A handful that just might be more than dust (Nick Gordon, January 2004)

Nick Gordon sees two faces of Brazil - the Chapada Diamantina park and a favela in Rio

It doesn't take long, less than 24 hours, for me to be offered a handful of diamonds. I hear a whistle, see a local pushing a bike and am given what I take to be a staged conspiratorial look, something between a toss of the head and a half-smile. I see the man dig in his pocket, pull out a plastic phial and bite the cork top off it.

He taps the open phial on his palm and out spill three specks of dirt. He taps again, this time more determinedly, and another speck follows. This one is unlike the others, which are brown, the colour of the dirt street we are standing on. This one is glinting in the brittle morning sun.

"Diamantina," says the man. He wants 50 reais (about £15) for the lot. I shake my head. The man taps his wares back into the phial, shrugs and moves on. And so do I. It's the end of a minor yet telling scene in Lençois, a forgotten town in Brazil's Chapada Diamantina, the Diamond Highlands. Yet what had just happened on that quiet cobbled street spoke volumes about the region's epic yet frangible past, and its quietly business-like present.

I had come to the upland region - 250 miles from Salvador, Brazil's tumbledown treasure of a first capital on the Atlantic coast - to hike in the 15,000-square-mile national park. The topography is pure MGM Western - a landscape of bizarrely shaped mesas with red sandstone bluffs and crudely carved peaks. You almost expect hordes of Apaches to smile and nudge each other as they look down on a solitary stagecoach beneath.

But wherever I went, whatever the scenery had to offer, I couldn't avoid diamonds.

Diamonds kick-started the fortunes of the Chapada. Back in 1844, someone found a rock that sparkled, then another, and the ensuing rush changed the face of the Chapada for ever. The lure of diamonds brought thousands and, with them, all that defines "modern civilisation" - towns such as Lençois with its grand square, the Rua das Pedras, lined with banks as grand as Roman temples, hotels, gourmet restaurants, a Saturday-night scrum of brothels, even a philharmonic hall.

It was a short-lived boom. The discovery of vast diamond fields in South Africa in the last quarter of the 19th century spelt the beginning of the end for the Chapada Diamantina - and though the prospectors and the prostitutes have long since vanished, this lambent past has left a heritage that still contrives to haunt the region.

Lençois, with its elegant pastel-shaded houses and shops, retains a semblance of splendour, faded though it is. What was once a town built on dreams of finding fabulous wealth, where miners came down from the mountains to spend the fruits of their hours of sweat-drenching toil - or to curse their luck with buckets of the local hardstuff, cachaca - is now a dedicated tourist centre for the region.

The frenzy for diamonds scarred the landscape. Watercourses were diverted to wash away the slopes; numerous aqueducts were built (the remains of which can be seen today, buried in the bracken). A century and a half after the first boom, however, the miners' workings have left a wonderful and unexpected legacy: an abandoned landscape riddled with an abundance of caves - some as vast and yawning and as eerily lit as the interiors of Europe's great cathedrals. Above the ground, dark, deep pools are fed by streams, waterfalls and springs.

Indeed, throughout the Chapada, hikers like me were throwing off their clothes and diving into the pools, savouring the refreshingly cool, whisky-coloured waters, slipping down 60ft rock slides into the pools or jumping off the overhanging cliffs.

Though the Chapada has been designated a national park since 1985, much of the land is privately owned and it is difficult to enforce strict conservation measures. Indeed, without the dynamism of one man - an American-Brazilian biologist called Roy Funch - it is doubtful whether the Chapada would have survived. Not only has he written a book detailing all the trekking routes, birds, flowers and wildlife (especially the snakes that slip and slide across the hillsides), but he has also persuaded the Brazilian government to buy up large tracts of the Chapada to ensure its survival.

One day, on my way to the spectacular 13,000ft-high Fumaça Falls - a return hike of three or four hours from the village of Capao - I spot at least a dozen orchids in the space of 12 square yards. I see hummingbirds smaller than my fist and bees that are larger (the honey is cheap and sweet and tastes of the local flowers), not to mention a pair of eagles - but no snakes.

Another day, in the mountains above Lençois, I meet a man who has survived not one but two snake bites. He is wizened and ragged and struggling with a length of broken plastic piping as long as himself. His wife stumbles after him. He waves to my guide, Isadoro, and tells him he is feeling much better now.

