After Tambaba we decided to narrow down the kind of examples that we wanted to see. We focused on groups and people that work to protect what is left of the Atlantic Forest, while also contributing to generate income for the families that live in the surrounding areas that are to be protected and restored.

We wrote to several organizations in the Northeast and that was how we got in touch with Ana Cristina from Pau-Brasil Foundation at Glória do Goitá, David from Santuário Ecológico in Pipa; and finally the Environmental Group “Natureza Bela”.

From the very first email, Natureza Bela received us with open arms and were very willing to share their story and challenges with us.

When we arrived at Trancoso, we realized that Itabela, the city where Natureza Bela is located, was not as close as we imagined. We started to question whether it would really be worth going there:  “Why not just spend a last romantic day on the beach in the South of Bahia?”

Simply because we still had a lot to learn, we decided that yes, we were going to get up at 5:00 am and spend several hours on a bus on our last day of the trip. It was really worth it! The work presented to us by Deivison Viana, Geisa Bonfim Berte, Alexssandro Gonçalves dos Santos and Sidvaldo de Oliveira filled us with hope and optimism.

The Environmental Group “Natureza Bela” has found ways to overcome their challenges and since its creation in 2001 has been implementing more and more projects, contributing to the protection of the environment and generating income for local communities in the Southernmost part of Bahia. Its main strategy is perseverance, cooperation with other organizations and a combination of young people working alongside others with more experience.

The organization is located in Itabela, a city with a population of around 25 thousand people that was founded around 1960 to harbor the major lumbermills that installed themselves in that region. These companies came in response to incentives for deforestation and urban development of the region by the Federal Government at the time. The Atlantic Forest remained almost intact until 1940 but intense wood exploration for more than 20 years reduced it to around 7% of the initial territory.

Attempting to preserve what was left and restore what was destroyed, in 2001, the biologist José Francisco Azevedo Jr., Gilson dos Santos Gali, Sidvaldo de Oliveira and others got together and decided to form the Environmental Group “Natureza Bela”. Ever since it was founded, Natureza Bela has contributed to effectively preserve and restore natural resources, in addition to promoting environmental awareness, empowering citizens and generating income in the Monte Pascoal – Pau-Brasil Ecological Corridor.

It wasn’t easy. Their first project was not an immediate success. Natureza Bela proposed that a City Park be created in order to preserve around 600 hectares of Atlantic Forest in medium and advanced stages of recovery. Local politics kept the project from being implemented as initially planned, but it resulted in the creation of the first native tree nursery managed by the group, as well as the creation of two Private Natural Protection Reserves (RPPN) and environmental involvement of the region’s population.

The know-how acquired with the production of seedlings in this period and the ability to network with owners of rural properties and the local population allowed Natureza Bela to co-manage a project to recover the Atlantic Forest and protect the waters of the Caraíva River Basin, along with Instituto Cidade and the Association of Natives from Caraíva (ANAC). In addition to these lead organzations, the project also relied on help form several other institutions, among which were Instituto Bio-Atlântica, Conservation International Brazil (CI-Brasil) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC).

This project not only created the basis for the recovery process of the Atlantic Forest in the ecologic corridor of Monte Pascoal – Pau-Brasil, but also had two other vital results: the creation of Cooplantar – a cooperative of reforestation workers of the Atlantic Forest in Southernmost Bahia – and the fomalization of a partnership of environmental organizations to jointly implement projects.

Cooplantar is a cooperative that specializes in the restoration of the Atlantic Forest, offering an important alternative for income generation for poor families in the region. Natureza Bela and its partners train the over 20 members of the coop, which live in the villages of Caraíva, Nova Caraíva and Itabela. The coop members have had courses on seed collection, planting techniques, managing cooperatives and others. This leads to an improvement in the lives of the coop members, while providing Natureza Bela and its partners with professional reforestation services and better results in their projects in the region.

Natureza Bela and their partners also try to assure a steady demand for Cooplantar’s services, whether by hiring it for its own projects or referring them to other institutions that need or wish to reforest.

Cooplantar is, for us, a clear example of how poverty and environmental destruction can be fought at the same time. Geisa told us that the current president of the coop used to work in wood extraction and now plants for a living; some other coop members stopped hunting animals and now search for seeds, selling them to Natureza Bela’s nurseries; and many others have found an economic activity in the cooperative that can be carried out in the low tourism season, generating additional income for them and their families.

At the same time, the implementation of the Caraíva project proved that cooperation between the environmental organizations of the region leads to a much better result than individual work and competing for the same resources. As a consequence, Natureza Bela and seven other organizations: ANAC, Cooplantar, Associação Comunitária Beneficente de Nova Caraíva (ASCBENC), TNC, CI-Brazil, Instituto Bioatlântica and Instituto Cidade formed a partnership to jointly seek funding and implement projects in the region of the Monte Pascoal – Pau-Brasil ecologic corridor.

