Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
From Rio we needed to cross West through Brazil to get to Bolivia. Now I figured how to do it with buses and trains it wasn't that hard, but the journey was an absolute mammoth, about 3 days solid traveling in total. So we decided to break up the journey with a stop on the way in West Brazil. So after an overnight bus to a s***ty town in the middle of nowhere called Campo Grande, we immediately jumped on another bus to a place called Bonito about 6 hours South. Bonito is most famous for these lakes and rivers that are naturally really clear and have these big colorful tropical fish that you'd expect to find on a reef, but obviously the place is inland which makes it weird. I mean it wasn't the most spectacular thing we've seen on the trip, but interesting enough. The town itself however is hardly 'bonito' (Portuguese for beautiful) in that it's a bit of a ghost town, with just a few shops and restaurants on a dusty and mostly derelict main road and a pathetic excuse of a town square at the end which consisted of a couple of big steel fish (that were really gash) and a few benches. Anyway so we spent our day in Bonito snorkeling around one of the main rivers called Rio de la Plata, as part of a tour. It didn't get off to a flier because once we were in the water, the guy literally spent close to an hour explaining how a mask and snorkel worked and basically how to swim. It was excruciating, I wanted to jam mine through his eye. Then we had to do practice swims in single file, I felt like a godamn 4-year old it was a disgrace. Anyway so when things got going, me and Ben held back so we could be on our own at the back and do our own thing. From then on it was pretty cool, floating around with the current through thick jungle, gazing at loads of bright and shiny fish that were mooching about. There were also these natural volcanic jets that blew air through the sand to make these bubbling hollow sand pits that you could actually dive down into and lose parts of yourself in (well...if you were strong enough, because the wetsuits were designed to float, needless to say no-one got as deep into them as me, at one point my whole upper body was down in one of them, I had to show off to stick it to the douchbag patronising tour-leader and equally as irritating overly-enthusiastic lame-ass tourists in the group). So after a couple of hours of floating around looking at the same old fish and diving about, we finally got out the water and had the best part of the tour, the lunch buffet. It had all kinds of delicious local foods in plentiful supply; meat, pasta, soup, veggies, salad, dessert, it had everything. So I stuffed my face till I was on the verge of exploding to get my money's worth and left an abusive comment in the tour comment book to top the day off. Okay so I'm probably being a little harsh, the actual snorkeling was enjoyable enough and it was good to do a more relaxing and serene activity. I mean the surroundings were really nice and the water was crystal clear. But the tour was just diabolically run and got right on my last nerve. Anyway so that aside, the batteries were sufficiently recharged for the next part of the long journey to Bolivia, and the Death Train!!?!
- comments