Diamond Carnival, Sun, 18 Feb 2018 | written by Simon
Simon at a Mountain, Waterfall in Brazil, South America


Last night the grandma next door really went for it. She talks to herself loudly every evening, but finishes around 10. Tonight she started again around midnight and seemed really angry, arguing with some imaginary adversary really loudly. Woke me and half the neighbours up and soon people started shouting at her to shut up. It took a while before she did…

At 8:15 I had a ride to catch from the town centre. It took way longer than expected – two hours in total, quite boring at that. Preferred the motorbike before, much more interesting and faster as we weren’t stuck behind slow trucks. In the car I met a nice couple, Chris and Lea, who told me much of their travels in Vietnam – great stuff, I keep getting more and more info about it for next year. They definitely recommended getting a motorbike to travel around Vietnam.

The trek was quite easy, two hours with less than an hour or actual steep incline and the rest on a plateau. Some glorious views on the way though! When we got there, it was breathtaking. Both metaphorically and literally – the waterfall goes 380m vertically down, with no cascades or breaks, just a vertical drop. And we were standing right next to it, on the same wall, literally one step away from certain death. That was utterly sublime in the Kantian sense. And the view! I spent quite a while lying there with my head over the edge, looking into the sheer drop and catching my breath. If life had a save option and I could just reload it, I would totally jump just to see what is like. Once I got used to it, I proceeded to have my lunch sitting a metre away from it.
Cachoeira de Fumaca totally deserved its name – a small stream falling 380m down quickly changes into a fine water mist which looks like smoke. Except no rainbows form in smoke, while the waterfall is just full of them. By the time it reaches the bottom, it’s just a fine mist of water droplets, and so this is the quietest waterfall I’ve seen yet.

So for back down the same way and drove to Do Riachinho – another waterfall, this time way shorter but with more water and much more volume. This one was the best so far for swimming in – lots of space to stand or sit under it and get a glorious water back massage, and a big pool to swim in at the bottom.

In the evening we decided to meet up for a beer with some of the people who were at the trip. Had an rather great pumpkin risotto with a steak that was amazingly not grilled too death and write tasty. Nice to chat to people.