Bonito

Bonito means beautiful, and indeed we had a really nice time here. The town itself is quite dull (apart from the colourful phone boxes, see tucan box below) but the surroundings are great. We went on a day trip to the Rio Prata - see www.riodaprata.com.br and www.estanciamimosa.com.br - which involved lunch on the estate and then a 2-hour floating downstream with snorkel in the rio Prata, where you are surrounded by hundreds of colourful fish. The waters are absolutely clear and the fish are very abundant - we hired an underwater camera and that was a really good idea, check the pics below!! Unfortunately I took all the photos outside of the water on the wrong setting as movies, so I do not have any of those, some of which are quite good. Basically, the current downstream is quite strong (very hard to stay on the same spot or swim against the current) so for 2 hours you just float down amongst all this fish. Very nice. We camped on the grounds of the local Youth Hostel, which was pretty good with excellent breakfast and the tents were under a shelter, so that we could keep the waterproof cap off the tent and breathe a lot better. Temperature here quite high, at least 35 degrees, but it was just about comfortable. On the second day we took an escursion to the 'Blue Cave', basically a very large cave with a very deep blue lake which is quite beautiful, but not much can be explored and considering the heat, an optional trip. We spent the rest of the time on the camping site in the swimming pool and that was great.

Camping in Bonito

Rio Prata snorkelling

Rio Prata underwater

Toucan phone