Exotic Swimming in Lencois

With 8,000km of coastline, Brazilians seem to like to swim. Swimming around Lencois was something altogether different though. The swimming is in rivers and pools with many additional features such as waterfalls and natural rock slides. The water is always very dark but as Roy Funch explained in his guidebook, it is from organic matter not from minerals, he says you could think of it as a bit like tea.

Our first experience of all this was just north of the village of Lencois called The Serrano Swimming Hole. The rocks there are pretty amazing and some of the rock pools spectacular. They are large and deep because they were scraped out by gravel over the ages, and some of that gravel contained diamonds, a particularly tough material for gouging holes in rocks! The rock pools at this location are part of a waterfall and are great to mess about in. The locals know where you can bomb dive here, and which rock channels you can swim underneath as the water diverts underground for a bit (didn't fancy either prospect much myself).

As I mentioned in the previous entry, you can also do some guided snorkeling in some caves to the south, which is a really nice way to experience a cave with crystal clear water.

Pools were to be found all over the place, many with waterfalls to play in. Though we were all a little cautious of the first waterfall we swam through, since it looked like a lot of water.

During the end of our stay we hired Roy Funch as a guide. He choose a nice short hike for us, from Lencois (no driving). After about an hour we arrived at a pool, at which, without much explanation, our guide stripped off and dived in to the murky darkness. Happy to follow the guide, I stripped off and dived in too. He swam to the other side of the water and started walking up the edge of a bloody slippery rock incline. Expecting our geology guide to be about to continue my education on rocks I followed. About 30 feet up he gingerly waded our into the waterfall coming down this rocky incline and gestured me to follow, showing me the best place to stand to try and maintain some semblance of grip. So, we both end up sitting in our trunks on the middle of this slippery slope of rock. Roy then carefully slides down about 10 feet to a special spot. Wondering how the hell he managed to stop himself sliding all the way down the rocky slope, I carefully followed him. At this point, he explained that this is the Rock Slide (the Ribeirao Do Meio). Roy told me I would probably would want to go down on my trunks but he goes down "on the skin because it's faster" (yes, bare arsed). He aimed himself and pushed off down the slippery but ROCKY slope. Thinking better of it but by now far too committed to reconsider, I set off too. Things started well, nice and slow but soon enough I was way out of control and somewhat off piste from where Roy had gone but I plopped onto the slabs just beneath the water (not the ending I expected - I hoped to plop into clear water!). Anyway, this was the rock slide and the locals love it. Roy now limits himself to 3 goes a day out of consideration for his age (50 or so) but I managed to persuade him to his second go of the day and I believe someone may have a photo of that, with my face no doubt expressing panic on the decent. Later he told me that one of his kids goes down this on his feet, like he is surfing - it wouldn't be the best place to fall over trying that! Later still I discovered a brand new hole in the back of my trunks!