Lençóis Travel Tips
Lençóis is one of the most adorable little towns I’ve ever seen.
It’s very much a tourist town, where streets are empty during the day when most visitors are out on tours of the waterfalls and caves. There are dozens of quaint restaurants and even more boutique hotels and quaint bed & breakfasts. It has a half dozen corner shops but no real grocery stores. Souvenir shops tend towards handmade crafts and art.
Lençóis is also the best town from which to base your explorations of Chapada Diamantina.
There are over a dozen local tour agencies in Lençóis, as well as an association of guides which offers much lower prices than the tour agencies. I did all my tours with ZenTur, a fantastic local company that employs guides from Lençóis who know all the trails, waterfalls and villages of Chapada Diamantina. Their office is located right at the entrance to town. My guides were all professional, knowledgeable and spoke great English. Check out the tours I did with ZenTur here.
You can make reservations ahead of time, but I recommend booking your tours when you arrive in Lençóis. Most agencies post which tours they are running the next day, so you can be sure that the tour you want is available and you can ask which languages the guide speaks. Not all speak English, so be sure to ask.
I recommend also contacting the association, ACVL. About 200 guides are members of the Associação dos Guias de Lençóis, all locals and most descendants of garimpeiros. The association serves as the region’s search and rescue force and also sends members to fight wildfires. The website is only in Portuguese though many of their guides also speak English, Spanish, French or even German. It’s easy to find their office on Rua Sete de Setembro.
Read about my favorite Lençóis restaurants here.
You will have no trouble finding amazing places to eat, especially for dinner. Very few restaurants are open for breakfast or lunch. Most lodging includes breakfast and the town tends to empty out in the middle of the day, as most travelers are out on tours. In the photos above you can see that when it’s dark, the tables are full and when it’s light out, there are very few customers. Even the museums are open late, such as the Memorial do Garimpeiro (below), which is open only Friday and Saturday from 4:00pm to 8:00pm.
Memorial do Garimpeiro
This is the best place to learn about the region’s history. Garimpeiro is the Portuguese word for a miner who uses a pan, rather than machinery, to mine. The name Chapada Diamantina comes from the diamond mines that used to dot the landscape. Diamond mining was active from 1845 through the 1990s. Throughout the 1800s and the early 1900s, miners panned for diamonds, a slow and laborious process. In 1984 machines were brought in for sluice mining. The resulting environmental damage was so extreme that mining was outlawed in 1998. Experts estimate that less than half of the diamonds in the area have been mined, but the local population has been successfully sold on eco-tourism as the new industry.
Slavery wasn’t outlawed in Brazil until 1888, though slavery for garimpeiros was so thoroughly established in Chapada Diamantina that even after that date many garimpeiros were treated like slaves. It’s a brutal piece of history that the museum explains with care. The museum docent and vice president of the museum, Ivaldete Roldão, was eager to answer my questions. President Henrique Antonio F. Lima also stopped by to answer some of my questions. If you are in Lençóis on a Friday or Saturday, you must go visit this museum.
The Memorial do Garimpeiro has exhibits on the tools that garimpeiros used as well as a replica of the kind of hut that was used at the time. It is rustic, but well designed. One of my favorite things on display was an astonishing quilted book (below), which tells the story of the garimperos and their patron saint.
Lodging in Lençóis
Though I recommend booking tours after you get to town, it’s best to book your lodging ahead of time. There are a lot of options, but the best ones are booked weeks or months in advance. I used the app Booking.com but any platform will give you lots of choices.
Chapada Casas da Izete
I stayed at Chapada Casas da Izete, hosted by a wonderfully helpful and generous Izete. I have never before seen such an elaborate breakfast buffet at a small, family run place. Her house is at the top of the street, so it’s quiet and has a great view.