Each organization has its role in this joint-venture defined according to its comparative advantage. Natureza Bela distinguishes itself by its ability to network with the local community and owners of rural properties and it capacity to produce seedlings. By joining the partnership, Natureza Bela overcame some challenges such as access to funding and distribution of the produced seedlings.

After the joint-venture was created, not only was there an increase in the funds available for implementing projects, but these projects also became more sophisticated. This joint-venture was the first carbon sequestration project via reforestation in Latin America certified by the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA).

The project seeks to sequester 280,000 tons of CO2 over 30 years in an area of 800 hectares through the recuperation of native forests. It measures success through climate and biodiversity criteria, but also by bringing social and economic benefits to the communities. Corporations such as Natura Cosméticos and Kraft Foods Inc. have already bought part of the rights to use the CO2 to be recovered in 30 years, making the project economically viable.

Knowledge exchange with their partners, along with practical experience has taught them how to increase demand for the seedlings produced in Natureza Bela’s nursery. According to Sidvaldo, there is a demand outside of the projects carried out by the partnership, which comes from three main sources: a) companies / organizations with environmental liabilities due to obligations under the environmental laws; b) owners of rural properties interested keeping their legal reserves in good standing in order to obtain agricultural loans granted by state, national and international banks; and c) companies interested in the emerging carbon market.

In order to meet the increase in the demand for native seedlings, Natureza Bela currently manages 3 nurseries, each one with the productive capacity of 200,000 seedlings per year, from 72 types of native Atlantic Forest trees. It is expected for production to reach 3 million seedlings from 80 types of native species per year by 2012.

Natureza Bela is also in charge of several social, cultural, and educational activities that promote environmental awareness and alternatives for income generation. These activities include drama, crafts and dance classes, as well as managing one of Bahia’s Cultural Spots. One of their plays “Quando a Natureza é Bela” (When nature is beautiful, a play of words with the organization’s name) was so successful that it lead to the production of a comic book dealing with the same theme. These fun comic books are available for free on Natureza Bela’s website.

To us, Natureza Bela is an example of success. Over its nine years, it has gone from four volunteers to 10 employees and 22 volunteers and increased significantly its seedling production and the social and environmental impact of its projects.

The key to its success is cooperation. Whether cooperation with other partners, of young volunteers with more experienced people in the organization, or promoting cooperation between mankind and nature. To us, there is no doubt: when it comes to promoting collective well-being, 1 + 1 always equals more than 2!

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After Gloria do Goitá, we spent a week readjusting to modern life. We spent 4 days in Recife, working a lot and doing some sightseeing. We stayed with Dani and Victor, a very special 8-year-old, who taught us how to be children again! We played a lot: wrestling, running and exchanging football stickers!

Then, we went down to Salvador and arrived in Bahia. Ah, Bahia! Magical land of dreams, a paradise to all Mineiros… We visited old friends, Adhemar and his family, and let filled ourselves with that Bahian energy.

Salvador is, on one hand, a city like any other, with many urban problems such as pollution, sanitation, unemployment and poverty. Salvador also seemed not well cared for, it seemed dirtier and more neglected than the last times we had been there. However, the religious mich-mash, the music, its African heritage and the amazing coastal scenery make Salvador a very special place. It’s always worth a visit!

After Salvador, we headed to the South of Bahia. We chose Trancoso as our home base. Neither Stephan nor I knew this small town and it is geographically located in the middle of the places that we wanted to see in the region.

For those of you, who do not know the south of Bahia (or any part of the coast of Bahia, for that matter), this region is the representation of paradise in the imagination of most Brazilians from the South and Southeast regions. The image is of a region filled with natural beauty, many parties in the summer, a place of sensuality and relaxation. This image is confirmed specially in the summer.

Arriving there in the beginning of winter and at the end of our trip was quite interesting for us. The villages were empty and not so many parties were going on. However, all the villages we visited – Trancoso, Arraial D’Ajuda and Caraíva – maintained, to a higher or lower level, a substantial offer of good dining, nice places to stay and splendid nature.

During our stay in Trancoso, we felt that winter was dawning on us as well. We were starting to miss a “normal” work routine. The time had come for us to put into practice all that we had learned and move on to a new stage of our lives.

But it didn’t end right then and there, we were still missing one last learning experience. One of the reasons that we chose to stay in Trancoso was that it is close to Itabela. Itabela is where the Environmental Group Natureza Bela is located, an NGO that works with environmental conservation and promotes sustainable development in the region.

