Beautiful By Name, Beautiful By Nature

Beautiful By Name, Beautiful By Nature
Bonito, Brazil

Bonito, Brazil

After a few days in the Pantanal, it was nice to be back in civilisation and what a place Bonito turned out to be. Arriving in the rain, usually you have a drab and damp view of a town, but Bonitos charm shone through even the torrential rain. This little town is pretty remote with a population of just 17,000 people and it has turned into a quaint and gorgeous tourist town. The wide streets were lined with restaurants, bars, cafes, travel agents and shops selling the usual tourist tat and it just felt small, safe and quaint.

The main draw to Bonito comes from the amazing geology and river systems in the area. Bonito has massive limestone deposits in the ground which filters the ground water into the rivers leading to the clearest, bluest most amazing rivers in the world. The fish life in these rivers has adapted to the high calcium levels and every river is swarming with fish of every size, shape and colour. Unusually tourism in this little town is completely controlled and there is a fixed price for every tour so there is much less chance of getting ripped off which is a treat. The other great thing about this town is that there are strict policies on numbers for the various snorkelling tours which ensures that the rivers are not overcrowded and the sediment is not stirred up which is great. What we didn’t take into account however was that we were visiting the week before the start of high season and the last days of low season prices so everyone was visiting this week which meant that slots to go on tours were few and far between and regular mini bus transfers were all fully booked.

Thankfully for us the lovely Seve and Karmen who had saved our bacon by being our translators in the Pantanal were also in Bonito and also wanted to go on a snorkel tour down the River Prato the main attraction in the area so after reserving the last slots of the day and a private transfer which between 4 of us was cheaper than the minibuses we were all set. Sadly the last slots actually were the first slots of the day at 7:30am so it was going to be an early start.

Luckily for us when we crawled out of bed at 5am the skies were clear and blue and the sun was beaming, the perfect weather for snorkelling down the Rio Prato. Given that Bonito is such a small town I totally expected our arrival at the river to include a short introduction in Portuguese followed by a dip in the river. What I didn’t expect was a stunning visitor centre full of hammocks and scarlet macaws, a thorough introduction in English, a good quality wetsuit, snorkel and mask, a walk through the forest with sightings of capuchin monkeys, howler monkeys, agouti and wild pigs before 3 hours snorkelling downstream in some of the most stunning blue water I have ever seen. Seriously this was the slickest and most wonderfully organised tour we have been on in a long time, we were the first group of the day down the river so the water was crystal clear, the sun was casting amazing beams through the water and over the top of us capuchin and howler monkeys were darting across the canopy. We saw natural springs where the fresh water was being pumped through the limestone, we saw sand volcanoes where the springs were making the sand below us dance and we saw huge, huge fish who just stopped and looked at us as we floated past. The rain that had been pummelling Bonito when we arrived had sadly left its mark as when we left the beautiful Rio Prato and joined the main river, the crystal clear water suddenly turned into a ball of sediment before our eyes and aside from the huge fish darting between the part where the two waters mixed there was nothing to see. Our last 20 minutes of the snorkel we just floated down the river watching the sky, the canopy and watching out for submerged logs. After hours of snorkelling we were well ready for lunch and Rio Prata had the most delicious buffet full of fresh salad, potatoes, meat and desert to ensure we regained those few calories that we lost on the swim. What a perfect day and what fun we had with our new friends, the lovely Seve & Karmen.

After an early morning, we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing around the pool at our hostel and napping. Sadly our day didn’t have quite the perfect ending we had hoped for when the oaf handed Tim decided that it was a great idea to wave the laptop over my head whilst I laid relaxing on the bed and it accidentally slipped through his fingers cracking me square on the right eyebrow. I literally saw stars, then cried, and cried and cried. Tim’s face was a picture, I don’t think I have ever seen him look so guilty. He rushed off to the hostel café to get me a cold drink to stop the swelling and watched on as my eye turned from pink to blue to purple in a matter of minutes. Thankfully I seem to have a pretty tough head and a laptop to the face did minimal damage considering. It did leave me with a pretty rotten headache and a black eye for the next few days so the remainder of our time in Bonito was spent relaxing at the pool, testing the local restaurants, eating some amazing food and chilling (whilst wearing large sunnies 24/7).

From Bonito we have a pretty mammoth journey ahead, anyone that has been here will know that it is pretty badly connected, no buses and one flight a week to get out, unless you want to backtrack to Campo Grande. So we took that one flight from one of the smallest airports (although at least the runway had tarmac unlike Rurrenabeque in Bolivia) and set off for a brief overnight stop in Sao Paolo airport and then onwards to the East Coast and Salvador.

Bonito certainly lived up to its name, what a beautiful town and place!