Swimming with the fishes

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Firstly, everyone stop panicking, I didn't fall foul of the Brazilian branch of the mafia. As if I did, I wouldn't be here writing this would I? It's just a title. Perhaps I should change it.

Down to business then. So, from the Pantanal all of our group except for Mack, who swanned off to Rio, got on a bus to Bonito, which duly arrived about four hours later. Bonito has become one of Brazil's main centres for Ecotourism, and thus is filled with rather large statues of fish and the such. Quite bizarre. It is also jolly expensive.

So why had I come to this expensive town? After all, Stewart and the word expensive are usually found at opposite ends of the dictionary (pedants, yes I do realise that Stewart is a proper noun, and thus isn't in the dictionary, but give me some creative license here OK?) Well, the fish statue was kind of a clue, as Bonito happens to be home to some of the worlds finest freshwater snorkelling on the Rio da Prata.

After a quiet night and a good breakfast, we piled into the van which would take us to the river. Or so we thought. You see, first we had to stop at a place called the Macaws Hole, where you could go on a 1 hour walk to see some Macaws. This was not included in the tour, and would be 25 reais more. Now, being as we had just come from the Pantanal, and had seen bucketloads of the things, we really weren't fussed about doing this, so instead had a fun time standing outside twiddling our collective thumbs. Not impressed.

Eventually though, the tour did get to the place it was meant to, and we spent a very fun hour or so floating down the crystal clear rivers which were indeed filled with fish of alls shapes and sizes. Well, as many different shapes and sizes as is possible within the constricting boundaries of being a fish anyway. There were some particularly nasty looking Dorado, which I'm fairly sure wanted to pick a fight, but I stayed well clear. Afterwards, we were rewarded with lunch, on the condition that we paid for it. Sadly, fish wasn't on the menu. Just to top off my discontentment with the tour, we stopped about 3 times on the way back so that the driver could pick up his laundry, deliver it back to his house, and buy himself a new pair of clown shoes (OK the last one might not have happened).

Upon arrival back at the hostel, Marty, Donna and Emmanuel left immediately for Foz do Iguazu, so I enjoyed a nice meal with Pipin and Inge before giving Pipin a good lesson in how to play pool (5-0). And then the next morning, it was time to get a bus to Sao Paulo and beyond.

Stewart

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Photos

The toilets - I'm as confused as you are
You see, we rented a waterproof camera. When it came back, whoever was the photographer at the time had taken multiple photos of the toilets. Very strange.