There is a kind of traveller for whom Bahia sounds wrong for reasons that have nothing to do with Bahia. Someone who does not enjoy humid heat, does not want to spend the day on sand, and suspects a tropical destination has nothing to offer them. That calculation is reasonable and, in this particular case, it is wrong.
The state covers 565,733 square kilometres, more than France, and 68% of its surface lies inside the semi-arid zone. The beach in all the photographs occupies a strip. Behind it there is a sandstone plateau, and that plateau is a mountain destination in every sense.
01 The misunderstanding in the name
The Chapada Diamantina covers some 38,000 square kilometres across 58 municipalities, with almost all of its surface above 500 metres, and forms part of the Espinhaço range. The Sincorá ridge runs a hundred and sixty kilometres north to south.
The national park was created on 17 September 1985 and protects 152,142 hectares across five municipalities: Palmeiras, Mucugê, Lençóis, Ibicoara and Andaraí. The state's highest point, Pico do Barbado, reaches 2,036 metres.
What you walk through is flat-topped tablelands with sheer walls, valleys wedged between them, caves cut by the rivers and rocky grasslands on top. None of that resembles what you expect when you read the name of the state.
02 Four hundred and ten kilometres inland
Lençóis, the usual gateway, is 410 kilometres from Salvador. That distance is the trip's first filter and it deserves to be taken seriously: this is not a day trip from the coast, it is a move that takes up a day.
It is also what makes the chapada work. It is far enough from the sea not to share its climate, its vegetation or its rhythm, and far enough that people on the coast do not take a bus up for the afternoon.
The honest trade-off is that distances inside the district remain long and transport is scarce. A six-to-nine-day trip without your own vehicle works if you pick one base and go out from it; covering the park's five municipalities by bus does not.
03 What changes on the thermometer
This is the central argument for the profile this article is about. In Salvador the lowest average minimum in the whole year is 21.0 degrees. No month, no statistical night, drops below that. In Lençóis the average July minimum is 16.6 degrees, and June's is 17.5.
Four and a half degrees of difference at night, in a humid climate, completely change how you rest. By day, though, the interior is hotter: average highs of 31.8 degrees in February against the coast's 31.1. It is a continental climate in miniature, with more range between day and night.
And the rain also favours anyone who has come to walk. The chapada's dry block runs from June to September: 55.7, 41.5, 40.4 and 26.4 millimetres a month. At the same time, on the coast, May, June and July are the months of 302, 238 and 194 millimetres. The two calendars are inverted.
04 How the walking works here
The reference traverse is the Vale do Pati, usually done over three days. You do not drive in: you walk in, cross the valley and come out the far side, sleeping along the way in the houses of the families who live inside it.
That defines quite precisely who this suits. It is not a hut-to-hut route and it is not a hotel route, and it is not camping either: it is sleeping in someone's house, eating what gets cooked there and depending on a local arrangement that exists because the valley is inhabited.
The calendar's contradiction is worth keeping in mind. The months with the best trail are the ones with the least water, and the months of full waterfalls are the months of mud. If what you want is to walk, choose June to September and assume the falls will be thin. It is a trade-off, and better decided than discovered.
The same state sold as a beach has, four hundred kilometres inland, sixteen-degree nights and three-day traverses.
05 A town that was very rich and stopped being so
Lençóis is not just any mountain town. Settlement began in 1845, after diamonds were found in the chapada; in 1856 it was constituted as a village and in 1864 it reached city status. By the middle of the nineteenth century it was the world's leading diamond producer and Bahia's third most important city.
That money left traces: luxury imports and even a French vice-consulate in a town in the interior of north-east Brazil. In 1871 the fall began, because South African finds sank the market and the local ground was exhausted. Many miners left.
What remained is a town centre that was never built over. IPHAN listed it as a protected ensemble in 1973, and today it lives off chapada tourism, with around eleven thousand inhabitants. For this article's profile that matters: the base of the trip is not a service centre built for visitors, but a town with a history of its own behind it.
06 If this describes you
The useful question is not whether you like Brazil, but whether you are willing to spend a day of travel getting away from the sea. Those who do find a mountain destination with cool nights, long trails and a town with a past. Those who do not stay on the strip, which is also very good, but is a different trip.
If you have got this far thinking that sixteen-degree nights and three days walking through a roadless valley sound better than a sun lounger, this trip is made for you. Book between June and September, allow a day to get up from Salvador, and accept in advance that the waterfalls will be thin.
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