We spent our last day with them learning a lesson of hope and optimism. The “detour” to Itabela was longer than we had imagined and we almost gave up. We had to spend about 5 hours on the bus in order to talk with them only for a few hours, but meeting them made each kilometer of dirt road worth it. We’ll tell you all that we learned with them in our next post, stay tuned!

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Roy arrived in Brazil in 1977 as a Peace Corps volunteer from the United States. He knew very little about Brazil. He did not know that the language of the country was Portuguese and imagined that the Amazon covered the entire country. As a biologist passionate about nature, it was the image of a paradise. Hence, at his arrival, he was disappointed. In Brazil there where cars, big buildings and life was much more urban than he had thought.

After a short stay in Lavras in Minas Gerais, he was sent to Brasília to work on management plans for national parks at the Brazilian Institute for Forest Development (Instituto Brasileiro de Desenvolvimento Florestal (IBDF)), today the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade (ICMBio)). In theory, the work was interesting, but in practice he spent few days in the parks and a lot of days in an office in Brasília. It was not what he wanted.

He managed to get transferred to Recife but that post also was not what he wanted. Traveling with friends through the interior of Bahia for São João (big celebration in June) he got to Lençóis, Bahia for the first time. Lençóis is today the main tourist center of the Chapada Diamantina. His life would never be the same: “No exaggeration, I did not look for a place, but still in the bus, I thought, I found it!”

He went on some hikes with local miners, got to know the Fumaça waterfall from below and other places of the Sincorá ridge. His friends left after a week but he stayed. He rented a house in Lençóis where he lives until today. There, he had many roles and functions: Guide, Director of the National Park (which he calls a punishment since he had fought for its creation), Mining Inspector, head of the city’s tourism department and today of its environment department.

When Roy arrived in Lençóis the city was very different from today. Mining for diamonds and carbonate, the dominating activity in the region, paid little. The city was very poor, the historical heritage was not well taken care of, and the population was made up of mainly old and very young people, since all working age adults migrated to the Southeast (mainly São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro) in search for a better life. In the words of Roy, the city seemed to be the scenery for an old Western movie.

Yet the Sincorá ridge, its rivers and waterfalls were still there. Mining had, up to that point, been mainly manual and the degradation coming from diamond exploration, while existing, had not yet compromised its beauty. Roy became friends with the mining community and spent his time discovering the mountains. He hiked the ridge so often that he became an expert for its history and trails.

One time, in 1979, hiking in direction of Vale do Capão, the sky opened and he was overwhelmed by the incredible scenery. In that moment, he had the flash of an idea: “if this place were in Europe or the United States, it would certainly be a national park.” That was when he began to fight for the plan of a national park to protect the Sincorá ridge.

It was not an easy task. During those times, there was little environmental consciousness in the country, economic progress was the main driver for development and very few people could imagine that nature’s resources are limited. Even some friends did not believe in his campaign for the creation of a park!

In addition to Roy’s persistence, various other factors helped the process along. The main factor was the construction of a hotel by the state to promote tourism in the region. Several important people of the political scene of Bahia stayed there: ministers, members of parliament, senators and future governors. When these people arrived in Lençóis, they often asked for a guide to get to know the area. The local people would answer: “Guide, what guide? Talk to the American, he likes walking around the mountains.”

So Roy, besides being paid for what he did anyway, was able to sell his project to important figures of the Bahia state government. Some of them bought his idea and after a long journey, the park was created in 1985. But this did not happen without challenges. In 1982 almost everything was ready for the inauguration, the opening date was set and the official ceremony organized, when the government, under pressure from the miners and the “run for the diamonds”, decided to stop the process.

Diamond exploitation had seen a revival. Exploration entered into a new cycle in the early 1980ies using machines to extract the diamonds. That exploration was not regulated and was controlled by a few people. Still, in this extremely poor region, the little the local population gained was more than before. As Roy put it: “Every little thing was something, the old times were relived.”

Initially, Roy had not included their main exploration area as part of the park, but the federal government did, confronting the diamond miners. Mining for diamonds was illegal and as such did not generate taxes. Moreover, there was a strong media pressure for the closure of the exploration activities. TV Globo (the main national TV channel) produced several reports against this activity, and, around 1992, filmed the soap opera Pedra Sobre Pedra (Stone over stone) in Lençóis, which became a big national success. This contributed to an increase in eco-tourism in the region and strongly supported the conservation of the park.

The diamond miners fought as long as they could to continue their activities. During that time, Roy worked as mining inspector and as such had the role to reconcile the conservation of the park with the diamond exploration. He tried to convince the miners to use cleaner, yet more expensive techniques, to protect the water of the rivers. Despite his attempts, they reached no agreement, since the diamond explorers were not interested in increasing their costs to protect nature. In 1996, 6 months after leaving his job as inspector and mediator, the army closed the all non-manual mining activities.

