this is the grave of brazilian legends: lampiao and maria bonita. theirs is a great story which encapsulates the key elements of a true great braziliam drama: courage, honour, love, violence, poverty, injustice, romanticism, brutality, lyricism and an intricate relationship with the land.

i came across this grave sort of by accident. my original destination was the impressive and legendary hydro damn of paulo afonso, in the northwest of bahia. after paulo afonso i continued down the sao francisco past the next power station of xingo, and right after that came across a completely charming small village called piranhas. i fell in love with this place, and the river, and stayed for a few days. it was only then that i learned that the place where lampiao and maria bonita had been killed was a short boat ride down the river and then a short trek into the caatinga, the harsh arid cactus and shrubs vegetation which surrounds the sao francisco. so there i went, with a local guide and my imagination piqued.

and this is what the caatinga looks like. unforgiving! it is bone dry, and its quite something that these skinny shrubs manage to grow so tall. the cactus are just cool. a scrape on either the shrub or cactus is quite an obvious sensation, and not exactly pleasant. i was told that in some spots of this semi desert rain falls once in a blue year making the landscape virtually unhabitable outside the immediate river banks.

and it was in this is the land where lampiao and his gang lived while fighting a gorilla war with the federal troops sent to support the rich landowners whose ire he had aroused. in some romantic accounts lampiao was a hero of the poor and dispossed, a man fighting for the honour of his family, bent on revenge for a death. and maria bonita was one of his fighter, capangas, a lady of equal courage and ferocity according to the legend.

http://www.brazilbrazil.com/lampiao.html

the river is amazing, breathtakingly clear crisp water which had a majestic emeral colour. i free dived in it with my eyes wide open, taking in the random creatures which swim up near the surface. in this stretch the river was quite deep, the clear green emerald giving way to a murky opaque and unpenetrable green into which i dared not go. maybe it was all the stories i heard from the locals of gigantic beastly fish, man-eating feral monsters which roam the depths of this legendary river guarding its soul.

during the tourist season this little shack is a riverside bar, um barzinho. unfortunately it was closed when i was there, abandoned actually :). this little place however, has lived in my memory ever since i saw it, and this place is probably the closest i have ever come to my personal perfect place where to die: it is far, far from everything, everyone. it is harsh but stunningly beautiful, a place where nature is unquestioned and untamed. and as you can see from all my photos and descriptions, i am profoundly seduced by strong and pure natural colours. i am mesmerised by colours: the pure blue sky, the emeral green river, the burnt orange land, the prickly green shrubts and toasted green cactuses, and sunbleached white dry bones of long and short dead animals.

of all the places i met in brasil, this one left me some of the most potent and romantic memories. i fell in complete love with its legend, its stark and brute beauty, with the emerald green waters of a storied riverway, and with my imagination of the suffering and the loving engendered by the sertao and its inhabitants.

thats the little village of piranhas, in the state of sergipe, the left is sergipe, the right is bahia. to get here head towards paulo afonso, and from there follow the rivers course, past xingo

one of the things i enjoyed the most in my trips was to discover a path leading nowhere, and finding myself somewhere like this. i remember sitting here and just soaking in the sun and the spirit of the sertao.

rio sao fransisco, down from the damn,

despite not having a roof, and looking fairly abandoned, this is actually a functioning fish market. there is simply little purpose to install a roof in a place where it rains so little.

 

piranhas at dusk 

 

i couldnt figure out whether this was a large mausoleum or a tiny cute church in the middle of a path going nowhere in particular

i like the simplicity of this image. the stark contrast between that which we make and the land, the artificial white and blue agaisnt the organic colours, the exact geometry of the structure and the lone cross on the hill, against the irregular shapes and contours of the hill. i get a quiet satisfaction in knowing that over time nature will remain, retain its natural grace and adapt to change while what we make will crumble, the white will stain to a more natural colour and the blue will flake and peel away, and the cross will be gone, leaving the land as it was, as it is to become.

this is the lovely little town of piranhas. it is literally 3 roads north south and 10 east west. i spent a good amount of time in the little bar there, sitting with the locals and listening to the rythms of uncomplicated yet dramatic lives. 

 

 

 

and this is the hydro power station of xingo. it is a small one, much smaller than the paulo afonso station which is only a few hour up the sao francisco in bahia. i love big engineering, and power damns are about as large as they come. i am fascinated by the scale of the ingredients, the walls of cement, the static and profound lakes created upstream, the tension which permeates the air outside, the crackling of the powerlines and the danger signs everywhere speaking of voltage and electricity. and i absolutely love the elegant simplicity of the fundamental science that underlies the entire endeavor. yes, im a geek. but a romantic one :)