Day Four - Hiking Trip

Day Four of our Chapada trek started a little more slowly than the previous day. None of us seemed to be in much of a hurry to get moving, so we didn´t end up leaving our pousada until a little past 10:30 a.m. Our guides were actually worried that we wouldn´t be able to make it to both destinations scheduled for that day, but we convinced them to proceed with the plan. We set out to climb Castelo Hill, one of the highest in the park. The photo to the left shows us decending into a large cave near the top of Castelo Hill. Shortly after this photo was taken we had to pull out our flashlights and headlamps to navigate through the length of the cave.

At the far end of the cave we climbed up through an opening and then continued on to the lookout point near the peak of Castelo Hill. As you can see to the right, the views were spectacular. We spent about twenty minutes admiring the scenery before the guides started encouraging us to be on the move again. We needed to get back down the hill, a 3 km trek, with enough time to make it to our second destination for the day, the Funil Waterfall. We stopped at the bottom of the hill for lunch and some sun bathing by the river before continuing on our way.

After lunch we jumped from stone to stone along the river for a distance of almost 2.5 km. At least half the guys slipped in along the way, so there were some wet hiking boots before we reached the waterfall. Along the way we saw a water spider (not poisonous) that was the size of Peter Crossgrove´s hand. Needless to say, we eventually reached the waterfall safely and spent about an hour swimming and jumping in to the pool at the base of the falls. The photo to the left shows Connor Ritchie, Mike Mildon, and Kelsey Boland in the centre of the pool. After about an hour of swimming and rock jumping, we continued on to our next pousada. We spent the evening at the farm of Dona Leia (pictured below). After another round of cold showers and a great meal, we were once again in bed before 9:00 p.m. Although the description above makes this sound like it was a leisurely day, it was exhausting. The climb to the peak of Castelo involved almost 90 minutes straight of uphill trekking, and going back down was even more difficult with the rocky terrain. Jumping from rock to rock along the river was also gruelling. In total we covered 12 km throughout the day, so the early bedtime was very much needed.