Today, there is no machine mining left and the park receives thousands of visitors from all over the world. Lençóis and the other cities in the region grew and have more resources for conservation, not just of the environment, but also of their historical heritage.

The Chapada Diamantina National Park, like the majority of Brazil’s national parks is still not fully implemented. There are neither fences nor gates, nor enough resources for their maintenance. Yet, there can be no doubt that the park exists. It exists in the hearts of many people, in particular in those of the local population. The guide associations clean its trailswithout extra remuneration, many local citizens are volunteers in the fire brigades, and the new generations see in the park their heritage that has to be preserved.

There are still many challenges to be confronted. Roy reminded us that besides companies without a sense of environmental responsibility, poverty is another big enemy of nature. To overcome poverty, people invade protected areas to live, plant, hunt or search for precious stones. They often are not environmentally conscious since their main concern is to survive. In Lençóis, ecotourism lead to economic growth in the city, but poverty still persists, since the newly generated opportunities attracted thousands of people from the surrounding areas in search for a better life.

This is why today through ecotourism and in the past by promoting clean mining Roy fought and continues to fight for the importance of reconciling conservation with economic activities to the benefit of both nature and people. For his history and his role in the creation of Chapada Diamantina National Park, Roy is for us a great example.

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João was also a pioneer in surfing the “Ribeirão do Meio” (Middle Creek). Legend has it that kids, parents and grandparents would come just to see João going down the full creek. And that’s how it all began for me. Disguised as a guide, João took us around the Chapada for eight days, doing mischief. He started out by going down the “Ribeirão do Meio” with his own feet. I must confess that I, myself, had to pray a lot to go down it on my butt: “Lord’s prayer, Hail Mary… God bless me!”

During these eight days, every day was full of surprises and adventures. He picked the mango from the highest branch in the tree, climbed the “Morro do Veneno” (Poison Hill) like a lightning bolt, flew fifty meters down the Capivara and climbed the “Morro do Macaco” (Monkey Hill) without using his hands. As if this weren’t enough, when I couldn’t go on anymore, he’d come back and carry me up the Macaco with just one arm. That’s why João, to us, is not João Batista, he’s Super João!

Super João climbed the trees that no one else could climb, picked the fruit that nobody else could pick and reached the highest point in the Chapada as fast as a bullet. João knows where the waters spring and what can be eaten from the woods. João speaks with the sky, the sun and the waters. João knows and loves the animals. João understands that those who listen to nature, who know it and respect it, are more human. And that’s how, while he shows us the beauties in the heart of Bahia, he is also defending the Chapada Diamantina. That is why João is not just João Batista, João is Super João, our super hero of the Chapada Diamantina!

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Source/ Fonte: http://www.infochapada.com/indexparque.htm

The National Park “Chapada Diamantina” (Diamond Mountain Plateau) is located in the heart of the Brazilian State of Bahia and covers 152.572 hectares of the Sincorá ridge. The Park was created in 1985 and includes the municipalities of Lençóis, Palmeiras, Andaraí, and the districts of Igatu and Mucugê. The park’s name comes from its past as an area famous for the extraction of diamonds, which was the main economic activity followed by coffee production. Today, the main motor for the local economy is ecotourism.

The beauties and attractions of the park are so many, that we could easily spend the four months of our trip discovering its secrets. Abundant waters molded breath taking waterfalls, caves and valleys into the Sincorá ridge. The Atlantic Forest and singular fauna are equally impressive, and the cities and small villages do not leave anything to be desired. Among the historic remnants of the Diamond exploitation, the coffee plantations and the mystic and alternative Vale (valley) do Capão, there are plenty of options for those not so keen on walking.

We had chosen Lençóis as the main city for our adventure since we did not know better and because it is difficult to move around the park by bus. We admit, however, that when passing by Vale do Capão during our hike, it felt like staying. We were also very curious to visit Mucugê (some say it is like Lençóis some 20 years ago), Igatu (the city of stones or the Machu-Picchu of the Chapada) and the Marimbus, a flooded area also known as the Mini-Pantanal of the Chapada.

Unfortunately, as there is so much to do in and around the park, we had to choose. We chose to go on a hike that would allow us to see the greatest numbers of attractions while at the same time allowing us to experiment first hand the park’s wild nature. We did the “Cachoeira da Fumaça por Baixo” (Fumaça waterfall from below) and the Pati Valley trails walking about 105km during 8 days. We swam in several waterfalls, crossed many mountains (some just hills), enjoyed panoramic views and benefited from the abundant kindness of the remaining inhabitants of the Pati Valley.

