Following two more long driving days and a rather unpleasant bush camp outside a dirty petrol station we arrived in Bonito, the ecotourism capital of Brazil.
The town is the only one we’ve seen with bicycle lanes and recycling facilities on every street corner, and seems to have had a decent make-over recently with artworks all over town, including a huge fish sculpture in the main square. Once we saw the prices of all the activities we realised where all the money had come from – it was double or more the price of similar tours elsewhere in Brazil.
I’d had two of the tours heavily recommended by people we’d met at Carnival in Rio who were travelling south to north: river snorkelling and cave rappelling.
The river snorkeling was absolutely stunning – the fresh water was crystal clear and we floated along the surface able to see fish swarming all around us. We started at the source of the river and could see the water bubbling up through the sandy riverbed. Further along we came across a good sized anaconda resting in a submerged tree. The high prices seemed more justified when it became apparent that the maximum group size allowed was 8 people and a guide, separated from any other groups by at least half an hour to ensure the maximum chance of spotting any animals.
On the way to the river snorkeling centre we’d also visited a macaw hole, which I’d not been overly enthused about, but the girls signed me up for anyway. I was vaguely expecting a tree with a pair of macaws nowhere to be seen, but it was actually a 150m wide by 120m deep collapsed cave with over 100 huge red and green macaws flying about and was beautiful to see.
That evening four of us underwent training for an abseil into an underground cave. The rappelling was the easy part but getting out involved climbing a rope 72m (240ft) using an Ascender, which should have been relatively straightforward but the equipment was designed for a child and after the 9m training run I was covered in rope burns from the overly tight harnesses. In addition to my mangled toe I now have a large rope burn running round the side of my neck, just where the collar of the t-shirt rubs it. Painful, but gets some odd looks from people as it looks like I’ve narrowly avoided being lynched recently.
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