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Published: August 28th 2009
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In between chasing down caimans and all sorts of birdlife in the Pantanal and Amazon we undertook a couple of side trips in the states of Matto Grosso and Matto Grosso do Sul.
Bonito Perhaps 'alright' would be a more appropriate name for the town of Bonito (Portuguese for 'beautiful') south of the Pantanal in Matto Grosso do Sul. While nice enough, the attraction definitely lay in its surrounding rivers. Thanks to high levels of calcium carbonate in the springwater which feeds some of the creeks and rivers running into Rio da Prata the waters are crystal clear. Without going into too much detail (which I forget anyway), the calcium binds to the compounds and any 'impurities' that would otherwise murk up the water, and drop them to the bottom of the river. The result is a snorkeller's delight, as long as everyone follows the guide's instructions and keeps their feet from stirring up the bottom.
So we joined a day tour along one of the creeks flowing into Rio da Prata. Upon arrival we were each given a wetsuit as no sunscreen can be worn into the water. We must have been quite the sight then
as we undertook the 30min nature walk through the bushland to the creek, all kitted out (no flippers for this one thankfully). We spotted a few cool birds and lizards, but the highlight of the walk was coming very close to a Capuchin Monkey, and they're just the colour of a cappuchino too!
It wasn't until we hit the water that we realised what a unique place we were in. While we had snorkelled in the ocean, snorkelling in a tropical freshwater stream was a whole new world. For starters it was really shallow and in many parts rocky - we came away with a couple of cuts and scrapes to show for that. It was great also to see all the elements of the ecosystem - leaf litter floating down through the water, bubbles of oxygen forming on the ribbons of algae floating through the water column.... ok ok, so its probably not that exciting to most people, but after having worked with this sort of stuff for the last few years it was amazing for me to see it all in action... Thankfully for Jen I had a snorkel in my mouth most of the time so
couldn't blab on too much! We were able to see so many fish, ranging from schools of the small red and black 'Matto Grosso' (endemic to the two states) through to the large Dorado - a huge and iconic gold fish found throughout tropical South America. Fish surveys in the creek have shown up an amazing 66 different species living in the few kms of this creek. While we weren´t really keeping count, we probably saw a fair few of these as we floated downstream.
In one of the thinner sections of the creek we were told by our guide to ignore all the rocks up ahead and just 'go with the flow'. We soon saw why, as our bodies were racing uncontrollably through a set of small rapids! Thankfully the water did push us through the gaps between rocks without injury although we almost drowned from laughter as the rapid spat us out spinning wildly into each other - great fun!!
Chapadas Dos Guimaraes With our hire car still in one piece after the Transpanteneira we decided to head up onto the mesas of Chapadas Dos Guimaraes. With only a basic, not-to-scale photocopy of a
hand-drawn map provided by the car rental company it was only going to be a matter of time before we got very lost in the backstreets of Cuiaba. About an hour later an extremely nice taxi driver was commanding us to follow his car, with us driving behind him through countless streets and turns until he stopped and said something about going left and then right and something about a school, shook our hands and said good luck! Thanks to this lovely man we were soon on the road into Chapadas.
The guide books describe these mesas of Chapadas Dos Guimaraes as a bit like the southwest of the USA - in my mind this conjured images from movies of Arizona and roadrunner cartoons! (BEEP BEEP) We shall find out in several months time if this is indeed like Arizona, but for the time being can say that the geology here was stunning! Massive and jagged rock faces, bright red in colour giving way to scrambling foothills and green savannah plains below. It was extremely hard to keep an eye on the road whilst driving, as the afternoon sun created for specatular colour in the rocks.
In the
small town of Chapadas we found a beautiful campsite to base ourselves. This was in the backyard belonging to a friendly Venezuelan couple, where we pitched our tent between vege garden plots and cooked our dinner on an old woodfire stove. Sounds romantic, but in truth Jen had fallen asleep well before dinner was ready. It seems my wood fire cooking is as slow as my dad's infamous weber bbq's!
Well rested and with some cold dinner for breakfast we began our assault on Chapadas Dos Guimaraes. Unfotunately we were to miss out on visiting most of the national park, purely on the account of us being stingy and unorganised. Apparently you need to organise and pay for a guide to go anywhere in the park, except for one waterfall - Veu Novia. So we went and saw that then began searching for attractions more within our price range (i.e. free!). This payed off nicely as we found ourselves wondering which waterfall pool to swim in first when we reached the beautiful Martinha Falls. Had a lovely picnic lunch by the water here, before heading to another free waterfall swimming hole where a short walk downstream had us millions
of miles away from everyone else...
Near Chapada we also managed to add to our list of 'middle' places. Having already been to the 'centre of the earth' in India (see Mumbai blog), there was a little less anticipation for the Centro Geodesica do Sul America. This centre of the continent of South America didn't disappoint though, providing a nice sunny view of the plains, across to Cuiaba and almost to the edge of the Pantanal.
After braving the traffic to return the car we were presented with a nice little present for our poor Portuguese listening skills - apparently we were supposed to have the car washed before returning, but instead we had an inch thick layer of Transpanteneira dirt caked firmly over it. A 70 dollar cleaning fee really killed our spirits, especially as we had been foregoing the luxuries of beds and showers to save a few dollars here and there... But it didn´t keep us down for long - about 10 minutes later we made a snap decision to spend $300 each and fly straight to the Amazon!!
Jen will meet you there in the next blog!
Jeff
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Erin
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Hee hee - It all sounds so wonderful and makes me smile at the Good Times being had! That snorkelling sounds fabo! Truley beautiful! Brilliant that you guys have an underwater camera! That's something we needed - we did put the camera in a plastic bag at times - but the results were pretty lame! Oh well have to reply on memory for those ones. Sounds like tops time in the National Park in Venezuela - ahh, it's starting to warm up here enough to go swimming except for the water - eek it's way to cold. But come-on please, secluded swimming spot, don't think that we don't all know what is meant by .... :-) Lots of love to you both! xxx