Before loosing ourselves on the park’s trails, we took a tour called Route 1. This Route is a day tour that takes you past several of the Park’s main tourist attractions, such as the famous Morro do Pai Inácio (Pai Inácio’s Hill, a reference to Candomblé religion) and Morro do Camelo (Camel’s Hill).

The hike of “Cachoeira da Fumaça por baixo” is a difficult 3 days hike. It goes from from Lençóis to Vale do Capão passing the Palmital and Capivara waterfalls, and seeing the Fumaça from below and above with many additional panoramic views along the way. The hike took us to places where diamonds were previously extracted and some almost untouched Atlantic Forest. Hikers should bring their own food and it advisably also their own tend in case of rain or crowed burrows (naturally covered areas used as places to sleep).

The hike of the Pati Valley is considered to be one of the most beautiful in Brazil. The hike goes from Vale do Capão to Andaraí, passing through the Vieira and Rio Preto plains, and including the Castelo hill, and the Funil and Cachoeirão waterfalls. It is a moderately difficult hike.

The Pati Valley (alongside Vale do Capão) was home to most of the coffee producers in the region at the beginning of the 20th century. During this time, the Valley had almost 2 thousand inhabitants. The coffee crisis during the first half of the last century was responsible for the exodus of most of its population. Today it is reduced to a total of 50 people (see Guia Vale do Pati).

Many of these remaining inhabitants receive visitors in their homes. This way of accommodation makes the Valley trails even more special. The hospitality of the Wilson, Eduardo and Joia families was without a doubt one of the highlights of our walk.

Besides treating guests with great kindness, the food at their houses is great and homemade. We drank coffee grown, toasted and grounded on their properties. We tasted green papaya salad that everybody thought was cabbage. We ate tropical fruits and vegetables directly picked from their garden, bananas of many kinds and juices from mangaba, umbu and acerola. The chicken were running around freely before we ate them and desert homemade. Dona Maria, Sr. Wilson’s wife, swears it is the walk that makes the food so good, but I think it is good indeed!

As it is hard to describe in words what we saw and what we felt, we have prepared a couple of slideshows and videos with images and histories of our walk. We hope that seeing the images you can feel at least a little bit of the emotions (and maybe the tiredness) we felt. We hope you will like it!

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Ever since mankind decided that it is the center of the world, we have distanced ourselves from the other beings that also inhabit our planet. We began to see them as instruments for our welfare or obstacles to our comfort. We forgot that, no matter how small they may be, each being contributes to the balance of life and represents an enormous evolutionary effort by Earth. I’m no exception to this rule.

Born and raised in the city, I’ve developed in these almost thirty years an enormous and irrational fear for small creatures that I can’t see and may bite me. The fear grows if the animal, in addition to be able to bite me, goes “ZZZZZZZZZ”. It’s this fear that I call the fear of bio, fear of other types of lives.

Since I suffer from this fear, the weekend at the farm Flor de Café that grows organic coffee, was a great challenge. Organic agriculture is based on the principle that we live in nature and not from nature. From this principle comes the idea that other living beings – animal or vegetable -, when in equilibrium, actually benefit the crop instead of causing damages to it. For this reason, organic agriculture does not use any kind of pesticides and it has been proven that it increases the organic mass: there’s more life and more forms of life.

This became very clear to us from the moment we arrived at the farm.  As soon as we got out of the car, heading to the room where we were going to sleep, I looked at the ground and saw nothing more, nothing less, than a huuuuuuuge scorpion! Wow, what a scare! We weren’t sure what to do. Brígida, the farm’s owner, tried to disguise her own fear and explained:” When I find a scorpion in the middle of the woods, I let it be, but this close to home, I think it’s better to kill it.” And so Stephan armed himself with my running shoes and sent the scorpion on to its next life.

We left our backpacks in the room and went to the kitchen. While we were chopping onions, grating carrots, we heard a frog croaking. It seemed like it was quite hungry too…but there was not enough food for all of us. Its luck, however, was better than the scorpion’s and was simply asked to leave the kitchen with the sweep of a broom.

The night went by smoothly, probably because a mosquito net protected us. Maybe this is what made me wake up with such a disposition for wilderness. From the farm’s kitchen you can see the mango trees. There are several and they were all loaded with fruit. Since we were preparing breakfast, I offered to go and get some mangos from the trees.

That’s when, while I was enjoying my first harvesting, I saw, more or less by chance, a beehive. It wasn’t big and there weren’t any bees, but the image was enough to leave me terrified. I tried to carry on with my work but the thought of the beehive haunted me and allowed me to pick only 3 mangos. And I must confess that one of them I got from the ground.

