Cacau was optimistic about the prospects for the local cocoa industry to regain its former glory. A growing number of farmers, many of them friends of his, were adopting organic methods and other ecologically enlightened practices, in part to avoid the kinds of diseases that had devastated crops in the region in the past. Every morning at the hotel, I would sit at a table laden with their produce, not just cocoa beans, but also banana, papaya, mango, and a cherry-like fruit called Cherry, as well as coconut milk and coconut water, all local and organic.
One day after breakfast I followed Cacau on a paddle board through a maze of mangroves to an uninhabited island where some of his farmer friends had been growing all kinds of fruits that he had never heard of, let alone tried. I bit a capia, a small yellow ball with the texture and flavor of a sweet potato, then one of the peons cut a cocoa pod: oblong, orange, with ribbed and leathery skin. We all just smile at each other as we chew on the sweet lemon pulp, spitting out the bitter seeds that are used to make chocolate.
Chapada diamantina, my last stop in Bahia, is a national park in the backwoods, the rugged interior that stretches through the interior of northeastern Brazil. It’s hard to sum up the astonishing scale, scenic beauty, and great ecological variety of the place without simply turning to a recital of its greatest hits. I’m thinking of its dozens of waterfalls, some hundreds of feet high, and its cacti, many of which grow taller than houses, and its extraordinary caves, which attract cavers from all over the world, and a pool of water. sweet carpeted with antique white seashells. so small you can fit dozens on your fingertip.
The land is mostly dry and rocky, dominated by spectacular cliffs and hills. Stretches may remind you of the American Southwest, but then you will see a capuchin monkey running down a cliff or tree shedding its bark every day so the green skin underneath can draw energy directly from the sun, and you realize you don’t there is another place like this in the world. Right in the middle of all this natural beauty is an unnatural explosion of color, the pastel-painted city of Lençóis.
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