Beautiful Bonito!
Bonito,
Brazil
Saturday, October 8, 2005
We headed to Bonito in air-con luxury which was really nice as it had started to get hot, hot, hot and managed to spot lots of toucans and 4 blue macaws flying along side us! We arrived early evening and checked into the HI hostel there equipped with a swimming pool no less, settled down for a few beers with Kay & John and tried to decide what we were going to do the next day and most importantly if the weather was to be kind to us!
We woke up the next morning to an extremely cloudy sky which left us in a bit of a dilemma as the main part of Bonito's charm is the clearness of its river water and obviously the sun would make a huge difference regarding visibility for snorkelling, etc so we decided to hold off for abit to see what the weather decided to do! Kay & John had to leave the next morning so we eventually decided to just go for it and arranged to leave at midday - unbelievably about an hour before we were due to set off, all the clouds disappeared completely and were replaced by the most amazing clear blue sky! Yipppeeeee! So off we headed and in broken Portuguese managed to work out where to get our attractive wetsuits and booties - we've got an excellent (or not!) photo of me sat next to Kay who has unbelievably brown legs and me with seriously pasty whites!!! Challenge is to get at least abit of colour by the time we get back! Our afternoon started with a short walk through the forest where we got our first glimpses of the stunningly clear water....never seen anything like it...you just felt like you were looking straight at the river bed and could see lots of massive fishies!!!! The reason why it's so clear is because river water bubbles up through underground springs in limestone rocks and they basically have very high concentrations of dissolved salts and limestone. The limestone attaches to all solids in the water causing them to precipitate out of solution. This leaves the waters crystal clear. (Can you tell I copied this from somewhere as the words are too big for me! Hee Hee!) We then spent the next couple of hours floating down the river with our snorkels admiring the huge shoals of fish and the underwater flora (I even managed not to hit the river bottom!!!) ...some of the biggest fishies must have been at least ½m long and one had a particularly grumpy looking lip! Very cool as well as we had our own photographer who took piccies of us all throughout the afternoon and then we could spend lots of money on a CD when we got back but it was well worth it as had lots of photos of the area on there too!
After a quick ice cream we headed back to the hostel and decided to head out to find ingredients to make our very own caiparinha's! My job was to find the limes and not knowing the Portuguese word for limes at this point, I tried to explain to the woman what we were making and she knew instantly...success! So equipped with our bottle of cachassa, a HUGE bag of sugar (it was the smallest we could find!), a bag of limes and some ice we embarked on our mission to get sozzled! Mmmmmm....they were lovely and even if I do say so myself, I think mine were the best but that's because the lovely kitchen lady lent me a cocktail shaker when it was my turn so I guess I cheated!!!! A lovely night though and then it was time to say our goodbyes to Kay & John and for us to be introduced to 'Snake' Man and his 16 year old bit of stuff! Snakeman was basically a rich Brazilian who had gone bankrupt so had decided to enter into tourism and spread his love of snakes to the tourists of Bonito! A very nice man if not a bit bizarre and with our love for Bonito growing with every caiparinha, we decided to stay on an extra day and go and see some waterfalls and a blue lake the next day!
We got up in good time next morning to have a nice, leisurely brekkie only to be informed 2 seconds after sitting down that we'd be leaving in 10 minutes!!! Rush, rush, rush!! So off we went again and we had a lovely, funny, chatty guide who basically didn't stop talking all day! Our first stop was at an estancia with stunningly beautiful gardens and colourful flowers everywhere you looked and once again the sun was shining down on the Smedleys! We set off walking through green forest along the river - the water today wasn't quite as clear as the day before but the area was just soooooo beautiful you can really understand why they call the place Bonito which means 'beautiful' in Portuguese. We saw so many waterfalls throughout the day and they must be some of the prettiest we've seen with lots of greenery all around them and beautiful flowers! WOW! There was no hesitation on the swimming front either...we were both straight into every pool we came to! We actually saw a capybara sitting serenely on top of one of the waterfalls and then quite randomly saw him jump over the waterfall itself!!!! Kamikaze capybara!!! We went to try and find him in the pool but no joy. Our guide told us that they spend a lot of time behind the falls as do the swifts who make their nests behind too so you just see them flying in and out of the waterfalls! Mad! We probably walked for about 3 hours in total and it was just one waterfall after another and at certain points we headed up into the tree canopies so we had amazing views of the whole area and how green it actually is. At this point, our guide decided to share a documentary he had seen on TV with us about Dutch cheese! Very random, in the middle of a forest watching a Brazilian with his beer gut out and a Dutch tourist re-enacting a 'traditional Dutch cheese dance!!!' Had to be there moment me thinks!
Part of the journey back involved a serene boat ride along the river to another pool with a 6m platform for people to jump from! Eeeeeek! Obviously Paul was first up and straight in there...I took a little more convincing but finally plucked up the courage! Paul was supposed to be taking a video clip of this momentous occasion and bloody missed it!!!!!! Grrrrr! So I had to do it again...but by this time I was quite enjoying it anyway! Our last stop was to visit a cave with a 'special something inside'! Curious we swam into the cave and saw a HUGE phallic shaped rock formation.... think it gave Paul abit of an inferiority complex...hee hee! And then it was back to the estancia for lunch and the most amazing spread...talk about immaculate presentation and yummy to boot! Happy days!
In the afternoon, we headed out to see a huge cave with a blue lake inside. We had to wear extremely attractive hairnets and helmets...fwoargghhh! The stalactites and stalagmites were HUGE and in allsorts of bizarre shapes and if you used your imagination a lot we could make out...a sitting Buddha, a Sikh woman with a veil, more phallic formations of course and many more!!!! As we entered the cave, you could kind of make out the blue of the lake but as we got deeper and deeper, the real colour started to appear and we have never seen colour like it! WOW! Such a lovely blue and apparently between December & January for one hour each day, the sun hits the water and the colour then must be awesome! Unfortunately it was hard to show the true colour with our camera but we bought a postcard which we can show you when we get back! :0)
Another amazing day in Bonito and again we decided to stay another night and head out snorkelling again the next day although this all went pear-shaped in the end! At breakfast the next morning as I checked with the hostel what time we'd be leaving, she decided to tell us that they didn't have room anymore even though when we'd booked it at midday the day before they had! Grrrr! We managed to get the night free at the hostel though as compensation but we were a tad disappointed not to be able to go snorkelling again! Booooo! But we would definitely recommend taking the time to visit Bonito...it's GOOOOOORGEOUS!