After breakfast we went to see one of the water springs in the farm. The notorious place where Brígida heard the creek’s message. We were sitting facing these waters when Brígida mentioned that near some tarantulas and water snakes lived close to where we were.

And there were several other examples such as these. Hornets had built nests in both of the bathrooms in the house. The malagueta tree was home to some yellowish spiders and we could hear “ZZZZZZZ” all around while we were climbing Serra da Tromba.

It was quite interesting that, while we were listening to the waters, we spoke of how humans need to reconnect with Earth and understand that life as a whole, and not just mankind’s, is important. Reflecting over this and acknowledging the great fear that I felt of these ingenious manifestations of life that are small insects and invertebrate creatures, I realized the great contradiction in me: the desire to reconnect with life and the great fear I feel towards it.

I decided that the weekend on the farm would be my first step towards facing the fear of bio. This decision was strongly tested when we went to pick our lunch: manioc, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, passion fruit and mango. I had imagined this moment like a page in a romance novel: it was the first time in my life that I was harvesting what I was about to eat!

And it was, in fact, a wonderful experience, but not one without challenges. Between Brígida, Stephan and myself, I must confess that I was the most useless. Each “ZZZZZZZ” made me want to go running off. And so I did, when we heard a swarm of bees approaching. Luckily I was fast, because I acted exactly the opposite of what I should have done. In these cases, it is recommended to stand as still as possible.

It is true, though, that despite these comings and goings of invertebrate creatures, I witnessed this weekend the fundamental role that each one plays in the ecosystem. When we killed the scorpion, I thought: “we should remove it from there so as not to attract others.” How naive of me! After half hour, we passed by the same path and the scorpion was no longer there. The ants had already taken it to their nest.

Brígida explained that, in addition to be nature’s cleaners, ants also execute the function of opening holes in the soil, allowing air and water to sink more easily, which are essential ingredients for the survival of several living organisms.

Hornets are great friends of coffee producers in a similar manner. They are predators of caterpillars called “bicho mineiro” (lecucoptera coffeella) that is a coffee pest. On a certain occasion, while all other farmers in the region were having problems with this pest, Brígida’s crop went unharmed. As she doesn’t use pesticides, the hornets were alive and buzzing in her farm, keeping the natural balance and not allowing the pest to spread throughout her plantation.

Spiders and frogs also feed on several insects and are important agents in this balance. According to Brígida, frogs are not very welcome in the kitchen but are essential to the vegetable garden as they feed on guava and mango pests. Spiders can also help to predict the weather. If they are moving around a lot, it’s a sign that rain is on the way.

This is why I think it’s important to face the bio fear and defend these beings lives, respecting limits and acknowledging that there are risks sometimes. In the big city, where food comes from the supermarket, water from the faucet and electricity from the outlet, it’s easy to forget that each of them has a function that is vital to our own lives.

Recently, I heard during a lecture that if all insects died, life on Earth would end in 50 years and if all human beings died, life on Earth would flourish. I hope that if we learn to respect more what these creatures represent in our lives, and not fear them to the point of exterminating millions every day, we can change this prediction! I am trying to do my part!

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Serra da Tromba in Piatã, Bahia

I’m writing from Piatã, Bahia. We made a few changes to our plans in order to adjust our schedule to the availability of our guide, João, highly recommended by some of our friends to help us in the hikes  in the national park of the Chapada Diamantina. One of our friends from Belo Horizonte has an aunt that owns an organic coffee farm in the Chapada. We were curious and luckily she agreed to have us over. That’ s how we met Brígida, who’s from Minas Gerais, mother of a very well raised son, about to be a grandmother and an organic coffee farmer.

Talking with Brígida and observing the scenery, we found out that Piatã is part of the “Rio das Contas” region. This region’s development was propelled by the discovery of gold in the 17th century. Gold exploitation went on for about 100 years and was abandoned when the gold reserves came to an end and diamonds were discovered in other areas of the chapada.

Piatã is currently a small town that thrives from agriculture, in particular from growing coffee. This land was responsible for the best coffee in Brazil in 2009. Its mountains, however, are enriched with iron ore and exploitation of this mineral has increased, which may compromise the scenery that left us in awe these days. Several mountains reign over the coffee farms, among them “Serra da Tromba” and “Serra do Santana”. Fortunately, Serra da Tromba has recently been declared an area of relevant ecologic interest.

Coffee from the Fazenda Flor de Café

But in addition to the beauty of this place, we discovered in Brígida the best reason for our trip to Piatã. She has enormous human appeal and our conversations filled our hearts with joy. At first, we thought that the examples we would describe in this website would come mainly from NGOs, companies, projects, etc. During these first five days, however, it has become clear to us that behind great projects and ideas are people, actual human beings with strong motivations to take decisions that are often non traditional.

