Chapada Diamantina seems to reference the ‘Lost World’ but it was arriving at this spot that I first ‘got it’. A pterodactyl could have flown over… no surprise. Fay Wray could have popped up shrieking, Kong in hot pursuit, and I wouldn’t have batted an eye. It really was like stepping back a few million years.

All Images Copyright Stuart Allan Hyde