Serra do Tepequem

On Monday Arlisson and Lice's friend Cleo (she is on Couchsurfing, too) took us to the beautifull Serra do Tepequem, an area of mountains, rivers and waterfalls, that has been famous for its diamonds. Many streams and waterfalls have been altered by dynamite explosions during the hightide of diamond digging. Nowadays it is prohibited to dig for diamonds but there are still some 'garimpeiros', diggers, in the area - digging in secret and with less machinery.

Cleo knows the area really well and she organized a local guide, a garimpeiro, of course, and a wonderfull lunch for us.

We visited two waterfalls (its not that easy to climb down there with thongs!), went swimming and tried to find some diamonds. Especially Arlisson was quite motivated to start digging. Unfortunately we didn't find anything. Our guide spottet a very rare yellow frog, but when he tried to take a picture the battery gave up ;-)

On the way back Arlisson let Matthias drive and we had a lot of fun teaching him and Cleo "Achtung Bruecke, Matthias, bremsen!" ('Attention, bridge ahead, slow down') in German. Be it a natural talent for the German language or pure fear but soon they where doing really well ;-)

In the evening we had pizza with Lice's friends and family and it was really sad to think about leaving the next day. I had stayed one night with this wonderfull family when going to Guyana and had enjoyed their company so much that I left Guyana earlier then planned to spend the weekend with them. And then I stayed on untill Wednesday ;-) So many people back home where shoecked when I told them about my plans to Couchsurf in South America (I would be robbed, raped, murdered etc.) - I wish they could stay one night with these great people and see what Brazilian hospitality is like! Our hosts trusted us with their house, their car, their belongings... they prepared breakfast, lunch and dinner for us... they invited us to meet their friends... they did everything to make us feel at home and get to know their country. I can't thank them enough and look forward to 'paying it forward' the next time I host back home!