Brígida is, without a doubt, one of these people. Before coming to Piatã, she worked for 12 years at a major Brazilian extraction company in Salvador, Bahia. She told us that her salary was good enough to allow her to buy a new car every year, pay the tuition of one of Salvador’s best schools for her son, among other comforts.

Many personal reasons and ideals, the search for a better quality of life and environmental awareness made her change her life. She accepted to take part in a voluntary dismissal plan from the company and decided to set up a bed and breakfast (“pousada”) in Piatã.

When we asked her why Piatã, Brígida told us that once, while she still lived in Salvador, she came to the town to celebrate the São João party (traditional Brazilian celebration that happens in June) and fell in love with the town. It’s the highest city in Bahia (around 1,260m of altitude), with a very nice temperature – believe it or not, you can even sleep with a blanket over you!

Brígida’s initial idea was to set up a “pousada”, a sort of small farm, close to the center of Piatã. But there were two great obstacles to this idea. The first was the lack of properties with the features that she wanted. The second was a local resistance to tourist activities. The local residents were afraid that what happened with the native residents of Lençois could happen to them. The tourism boom there was not accompanied by similar qualification of the region’s workers. So qualified labor came from outside the region and the previous residents were left to do manual, less qualified labor.

That’s how, one day, while she was looking for a place for her pousada, a local farmer and coffee grower told her that his farm was on sale and invited her for a visit, no strings attached, to see if she liked it. She reluctantly told him that she was looking for a small plot of land, next to town since she was hoping to open a pousada and needed a place with easy access. Even so, she decided to visit this farm. After all, people in town had spoken of waterfalls inside the property.

The speaking waters of the Fazenda Flor de Café

Brígida was charmed by the place at first sight, but is was the waterfall, which made her stay. When the owner took her there, she felt that she had to swim there. As she had not brought along her bathing suit, she asked the owner to keep away. Alone in that waterfall, she felt nature around her and the waters whispering in her ear: “Your role is to care for the waters of these rivers.”

She had never been much of a mystic, believed in God at best, so she quickly got dressed and left as soon as she could.

When she got back to town, the farmer asked:

- Did you like the property?

- Everything is gorgeous, wonderful, but I’m afraid that I don’t have enough money to pay you. How much are you asking for it?

The price was, in fact, more than she could afford, so she told him:

- Like I said before, I’m looking for a small plot of land close to town, I don’t have all that money.

The farmer asked Brígida:

- And how much do you have?

To which she answered:

- A third of what you’re asking for.

He returned the question:

- In cash?

Brígida:

- Yes, the money’s in the bank.

Farmer:

- Perfect, we’ll go to the notary early tomorrow morning, you pay me and I’ll sign the property over to you.

And that’s how Brígida tripled her equity, like magic. The farmer was also a merchant and needed liquidity at that moment.

After a few months, she opened the pousada, which, in her words, was in fact a hostel. Simple and laid-back, it sought ought to develop a bit of rural tourism in Piatã. She named it “Fazenda Flor de Café” – Coffee Flower Farm.

The locals’ resistance to tourism ended up jeopardizing her activities and she decided to care for the farm. Being a big city person, she wasn’t quite sure how to do it. Brígida took a few courses, learned from her neighbors and, having fallen in love with it, had no greater difficulty in learning how the land worked.

She opted, however, to grow coffee in a different manner than what had been done by the previous owner and went organic. We asked her why she did decide to grow organic coffee. Her answer was fascinating. In the beginning of the 90s, right after the Rio Earth Summit took place, the ecological movement raised the population’s and companies’ awareness to the importance of preserving the environment. At the same time, it became evident that the extraction industry had caused great environmental damages to the Bahia coastline. The companies’ answer was to create projects to recover the area.

As she worked as a librarian at the time, Brígida had access to documents and discussions over this issue. In her own words, she became aware. The company in which she worked carried out activities that could be extremely damaging to our ecosystem and, in order to recover it, many resources and time were needed and often neither were available. Since she had an environmental consciousness, Brígida decided that her production should also be conscious-minded, so the choice for organic coffee came naturally.

Two master theses have already been written based on her farm’s activities. One of them compared the insects on her farm with those that existing in a coffee farm that uses pesticides. The second thesis analyzed the soil’s quality and it’s features. Both theses indicated that organic production is more favorable to life.  Brígida confessed that she felt relieved with the results, as she had felt a chill to her stomach when she allowed these studies: “what if the results show that what I’m doing is not making a difference?”.

