As I said, my arrival in Bolivia went smoothly and around 7 PM on my first day in Brazil, I was checked into my expensive but nice hostel in the small town, Bonito. It is located right next to the Pantanal, a region that supposedly has the most biodiversity on the continent. On my first morning in Bonito I went on a tour organized by the hostel to ´Rio do Prato´, a river with crastalline water that runs smoothly into another larger river. We took a short drive followed by a hike through jungle to get to the start of the stream. We were ´taught´ how to swim and snorkle smoothly so as not to disturb the sandy bottom of the river. As soon as I went in I was instantly greeted by many big groups of colorful fish swimming right by my face. Many 5 foot, golden colored ´dorados´ floated slowly by the river´s sides. The water was hands down the clearest I´ve ever seen. At one point we came upon a spring in the river. There was a large area about 7 ft in diameter where the sand was being pushed up a few feet because of the water. It was great. After we finished the snorkelling and had a huge buffet lunch, we stopped at a huge sinkhole with massive red rock faces. Not only that, there were scores of macaws in the trees around the sick hole. It was beautiful. I stayed in Bonito a few more days and visited a stunning blue lake in the bottom of a cave and another stream packed with fish.
From Bonito I took two buses (travel time was a total of more or less 35 hours) with two Aussie friends I met in Bonito to Brasília. The country´s capital is awesome. There may not be all that much to do, but the city definitely has the coolest arquitecture I´ve ever seen. The city was originally made to look like an airplane from a bird´s eye view, and I saw it by going up to a lookout on a TV tower. The city is packed with crazy looking buildings.
After a few days in Brasília, I took another two buses (this time the travel time was only about 8 hours) to arrive in Sao Jorge, a small town without any paved roads that is located right by the entrance to Parque Nacional Chapada Dos Veideros. I planned on staying in Sao Jorge for only 2 maybe 3 days, but ended up staying for a week because it was so great. The towns extremely laid back atmosphere, the natural beauty of the area around the town both in and out of the park, and the extremely low amount of money I was spending per day made me stay. I was camping in my ultralite jungle hammock in a campground run by a really nice guy named Caverna. I spent my time in Sao Jorge walking. Lots and lots of walking. On two days I did full day tours of the national park to see huge, powerful waterfalls, mountains, and cool canyons. On other days I walked to several different natural sites with waterfalls, bizarre rock formations, canyons, and great lookouts. Overall, it was a week well spent.
From Sao Jorge I went back to Brasília where I decided to stay for a day so I could take care of an important phone interview I had for a special program at CU Boulder next year. The next day I bombed my interview despite the preparation I did at 6:40 and got on a direct bus to Rio de Janeiro at 8:30. I got to Rio smoothly the next day at 1, took a public bus to Botafogo (a neighborhood) and checked into a hostel. I will talk about Rio in my next post.
All in all, Brazil has been amazing so far. I love everything about it. The people are so nice and friendly, there is a lot of natural beauty, great culture, great food, beautiful women, the list goes on. The only drawback is the cost of living. It was quite a shock to come from Bolivia to Brazil. Everything in Brazil is much more expensive, and I have thrown the budget I was previously using to the wind. I have enough money and I decided that I was going to forget about how much money I spend, otherwise it will bother me my whole time in Brazil. And because the past weeks in Brazil have been so good and I am liking the country so much, I am going to take Portuguesse classes next year in University. My portuguesse is enough to get by and even have some good conversation, but it is too often that I don´t understand what someone is trying to tell me. It has been quite frustrating, coming from Bolivia where my Spanish was starting to get very good. Hopefully I´ll write soon!
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