Serra Grande, Bahia, Brazil · 20 May 2019
Nobody told us we could do this. Nobody told us we should. We arrived at Serra Grande, anchored Oroboro in the river mouth, and someone on the dock — with the casual certainty of a local sharing information too obvious to withhold — mentioned that if we took the dinghy upriver we would find cachoeiras. Waterfalls.
We went.
The river winds through Atlantic forest, the water dark with tannins, still and silent on the bends. Then the sound starts — a low, constant roar that builds as you round a curve — and the falls come into view. Wide, low, layered cascades dropping over smooth granite shelves into a churning pool of foam. The kind of thing that does not look real.
The falls sit at the base of what is left of the Mata Atlântica — the Atlantic Forest that once ran the length of the Brazilian coast. Only about 12% of the original forest remains, most of it in fragments. Serra Grande sits inside one of the larger intact reserves. Coming up the river by dinghy, under a canopy of dense jungle, you get a sense of what the whole coast must have looked like before the colonial clearing. It is genuinely beautiful, and genuinely rare.
All the way up to the waterfall
We didn't stop at a safe distance. We drove the dinghy directly into the spray, as close to the falls as the outboard could manage against the current. Yuka sat on the bow. I stood on the transom next to the motor and let the water come down. The foam was thick enough to reduce the propeller's grip and we had to gun the engine to hold position.
There are several distinct drops along the river. The first is a wide, low shelf — you can almost walk across it. The main falls are taller and broader, a curtain of white water across the full width of the river. We pushed the dinghy up to the base of each one in turn, getting soaked in the spray, the engine at full throttle against the current.
We were there for hours. We did not encounter another tourist. The whole thing cost nothing but the fuel to motor up the river and back. It is, without question, one of the best afternoons of the entire voyage.
Serra Grande itself is a small beach village — guesthouses, a couple of restaurants, a surfing crowd. It sits at the mouth of the Ribeirão do Tororomba river, and most visitors come for the beach. They don't always know about the waterfalls. Now you do.