Have been pretty remote since the last update and have loads to report! I should be in Bolivia, but I´m still in Brazil - more on that later. Not many photos as having some troubles, but will post more later!
Paranagua, a cute little port town with great buildings where we stopped for lunch on our way to Honey Island (Isla do Mel).
After Honey Island we headed on the overnight bus to Iguazu Falls, where it was back over the Brazilian border to Argentina for the day. Bizarre, but the Falls are on both sides of the border of Argentina and Brazil. Shelley told me how amazing they were, and she wasn´t wrong. On the Argentine side we got a boat literally under some of the waterfalls (there are 275 in total) - the smaller ones - and were blown away, literally drenched. There´s two or three walkways to look up at them and down on them and it took pretty much the whole day to wander through the National Park- it was hot hot hot so getting drenched or even damp from the spraywas fabulous..... that night the Argentinian red wine worked it´s magic on some of us, so it was a little slow out of the blocks for the Brazilian side the following day - which is a panaromic view from the other side... still got wet though!
Then off to Bonito via Dourados and a l-o-n-g bus ride. Just when you think the traffic can´t get any worse, you find yourself on a bus in pitch black night travelling at 120km/hr on a two lane road in Brazil side by side with two trucks and a motorbike - God knows how we survived that one, but I had to ask for a toilet stop pretty soon after. The wise lad in front of me decided to distract me with conversation after he saw me tighten my seatbelt and start getting nervous. Our driver, who we christened Carlos the magnificient navigated us expertly in between the coked out truck drivers on their way over the border, and I gratefully tipped him. I hope his company pays danger money to him.
Again, I didn´t believe Bonito could possibly be as good as Shelley said, but it was. The river is crystal clear (calcium carbonate in solution binds to impurities and makes them sink, for those interested) - we snorkelled in freshwater with 50m visibility. Fishing is illegal in crystal clear water in Brazil so the fish - some of which were 60cm long - had no fear. We drifted down river for a couple of k´s in wetsuits in really shallow water (like - 30cm in some places) - past hundreds of absolutely enormous fish. They would literally kiss you on the way past. Very cool. The group behind us got to see an anaconda - which I would have loved to do - but I would have crapped myself as it was over 5m long, so I try not to think about the fact that most likely I swam over it, but just didn´t see it.
Overall Bonito was definitely an unexpected highlight - not the stopover that I thought it would be - the snorkelling was amazing (think I´ll try and get an open water ticket before Egypt - it was much more impressive than the bottom of the Shepparton pool where I did my try dive some years ago. Now I see what you lot bang on about), and the town was a nice little spot to hang out after being fairly remote for a few days. We hit the pub for Belinda´s birthday where this time I wisely drank only a small amount of cashava - rum made from sugarcane that is more deadly than Bundy - to sniff it now gives me a headache - but one of my travelling companions made a donation to the grotto we visited the following morning....
Bonito has these cool phone boxes shaped like animals in the region and the nearby Pantanal. I was particularly taken with this Jaguar. We had a colourful trip home from the pub, much to the amusement of the locals.
The grotto we visited the next morning was a way out of town - and was also amazing (I need to find more adjectives for this blog!!). It´s called something something Lagoa Azul - cave with a Blue Lagoon - and is in a cave which is quite a steep and slippery climb down (my poor poor knees - banged up from slipping over on the Atlantic rainforest trek, banged up over rocks snorkelling, and banged up again in the cave). The angle of the light hitting the rocks causes refraction that makes the water the most amazing blue (I´m such a daggy scientific-fact-loving-traveller) - and I´m pretty happy as the guide asked if they could use my pictures on their website! Someone did point out to me that my climb down would have been a lot easier without my camera bag - but I´m glad now that I took it.
Then - no rest for the wicked - it was a l-o-n-g trip to the Pantanal (great big wetland area teeming with cool stuff). The hottest place on earth. It was about 45 degrees there and at high noon, it was closer to 50. We fished for and ate piranhas for dinner - full of bones, not very tasty, with big choppers staring up at you from the plate. Quite satisfying to reverse the food chain though. And, we swam with them - they have plenty of food in the Pantanal, so unless you have a bleeding amputation, it´s pretty safe - I was a bit nervous getting in though - you have to get in stealthily as splashing ´excites´them - I achieved that mission, and then moron next to me starts doing the butterfly (and he has a PhD - not bright though). There were five big caymans nearby. The caymans are a freshwater alligator - and it´s safe to swim with those too, so we did. Again. Nervous. But, fine. You just shouldn´t step on them, apparently.
