The Best of Bonito

---

[youtube=qIwjhCpQdPc]

April 11th, Day Four

Yesterday, after settling into the hotel in Bonito (around 6 PM), I had enough time to think and decide what to do in the 3 or 4 days that I plan to stay here.

Bonito has a relatively sophisticated touristic "ecosystem". It seems to be very hard to book a trip to any of the attractions without the support of a local tour agency. Agencies act as client relationship managers and help tourists understand what every attraction has (and has not) and book them for them. Bonito has also a good cohort of Tour Guides. These are trained individuals (accredited with Brazil's tourism agency - I think its called Embratur) that usually meet the tourists at the agency and take them (or join them if the tourists have a car, as I did) to their chosen attraction. Guides are very knowledgeable about the attractions, environment protection, safety, and so forth. It must also be noted that the attractions must be accredited too with the Brazilian tourism agency and with the Environmental Protection Agency. In short, Bonito's system seems to work very well for everybody.

So, when I went back to the tour agency, they showed me a tape or DVD with a video summary of all the attractions in town. It helped me further to decide what to do. At the end, I tried to choose the bold, daring or different.

So, today I went to look for some adrenaline. I went to rapel to the

Boca de Onca

waterfall.

For good or for bad, this is not the high season. And today was monday. So, I did the trip alone. I had to have a tour guide. So the tour agency asked me to go and pick him up at the main office for Boca de Onca, a couple of blocks away in Bonito's main street. Since I had done rapelling before, we took off around 8 AM and drove to the farm where Boca de Onca is.

The Boca de Onca waterfall is in private property. Its located in a large farm owned by Mr. Haroldo de Sa Quartim Barbosa. Based on what I heard from the people I talked to, Mr. Barbosa (a wealthy farmer who lives somewhere in the west of the Sao Paulo state, and owns farms in Brazil and the US) has invested heavily in his farm. Some people doubt he'll ever recoup his investment. But somehow I guess it does not really matter to him. His mother was a poet, it seems, and he even made sure to put, carved into wood, some quotes of her work, that can be read in the walking trails in the farm. I am sure this farm means something different than a business to him.

In any case, Boca de Onca is impressive. It has a very well maintained receptive area to receive large groups of people, with a nice pool, an area with hammocks, a large kitchen, a pool table, and many other amenities.

Anyway, I headed up to do the rapelling with my guide. He had an assistant at the place, so the 3 of us went on. As we approached the canyon with the waterfall, I noticed (too late!) that the rapelling would not use the wall of the canyon as a support (to be a positive or negative rapel). Actually, they had built a platform that came out of the land, from which I was gonna do it! With no support from any canyon wall! At the end of the platform there was a hole, in which I was going to let myself in, to then fall down.

To make a long story short, I did it. I closed my eyes many times during the 90 mt descent (a mistake, in hindsight). I came down with the assistant, which made it easier. Down, on the base of the canyon, we walked to the place where the waterfall falls, where I swimmed a little bit (Notice: the rapelling is not done "within" the waterfall, but some 50 mts to its left. Actually, when I did it, I could not see, only hear, the waterfall - Notice 2: the Boca da Onca has its name because the rocks underneath the waterfall are shaped in such a way that it looks as a Panther with her mouth open - thus, the name Boca da Onca - Panther's Mouth). Then we walked back up, through a very long wooden staircase built in the canyon wall, all the way up to the place where it all started.

Minutes later, in the receptive area of Boca de Onca, I enjoyed a very nice lunch and then relaxed for the remaining of the afternoon in the hammocks area. Late in the afternoon we returned to Bonito.

Overall, the trip to Boca de Onca, back and forth, was for 131 km.

April 12th, Day Five

Today, I did three, different things:
* First, I visited the Lagoa Azul, nearby Bonito
* Second, I went to float in the pristine waters of the "Rio da Prata"
* On the way back from Rio da Prata, I visited the "Buraco das Araras" (maccaws hole)

You don't need a guide to get to the Lagoa Azul. You just have to drive maybe for 15 or 20 minutes away from Bonito and get to it. As you arrive into it, a local guide will assist you.
The Lagoa Azul is a body of water that has accumulated on the lower part of a cave nearby Bonito. Different from Boca da Onca, its on public property. Its a short away from its parking lot, and on the way down through the cave, there were many 50, 60 and maybe even 70 year old people. There is no adrenaline in this walk. The cave is wide and open, so you just have to be careful not to put your feet in slippery grounds. The water of the Lagoa Azul is not really blue. The reason it looks blue is because of it chemical composition (I think it has manganese), which reflects only parts of the spectrum. Notwithstanding the technical explanation, the water looks really beautiful down there.

The floatation in Rio da Prata was a wonderful experience. The river has been kept clear, probably since they found it. It's almost a river that goes through terrain with a minimal slope. As a result, the current does not go down quickly, with rapids, but slowly. The river has been protected and there is a very rich life on it. You get to the place, you put your snorkel mask and get into the water. On the beginning, there are some water fountains (underwater) that feed the river. You just have to float on it, and you will slowly move downstream, looking through your snorkel mask into the water, where you will see many types of fish. The river is maybe 5 to 15 mt wide. The depth is between 1 and 4 meters.
The river is around 30 minutes by car away from Bonito. As you arrive, you have to walk maybe for 30 or 40 minutes to get into the water. The floatation goes for maybe 60 or 90 minutes. I think we arrived between 10 and 11 AM and by 1 or 2 PM we were having lunch, back at the receptive area of the farm where the river is located.
As in Boca da Onca, I needed to visit Rio da Prata with a guide, Lucia. I met her at the tour agency, and she showed me the way to the farm where the river is. In this case, there was more people in the pack: a couple from Sao Paulo (Vagner and Silvia), in their 20s, and two 40 or 50 something guys, from Sao Paulo too, that joined us at the farm.