"This is the man I helped carry down the mountain to Lençois hospital last summer," says Isadoro.

We share our sandwiches with the pair and the old man rolls up his trouser leg to show me the two sets of fang scars on his foot. His wife, who has heard it all before, wolfs the sandwiches; she smells of last night's drink. I ask what they are doing here. The man points to the piece of piping and looks at me as if I am a fool. "Diamantina," he says between mouthfuls of sweet cake. The pipe will divert the water from the stream, helping him and his wife find their fortune. I ask how old they are - and I find it hard to believe when he says, "Fifty-five," tapping his chest. "She, she's two years more."

The pair flip-flop gingerly onwards, dragging the pipe and their old bones across the mountain. Isadoro tells me there are only a few left who believe they will find a way out of poverty on the mountainside.

"We don't need to worry about snakes," Isadoro tells me. "You see them occasionally and they vanish." For him, the real danger is fire. Cattle herders and flower gatherers use it to regenerate the vegetation here. Isadoro points to one flower, sempervivum, which is exported to Japan. "This flower loves the fire," he says. "But while it thrives on burnt soil, other flowers die - and that means less pollen for the bees, so the honey harvest suffers."

Isadoro is a volunteer with the park fire service. "Last year we managed to contain the fires in the park. We did well," he says. "We limited the fires to one per cent of the park, but there were numerous outbreaks all over the Chapada."

The firefighters are funded, he explains, so they are given decent uniforms and boots. "Like these," he says, kicking the reinforced toe caps of his left boot against the conglomerate outcrop we are standing on. "They were given to me by a retired policeman from Manchester."

The threat of fire is always there in the Chapada. "The ecosystem is so fragile," says Isadoro. "One big fire could set us back years. Jaguars and armadillos are just beginning to return to breed here. A fire would destroy their habitat. If we had a few pumps, the mobile ones you carry on your back, we would be able to control the fires better, but they are not cheap. They cost about $1,000 and that's beyond our budget."

I am standing on the 3,500ft summit of Pai Inacio mountain as Isadoro points out the places where the jaguar is said to have settled, and the spots where fire has struck. The view is majestic. I am surrounded by the Chapada Diamantina. I feel that all I have to do to touch the great looming rock wall of the massive Chapadinha range is to lean out into the void beyond the jagged mountain edge. Bahia Mountain is on my right, the curiously shaped double peak called the Camel to my left.

It is a magnificently unorthodox landscape, difficult to categorise - and perhaps that is its magic. It would be a shame to allow this precious and strange place to succumb to the flames.
A life built out of leftovers
The Jeep is toiling up one of the mountains that surround Rio de Janeiro. Geraldo, our guide, tells us we are in Gavea suburb. It is an area for the rich, with mansions as well preserved as the socialites peeking out from behind high walls.

Suddenly, the road degenerates into potholes and our route is no longer lined by grand houses and lush gardens. In their place are fat dogs with swollen teats, mountains of rotting garbage and abandoned cars.

Two street children race alongside the Jeep. When we stop at some traffic lights, one leaps on to the other's shoulders and casually juggles three tennis balls. I can hear, somewhere in the distance, the throb of a samba band, and above me there are boxes upon boxes upon boxes, coloured red and blue and green. There are too many to count, perhaps 100,000, maybe more. Each one is a dwelling.

"Welcome to the favela of Rocinha," says Geraldo, as the Jeep pulls up by the side of the narrow road. "Welcome to the other Rio."

The mood in the vehicle has changed. The small talk and camaraderie has been left behind with the smart neighbourhoods.

Someone mutters something about guns and drugs and murder. There is an air of apprehension. No one knows what to expect here in Rocinha. But we have all seen City of God, the hit Brazilian film that portrays the harrowing struggle of a gang of doomed youths born in a Rio favela, raised on drugs, abandoned by society, targeted by the authorities and trapped in an unrelenting cycle of violence.

Grim stuff, yet the film was powerful enough to persuade the eight of us to sign up for this favela tour. The Jeep is parked now and Geraldo gestures to us to get out. He must have read the reluctance in some of our faces. "Don't worry," he smiles. "This is not City of God. You will survive."

