Soaking up Salvador
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Trip Highlights
· A fulfilling environmental volunteering project
· Salvador’s pulsating city
· Capoiera class
· Atlantic rainforest
· Pancada Grande waterfall
· Fantastic rock formations in Lençois
Your "Taste of Volunteering" Project
You will be exposed to the realities of agriculture and conservation in the developing world. With excursions to farming communities of wildly divergent scales, all in precarious co-existence with shrinking rainforest remnants, you will witness the struggle for sustainable development and the challenges it produces.
Trip Summary
Starting from Salvador, you visit and tour this vibrant city, ending up in the Pelourinho historical district for lunch and take part in percussion and capoeira classes. For dinner we enjoy one of Brazil's famous churrascarias ! Located between mangroves and rain-forested hills, Ituberá, our next destination, is a perfect laboratory to study the complex problem of maintaining tropical ecosystems in rural landscapes. You will be based here and make field trips out into the countryside to observe the different biomes and the people who inhabit them.
On Day 10 you have a four hour hike in the morning in the Atlantic Forest Reserve, and in the afternoon depart for Lençois, a small town in the heart of the Chapada Diamantina National Park.
You continue your amazing adventure with a grand tour of the region accompanied by former Peace Corps volunteer Roy Funch who has lived in the area for 25 years. You then hike to another magnificent waterfall and then on the way back visit a natural water slide. You depart Lençois in the early morning and catch an afternoon flight from Salvador to São Paulo, where your journey ends.
Firstly, we visit a small settlement of subsistence farmers in the Atlantic Rainforest. We spend the day working in their 10-hectare plots. We spend the night in tents on one of the farms.
We spend another day working in the fields collecting cacao with the farmers, returning to Ituberá the next morning and visit the spectacular 60-meter Pancada Grande waterfall.
For the next two days we work on the Jacaranda Farm, named after one of the prized hardwoods of the region. Its owner, the transplanted Briton Ian Walker preaches and practices his creed of agro-forestry and rainforest preservation. At his beautiful site, Walker has recuperated land totally degraded by abuse and mismanagement and made it productive.
He has also planted many fast-growing trees in an effort to relieve pressure on the native forest from the unending demand for wood. He has a large nursery of native trees and is actually trying to recompose the rainforest through replanting. In this he is a pioneer. He also spent half his life savings in the purchase of a 750-acre piece of rainforest that is now a permanent reserve.
On Day 10 we have a four hour hike in the morning in the Atlantic Forest Reserve, and in the afternoon depart for Lençois, a small town in the heart of the Chapada Diamantina National Park. In the 19th century this was an area rich in minerals and diamonds in particular.
The town’s name is the Portuguese for “sheets”, and comes from the makeshift camps put up by diamond prospectors after their fortune. Today, it has become a haven for trekkers and people drawn by the spectacular scenery of waterfalls and fantastic rock formations.
The next day we have a grand tour of the region accompanied by former Peace Corps volunteer Roy Funch who has lived in the area for 25 years and is responsible for making it a world tourist center that is sustainable. We will visit waterfalls, caves and the lookout mountain Pai Inácio.
We then have a six-hour hike to another magnificent waterfall Cachoeira do Sossego (peaceful waterfall) and then on the way back visit a natural water slide called Riberão do Meio. We will be accompanied by Roy on this day also.
We depart Lençois in the early morning and catch an afternoon flight from Salvador to São Paulo and further afield.
For a full trip description PDF click here
Extension Trips
Brazil Pre-Trip Rio
Brazil - Extension 1: Buzios
Brazil - Extension 2: Paraty
Brazil - Extension 3: Fernando de Noronha
If you like this trip, you may also be interested in:
Argentina - Northern Explorer in Atyle
Guatemala - Mayans & Mountains
Ecuador - Ecuador Encounter
Ecuador - Galapagos & Volcanoes
Feel free to contact us if you have any enquiries about this trip.