Probably around 4 PM we took off to go back to Bonito, planning to stop by the Buraco das Araras. The Buraco (the hole) is a geographic anomaly. Its, truly, a hole, maybe 40 or 60 mts deep, and with a 70 to 100 mt diameter. There is no clear way down, and I think the only way to go down is rapelling. At its bottom, there is a small lake (rainwater accumulated) and a small forest. Plenty of maccaws live in the trees nearby, and by sunset they come down to their nests and make a lot of noise. Its a very interesting and exotic sight. So we went there, walked around the hole, and took a lot of pictures. Very nice.

I finished the day going to the offices of next day's attraction (Abismo Anhumas). I had to practice to rapel down and up. Down is easy. You just have to know how to release the lever to move down, and to position yourself in such a way that you avoid burning yourself with the cord. To go up requires more of a physical exercise, since you use your legs to pull yourself up. I practiced there for like an hour, and was done for the day.

Again, to give you an idea of the distance, on this day I drove some 159 km.

April 13th, Day Six

Today, on my third day in Bonito, I went to for the boldest and more exciting attraction: the

Abismo Anhumas

.

Anhumas is a huge cave underneath a hill, some 20 km away from Bonito. When you get there, you find a couple of holes in the surface of the hill. One is maybe 5 x 3 mt, and the other is 2 x 1. It is in the latter that you descend. What you find is this huge cave, maybe 70 mt tall, 70 to 100 mt long and 50 mt wide.

For me, it was almost like a cathedral built within the hill. The thing is, the "floor" of this cathedral is flooded, underwater. Rainwater has come down through the centuries. And also, water, filtered through the soil, has come down. So, you rapel into this huge cave with limited light, and as you come down, you slowly realize it is underwater and there many geological structures under the water. You "land" in a small platform that floats in the cave. The guides give you a tour with a small boat. And later, the good part comes: you can snorkel on the surface of this little underground lake, or you can scuba dive in it.

The scuba diving only requires the basic PADI card. That's what I did. It was dark, and relatively cold (maybe 18 C). We wore full suits to protect us from the cold. They gave us lamps to use underwater. They have a cord that you use to follow the diving trail. And it is dark. And I said, cold. There is not too much of an aquatic life in the little lake. Apparently, there is only one type of fish, a very small one, maybe one inch long. But the magic comes from the structures that minerals have built underwater. Different than the stalagmites (thin structures built in "dry caves" by drip water), the Anhumas'

cones

are exactly that: cones. On the dark, they look grey. And they are tall. The tallest is supposed to be 30 mt high. They somehow look like the cones on the paper boxes used to store eggs. There is an area in the lake called "The Forrest", which is full of these cones. Diving through them was a fantastic experience. I truly felt as if I was in another planet, silently swimming between them, in the dark, only supported by the light, and from time to time looking above me to see the small source of light that came from the top of the cave.

It would be great if I could tell you I finished the diving trail, and so forth. But I must be honest. I had not dived for 3 or 4 years, and somehow diving in the dark brought some subconscious terror in me. The second time the guide asked us to turn off the lamps to look at the cones in silence, in the dark, my breathing disconnected from my mind, and I began to breathe quickly and without control. I had a panic attack. My mind noticed and I tried to tell myself to be quiet and relax. I slowed my breathing. But in less than 10 seconds it started again. I quickly realized I was not going to be able to finish it. So I took off, swam above and went back to the platform.

After a while, everybody returned to the platform and we proceeded to rapel on the way up. What the day before looked like an easy thing was now a serious challenge. I had practiced on a 4 mt high indoor system. Now, it was 70 meters, in this huge underground cathedral.

It's hard to tell the feelings that come when you rapel up on the Anhumas. Many times I felt close to panic, just by looking below me to the increasingly small people that were left behind. We went up in pairs. I went up with another tourist, a guy from Campo Grande that was more scared than I. Which was good, because I felt like the "experienced guy" telling him how safe the system was and all. Many times I chose not to look below. Maybe I lost part of the value of the experience but that's as much as I could take. It took us some 30 minutes to get to the ground. We waited for the rest of the crowd and everybody left.

Finishing Anhumas, I was done with Bonito. I had rapelled on a canyon, visited a cave with a blue lagoon, swam in a clear water river, looked at a weird big hole in the ground surrounded by maccaws, and rapelled down (and up!) to visit a flooded cave, where I (relatively unsuccesfully) dived. It was great.

---

Photos

Abismo Anhumas, Bonito
The large hole on top of the cave (not where you descend)

Boca da Onca, Bonito
At the end of this platform, you rapel down into the canyon, some 50 mts to the left of the Boca da Onca waterfall

Rio da Prata, Bonito
You basically swim around the fish in Rio da Prata

Abismo Anhumas, Bonito
The top of an underwater "cone", looked from the boat

Boca da Onca, Bonito
This is the beautiful receptive area of the farm

Boca da Onca, Bonito
This is the canyon where you rapel down

Boca da Onca, Bonito
This is the waterfall. Above the tree, you can see how the rocks on the waterfall seem to show the head of a feline. That is why it's called Boca da Onca (Mouth of the Panther)

Lago Azul, Bonito
Walking down the cave

Lago Azul, Bonito
The blue lagoon itself

Buraco das Araras, Bonito
A partial view of the Hole

Buraco das Araras, Bonito
Maccaws on the trees around the Hole

Abismo Anhumas, Bonito
The small hole on top of the cave. Clearly, the one used to rapel down

Abismo Ahumas, Bonito
My fellow travellers rapelling up on the "Cathedral"