More dangerous than the wildlife in this country though, is the wiring. The showers have the hot water heater in the shower head - and trying to change the temperature a few days ago in Honey Island I got a rather nasty shock. Some of them even have the copper wiring bits exposed - most go to the trouble of winding tape around them. Now, I just accept that whatever the temperature is when I get in is the temperature that the shower will be for the duration of my shower. One of the guys here has perfected a karate chop and jump technique to change the setting. Where is the Telstra issue rubber mat when you need it??
On safari yesterday morning, and in the boat trip yesterday afternoon, we saw lots of cool stuff. Macaws, toucans, parrots, 5000 different birds, monkeys, capipbaras (worlds largest rodent).... and we went horseriding through the Pantanal. Yesterday I fainted on a horse - now I know how Hugh Jackman felt filming Australia. It was 50 degrees! I also saw the tree where a lay-dee I know came unstuck.... ouch. It was really beautiful - I didn´t think I´d like that much nature as much as I did. The mosquitoes looked like Darth Vader though, and you couldn´t get repellant on fast enough - you were bitten on the other three limbs before you´d even finished the first one.
Here I am galloping bareback through the Pantanal, I mean, trudging along on a fat lazy horse, that sweated more than I did. I look like a natural in the saddle (not!).I´m lucky I´m travelling with a really great group. I was pretty sick the last couple of days and everyone has been really good to me - one girl walked literally kilometers in 45 degree heat to get me a bottle of water when I thought I was going to die and the whole group donated their water to pour over my head - once again, glad not to be travelling alone! I´ve heard horror stories of groups with rowdy lads getting kicked off, but they´ve hauled my arse up over a cliff (with camera bag!) more than once, and walked us ladies home from the pub several times, shouted the whole bus slabs of beer for the l-o-n-g bus rides.... and didn´t complain when the girls had to keep stopping the bus to pee..... Not to mention saving me from the over-enthusiastic local lads on more than one occasion - such that I´ve been able to preserve my ´natural´hair colour in the short term at least!! They also turned off the electric shock shower for me, because I wasn´t going back in there....
At this minute I should be on the no-doubt aptly named`Death train` on my way to Santa Cruz, Bolivia. But, there´s been a Dengue fever outbreak (like 20,000 cases in a small area) so we have to catch a flight instead.... can´t say I´m disappointed as the train has a bad reputation. But, the flight was meant to be at 11am this morning. And of course, there´s a big strike and a riot at the border, so we didn´t know until we got there if we could get through. We could, but the airport and all the roads and they think the train tracks are blockaded , so after 6 hours waiting in insane heat and dust, it was back over the border to Brazil, where tonight I´m sleeping as an illegal alien - because we had to get our passports stamped because noone knows if the´ll be there tomorrow, because they were on strike yesterday. Bolivia (the 100m past the border that I´ve seen) is a crazy, crazy place... this guy at the border runs the whole show (don´t ask me how it works), so we could have been stuck here for literally days and days, but we are now on a military flight rather than a commercial flight (not as exotic as it sounds, they just own the airline) and should be out of here at 4pm tomorrow...... He is going to personally escort us to the airport in a taxi. He wears a LOT of gold jewellery. It´s certainly been an experience. Our other option was an overnight, straight through bus with no toilet stops for 14 hours - open bus!!! no roof, no windows through the Dengue ridden area.... but no guarantee the roads wouldn´t be blocked..... I´m sure I´ll get to Santa Cruz sometime this century..... And this folks is the reason why I´m not travelling solo through this part of the continent....
I nearly copped a whopping great fine at the Brazilian border. The sleepy border guys at Chui didn´t give me an entry/exit pass at the border a month ago like they were supposed to, which is bad bad bad for me - but I smiled sweetly and said ´overnight bus, Chui´ and the chick just said ´OK´...... once again, very pleased that the bird crapped on me.
Anyway, enough for now. My next update will hopefully be from Bolivia - but at this rate, who knows......
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