Beautiful Bonito

I took a 25 hr bus trip to Mato Grosso, a province bordering to Bolivia, to visit Bonito. This place is famous for its crystal-clear rivers full of fish and vegetation, and snorkelling feels like swimming in a giant aquarium. Visibility is up to 70 m due to limestone which releases calcium carbonate into the water that eliminates all impurities.

Apart from that there are caves and waterfalls to visit, but the real highlight is the Rio da Prata with a snorkel tour that lasts 3 hrs. Unfortunately the tours are quite expensive, even by our standards. At least the town promotes itself as eco-tourism town and everything is exceptionally well organised (for the walk down the Gruta Azul, which is basically ~70 easy steps down, I had to provide my blood group and a home emergency contact number :)

More fish pics:

Bonito

São Paulo Cityscapes

Arriving in São Paulo on Jan 16th, the middle of Brazilian summer, it was surprisingly cold. I didn´t know the place has an altitude of 760 m. Luckily I just missed a period of heavy rain and could enjoy a smog-free, blue-skied Sunday in a really quiet city center.

On Sundays they also hand out free bikes on Av. Paulista, the main, modern shopping street, and everybody is out biking and skating down the 6-lane road.

The weekdays I spent getting lost, trying to figure out the bus system (there are over 1000 city bus lines because the metro is not able to cover the city by far) and walking, walking, walking.

On my return I am only going to stay in Vila Madalena, the hipster area of São Paulo, with art galeries, restaurants, boutiques, bars and more bars, and even a Berlin-style "Imbiss" that serves ridiculously expensive sausages and beer. It´s going to be the main day of Carneval and apparently the whole quarter is turning into one big, long party - but that´s 2 weeks away from now.

São Paulo