We asked her about the organic certification process and its difficulties. She explained us that the joint actions by several coffee farmers from the region ended up making the whole process simpler and cheaper than initially imagined. Cooperation with other farmers and residents from the region also proved to be critical for other conquests. Working together, they were able to obtain solar energy for the farms in the region and through a cooperative that they set up, organic coffee production is promoted and made viable.

Brígida warns us that life on the farm is no bed of roses. “Sometimes I miss cultural activities and intellectual stimuli.” This feeling has shrunk since Brígida entered into the WWOOF program (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) two years ago. Volunteers from all over the world come to the farm for at least a month to help her out with the chores, in exchange for food, board, paradise-like scenery and great conversations. As for cultural activities, one of Brígida’s greatest passions, the movies, has become platonic since there are no movie theaters in the Chapada Diamantina region.

Another challenge is the fact that the coffee business does not always do well and when this happens she has to seek out other activities. Her academic background and previous experiences allow her to carry out several different jobs in the town outside of the farm. School teacher, project coordinator at an NGO, among others…

Guardian of the waters

After 12 years in this cycle, Brígida has come to realize that the time and energy spent on other activities are also beneficial to business development and improvement of organic coffee farming. The 12 years are no coincidence. Her life does in fact seem to revolve around 12 year cycles: 12 years working in Salvador, 12 years in Piatã and now the beginning of the disembodiment of her dream of developing a sustainable plantation, by setting up a foundation.

Her goal with the foundation is to develop scientific activities in order to support, develop and spread new agricultural-ecological techniques. This way, she’s keeping alive her mission as guardian of the waters, because in order to protect the rivers, she has understood that she must keep all the ecosystem around it alive and in harmony. Since Brígida arrived at the farm not only do the waters that already existed continue to be alive, but new springs have appeared!

“Fazenda Flor do Café” grows more than coffee: its orchard has mangoes, passion fruit and other native fruits such as “carambola” and “jaca”, manioc (cassava), peppers, potatoes, sweet potatoes, bananas, lettuce, tomatoes, etc., etc., etc. While we talked, we taste an improvised couscous with several ingredients from the farm and a slight German touch. And during dinner, we were delighted not only with the food but also with the joy of rediscovering the pleasure of eating things directly from the ground.

To seal this night of such intense learning, we drank some of the farm’s coffee: it was delicious, with a soft aroma and naturally sweet… It was the first time that we drank coffee picked and ground on the spot…what a thrill!

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The bus option has many downsides: less independence to go to the places we want to visit, less space to take things, less comfort, more sleepless nights and so forth. Yet, looking exclusively on the practical side, it is also true that the less stuff we take or the less we drive, the less worries we will have. Not to mention that, making the math, the total cost of the trip will also be smaller. In the end, however, we chose the bus option mostly for philosophical reasons.

Coming from the upper middle class, I have always had the feeling that there was an invisible line between rich and poor. The line is invisible because there are no geographical divisions; both classes live very close to one another. In any Brazilian city it is possible that only few streets will be between a favela and a high luxury condominium. This invisible line can be illustrated in many different ways: how people talk, how they dress… the fear of violence. The truth is: no matter, which side you are on, you know there are two sides!

Drawn to action research we decided that traveling by bus would allow us to experience, and therefore, better understand some of the difficulties of being on the other side of the line. Finally, at 6pm on February 1, 2010 we took our first bus to Vitória da Conquista/BA. As if to test our decision, the bus we would be on for 13 hours, arrived to pick us up at the bus station with broken air conditioning and blocked windows that could not be opened. Outside the bus, the temperature was approximately 40 degrees Celsius. This meant that inside the bus, the temperature probably exceeded 50 degrees.

The broken bus left the bus station with about 30 people to a place 45 minutes outside Belo Horizonte, where we waited for 1 hour until the replacement bus arrived. Fortunately it arrived… Let’s hit the road!

After a night of sleep we arrived at Vitoria da Conquista/BA and from there we followed to Lencois/BA. It was day, so it was possible to observe the landscape. The landscape described in another language the inequality mentioned above. Between breath-taking nature and large plantations, we could spot small houses, humble people and smells that denounced poverty despite the beauty around us.

We passed through small towns called Anagé, Tanhaçu, Ituaçu, Barra da Estiva, Cascavel, Mucugê, Andaraí e Tanquinho. In Tanquinho we caught an improvised cab to Lençóis/BA, the touristic center of the Chapada Diamantina. After 24 hours traveling, we arrived at the exact moment a procession started with hundreds of people that celebrate in the typical way the town’s patron saint. A procession is a typical religious ritual to worship and give thanks. At this moment I was filled with peace, the decision to leave was blessed…

All of this to say that after our first and longest bus trip, it was clear that the decision to come down from our pedestal of distant observers to enjoy the good and bad sides of traveling by bus around Brazil, was the right decision!

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