Some of us are not convinced, however. The message of the film - that the Rio slums are no more than urban prisons, narcotic nightmares run by ruthless teenage drug barons - looms large. Perhaps those tennis-ball jugglers we saw down the hill were sub-teen drug addicts. Maybe they were tyro killers.

It is significant that nobody on the tour is Brazilian - not even Geraldo, who is from Argentina. "We have been running these tours into the favelas for 10 years," he explains. "Since the City of God, they have become more popular." Only about one per cent of the people who join the tour are from Brazil, he adds, and rarely does he see a Carioca - a Rio native. "They only believe what they read or see in films - that the favelas are run by drug gangs and are too dangerous to enter."

Not all favelas are like City of God, Geraldo reassures us. "Yes, Rocinha has bad places where even I cannot go, but in the real City of God - which exists - I wouldn't be able to set foot anywhere. Not even the film crew could move around in the real City of God. In this favela, I am known, I am accepted - and that is why you can come here."

What he says rings true because everywhere he goes he is greeted warmly by the locals. We walk through a labyrinth of tortuous lanes to a stall selling artworks. "They are embroideries," Geraldo tells us, "done by old women. They show the favela as it was 20 years ago, before the politicians acknowledged the existence of such places." The small, brightly coloured scenes depict an idyllic life where the sun shines and the inhabitants, poor as they are, can look down on the rich of Rio, the beaches, the glamour and the wealth, with a kind of detached irony.

In fact, Rocinha is nothing like the City of God in the film. There are schools, a hospital, a police station, shops, an open-air market, electricity. In what Geraldo calls "the secondary streets" - alleyways so pinched you can touch both walls - families do live like termites. But while the film suggested that violence was the leitmotiv of life, here in Rocinha it is quite evidently resourcefulness. That, and a fierce pride.

"We hated that film," says Jose Luis, who runs the Rocinha artists' co-operative. "It tells of a time and a place 20 years out of date. There are no families in that film, no mothers, no fathers, no homes. Here, we are proud of our community."

The ingenuity of the locals is evident in the way that rubbish has been turned into goods they can sell: a handbag made from the ring-pulls of beer cans (and a matching dress); a fruit basket made from recycled newspapers and a box from used coffee filters. "Nothing goes wasted here," says Jose. "That's the way with the poor."

As we drive out of the favela and back into the glamour of Rio, I ask my companions why they chose to see Rocinha. Two were intrigued by the film and wanted to see where it was set; two wanted to go to the artists' co-op; one had come along for the ride because "it was a wet Saturday afternoon"; and one was an anthropologist who was "professionally curious". None of them regretted it.

That night, I sit at a beach-side bar on Copacabana and listen to the murmur of the surf and samba. The tourists beside me sip their cane rums and snap their fingers needlessly at assiduous waiters. They discuss their day. They can still feel a trace of that fine, pale Ipanema sand on the soles of their feet; they have taken the snaking route up Corcovado mountain and stood open-mouthed beneath the feet of the gargantuan statue of Christ; they have ridden the two cable cars up to the Sugar Loaf where they recall not the City of God but the film starring Roger Moore in which Bond wins a comic-strip war against the KGB behemoth Jaws.

I can hear them discussing Pele (not the footballer, but the Viagra rep). They remember the Great Train Robbers, Buster and Biggs, larging it on the strip back in the 1960s - and they wonder whether either of them came to this place and drank a beer. Some of the more adventurous have watched soccer at a sadly empty Maracana stadium; all of then have stared at black dots bobbing in the wild seas off Ipanema and realised they are actually looking at a sweep of surfers That evening, after they have eaten, they will sway to the sound of a samba band. When they sleep, they will dream of tanned girls in outlandish thongs. One of them leans over to me.

"Where have you been?" the impeccably bronzed, mid-life American asks. I tell him.

"Jesus Christ! You went where? To a favela?" I point up to the twinkle of lights perforating the dark mass of mountain behind us.

"Why did you go there?" he asks. "You might as well have gone to the town zoo." He returns to the fresh laranja on the table in front of him.

Why did I go there? It was a fair question - but not one I particularly wanted to answer there. I went to see beyond the extravagantly exuberant Rio of picture postcards. Once there, I viewed the extraordinary destitution of a Rio that belongs to the Third World; but I had at least seen something else, something truly life-affirming. I had met people gassed-up not with narcotics but with hope and energy; men and women and children building a life out of leftovers.