But before I get to that, let me give a brief description of Bonito - the town where we spent 2 nights en route to the Pantanal. It was not in the original plan to stop by this sleepy town (not like we had a real plan...), but as we could only start our Pantanal experience a little later, it was suggested for us to spend a couple of days in Bonito.

It's a small town somewhere in the middle of Brazil - as far as you can get from the coast where we had spent our last week. Getting there from Rio took us 2 flights (Rio - Brasilia - Campo Grande) and a long van ride to Bonito. We left our BnB in Rio at 7 am and only arrived at our hostel in Bonito (Pousada Beija Flor) at 7 pm, plus a 1- hour time difference. As far as pousadas go, this one was pretty simple but at least it had air-conditioning and hot shower. If we thought that was simple though, it's about to get downright basic when we enter the Pantanal (more of that in the next story).

Bonito is famous for one thing (and perhaps the only thing notable to do around here), and that is to go snorkelling in its crystal clear rivers. And yes, that's what I'm referring to in the title. The river that we "fell" into - Rio da Prata (Silver River - no association with the Indian food) - is so unbelievably clear that it feels like you're swimming in an aquarium with hundreds - no, thousands - of colourful fishes. The water here is so clear because of 2 things (at least that's what we were told):
1) It's an area filled with limestones which act as natural filters
2) The operators of the tours adhere to very strict regulations in preserving the natural beauty of the place. For example, there is a limit of 100 visitors into the river a day. And even when we were in the water, we were not allowed to stand on the riverbed or use our feet to pedal so as to avoid stirring up the organisms from the riverbed and messing up the river's delicate ecosystem.

I'd spend some time talking about each of the different species of fish that we saw here but I will not bore those of you who are not...fish-inclined. What I'll do instead is to include some videos and photos which we were able to take with the underwater camera that we rented. What we were not able to catch however was the small alligator (jacare, as the locals call them) that we saw in the river with us - no kidding! It disappeared before I could take a good shot of it. But not to worry - we were told that we'll see plenty of jacares in the Pantanal.