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After a long bus ride (yes another one!) to Campo Grande, we rolled out of the bus station and straight across the road into the awaiting hostel, which came complete with a tour agency for trips into The Pantanal (swamp region) and was recommended in our guide book. After a bit of confusion in which the man tried to get us to leave on the next tour into in 2 hours, we settled for getting some breakfast and agreeing to come back to hear the sales pitch when we were a little more awake and with more food in our stomachs!! As it turns out, the sales pitch was nothing more than a few slideshow photos and a measly discount since there were three of us (another girl was in the office listening to the pitch). Having had some bad experiences, what with the our Amazon jungle tour etc, we were already skeptical, but adding to this the fact that we were slightly off season so The Pantanal was mostly underwater and we wouldn?t get to see all the animals in the pictures, and the fact that most of the activities were similar to what we had already done in the jungle, we decided to leave The Pantanal for another trip to Brazil. The deciding factor may or may not have been the overwhelming number of mosquitoes that are in The Pantanal, which would only have been increased by the amount of water!! So instead, we went back into the bus station and booked a bus straight on to Bonito, a small town on the outskirts of The Pantanal, where we had planned to finish our swamp excursion anyway. We spent the morning just milling about since our bags were in storage at the hostel (they still didn?t know we weren?t taking their tour!) and there wasn?t too much to see in Campo Grande anyhow, then left (since we didn?t actually stay at the hostel we had just bagged a free breakfast!!) on our bus. The bus journey itself was pretty long, and confusing since at one point we had to change buses, which we weren?t aware of. After jumping off the bus somewhat bewildered, a brief panic ensued when we realized they had already unloaded all the bags and ours weren?t there!! After near heart failure, we realized we had to get on the minibus in the next bay and our bags had already been transferred- PHEW!Â
When we arrived in Bonito, we were picked up at the bus station by the hostel we had booked to stay at earlier that morning and when we arrived we couldn?t have been happier! The place was beautiful, lots of hammocks and deck chairs for lounging around in and best of all A POOL!! Bonito was boiling hot so this was a great luxury for us! We passed the next few days in Bonito just hanging around the pool and chilling out with the lovely people that were staying there. Most tours in Bonito are pretty expensive, so we only ended up doing two, but we would both definitely like to return as it is a really beautiful place. The first tour we went on involved floating downstream with a snorkel in the Rio Sucuri. The river was filled with millions of fish, reeds and underwater trees and it was a very peaceful float down the river over about 1 hour, since you are not allowed to swim or even kick your legs because you would disturb the river bed, making visibility poor. Aside from the fact that we all looked hilarious in our wetsuits, it was a great day out! The second trip involved hiring bikes from the hostel and cycling about 6km out of town to a municipal park. The cycle was pretty easy and after having rested for almost two weeks, Marisha?s knee was much better and she was able to manage it! Once in the park, we hired snorkels again and floated downstream with our friends from the hostel and just generally chilled out in the beautiful surroundings of the park. We saw macaws in the trees, which we tried to fee banana, a toucan flew over our heads when we were sunbathing (!) and there was a very noisy tree full of parakeets nearby! All in all it was again a nice day and Rakhee even began learning how to juggle from one of the guys. We cycled back as the sun was going down and then jumped into the hostel pool for a rather violent volleyball match (which Rakhee?s team won)!! From Bonito we planned to head to Brasilia and we sauntered down to the town, to the bus company office to check the times one morning after breakfast. We had planned to leave that afternoon for Campo Grande (the only place you can go from Bonito, except into The Pantanal itself) and then catch a connecting overnight bus that evening for Brasilia. At the bus office, the informed us that if we caught the afternoon bus we wouldn?t catch the connection and would be forced to spend the night in Campo Grande, which obviously we were not happy about since there wasn?t a lot to do there! Not wanting to spend another night in Bonito since we had been there a good few days, we did the only other thing we could do?.the next bus for Campo Grande (which would allow us to catch the connection) was leaving in 15 minutes. We bought the tickets, jumped onto moto-taxi?s (motorbike taxis ? a hell of a lot of fun!) back to the hostel, STUFFED our bags full since our clothes were all over the place, paid the room bill, and caught another normal taxi back down to town to catch our bus! Would you believe we made it with about 2 minutes to spare!! Now THAT is what we call legendary! What followed was a rather interesting journey to Brasilia?
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