Saturday, May 03, 2014

BONITO: an area that deserves this name

Current location: click here

Located in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul in southwest Brazil, the Municipality of Bonito is developing into an eco-tourism attraction. My way to Bonito was an adventure as there are no direct buses from Asunción, and nobody could tell me for sure how to get there.
I ended taking the overnight bus to Juan Pedro Caballero and jumping of the bus at 3am, at the intersection with the road to Bella Vista Norte, a small town at the paraguayan-brazilean border. To my surprise about half of the passengers did the same so that it was not just me in the middle of nowhere.

The connecting bus to Bella Vista left 30min later full of freight load, passengers and a few animals; arriving to the border at 7am. I was lucky to have a seat neighbor that was also crossing the border so that we shared a taxi to the bus station of Bela Vista, the brazilean border town. There was no police/custom control to enter the country and therefor no wait time. I just hope this won't cause problems when I leave Brazil again.

In Bela Vista I was lucky again and found a free seat in the 9am van to Bonito, a van that runs once a day :)  It was 1pm when I finally got there, exhausted but happy that everything worked out just fine.

It was hard to get a ticket to visit the Blue Lake Cave (Gruta do Lago Azul) but still I couldn't use because there was a heavy storm during the afternoon and first night in Bonito so that the cave was closed for safety reasons. The Buraco das Araras is only visited from the viewing points and we went there.











Just before visiting the Buraco das Araras, we went floating/swimming in the Natural Aquarium. This is a place next to the water springs, where the water is absolutely clear. All this  despite the storm and rain from the day before.



















In the evening I met again Paula and Viviane from Sao Paulo. To celebrate the nice day and to avoid the hostel's food we all decided to do a 20min walk to the center of Bonito. We had a local fish which was very tasty and combined well with the wine.









No comments:

Post a Comment