Bonito and Pantanal: what to do, where to eat, where to stay – 10/27/2023 – Tourism

What kind of tourist are you, root or Nutella? The former tends to embrace rawer experiences to extract a local taste of “life as it is”. For the second, let’s say that getting to know other cultures is beautiful, but if you’re going to go through a lot of trouble, it’s better not to leave home.

Honestly, there’s no harm in understanding your mood for the holidays. A trip through Mato Grosso do Sul can even show the advantages of combining the best of both worlds.

The first stop is Bonito, with tourist attractions that live up to the city’s name. The Zagaia Eco Resort, where the reporter stayed, is one of those accommodation options that accommodate everything: families with children, seniors’ excursions, couples in love and bachelor parties, sometimes everyone together and mixed in the same indoor heated pool, drinking their Toddynhos or caipirinhas.

The complex also has a water playground and an infinity pool, a favorite for selfies with a southern sunset in the background, more ubiquitous than a macaw keychain in a local shop.

There are rooms where just the bathroom is bigger than many studios for rent in São Paulo. Depending, of course, on how much you are willing to pay. Five nights for two adults can exceed R$10,000, a value that the complimentary brown sugars try to sweeten. But the symphony of birds in the window in the morning helps, that helps.

You can spend the day at the hotel, which offers light versions of ecological tourism, such as trails, trees loaded with blackberries and catch-and-release fishing. To do this, you can rent a fishing rod for R$30, which you can buy on the internet for less than that. Okay, being a tourist has those things.

Other luxuries paid separately are spa massages. They can be combined with an ofuro bath, calibrated with honey, salts, foam, milk or essential oils. Eighty minutes of everything, for R$440.

Not that the tour options in the area leave your schedule free. Buraco das Araras is one of them. It is a depression 500 meters in circumference and 100 meters deep, formed after the collapse of a cave roof thousands of years ago.

Macaws use the crevices in the hillside to build nests and reproduce, a mix of maternity ward and motel. Like many birds, they only have one pair for life, although on the afternoon in question the report witnessed a non-monogamous trio zigzagging across the sky.

The guide says that in the past, without any environmental regulations, the place was used for illegal activities. People would shoot for sport, improvise garbage dumps and even dump bodies. The carcass of a Brasília car that crashed (or was crashed) decades ago is still there, hidden by vegetation.

Another hole to dive into is the Anhumas Abismo, one of the most expensive incursions in the region. It costs R$1,350 to float (floating in a life jacket and snorkel) and R$1,800 for diving enthusiasts.

It’s an adventure with perks: not long ago, anyone who wanted to reach the inside of the cave, until they came across a crystal clear lake, needed to master rappelling. Not now. An electric chair lowers the person for almost 80 meters, which is not recommended for pregnant women (the ropes can tighten the belly), small children and people who are phobic about heights.

Below there is a deck with a bathroom and changing table, where you can wear a neoprene jumpsuit that is tighter than many Kim Kardashian outfits. Warriors are those who do without rubber clothing, a thermal antidote against water with an average temperature of 18°C.

There are more child-friendly options, such as floating through translucent rivers, where in July tourists saw an anaconda snake measuring almost seven meters.

Another: Bio Park, a more politically correct version of zoos. The animals there need care and are unfit to live in the wild. One of the owners, zootechnician Ada da Cunha, explains on the tour the origins of some residents, such as the maned wolf Flor, who lost her entire family after being run over by a tractor, and the anteater Chiquinho, rescued with an umbilical cord still attached.

Itinerating tours with the help of an agency makes a difference here, where not everything is close by, and there are a lot of dirt roads along the way. “Bonito is a unique and multiple destination, hence the importance of optimizing time and being able to enjoy the more than 40 local wonders”, says Marco Antonio Tiago, from M26 Assessoria de Viagens.

The Bonitense gastronomic route includes two popular restaurants. Juanita started with a chef who ran a self-service business, until her son transformed it into one of those businesses that charge tens or hundreds of reais for the dish. He wouldn’t look bad in São Paulo’s Vila Madalena.

The grilled pacu is one of our favorites. For starters, suggestions such as alligator meat in butter. For dessert, petit gateau with jaracatiá ice cream, a regional fruit that resembles coconut.

At Casa do João, with a wall overpopulated with photos of celebrities such as Alcione and Fábio Porchat, two good options are the annatto painted and the plantain ceviche.

A four-hour drive away is the second leg of the trip, at the Pantanal Jungle Lodge, a hotel in Corumbá (MS), but far from major urban infrastructure. It’s a more rustic experience, although it has its comforts, such as air conditioning in the rooms.

With no popular restaurants nearby, it is full board style, with all meals included in the R$780 daily rate for a couple. Honest and tasty food — on the first day, lunch was fried pacu ribs, rice, beans, farofa, onion steak, pumpkin and salad, plus fig jam to top it off.

Always accompanied by a guide, who in the morning offers the menu of the day, the attractions are also included in the daily rate. It’s up to each person to decide the level of adventure they want to take on.

Fishing takes place on the banks of the Miranda River, in front of the hotel, among capybaras and tuiuius (the symbol bird of the Pantanal, with a red neck and black beak) that run freely across the lawn.

More intrepid are those who camp for a night in the middle of the bush. A somewhat controlled danger, of course, but always subject to contingencies. Case of two guests who were caught by surprise, in September, by a storm like that. But they only became alarmed, according to the guide who accompanied them, when one of them woke up with a start from a nightmare. She had dreamed that an alligator broke into the tent.

The Pantanal population of these reptiles is around three million. There are many of them on the river where the hotel’s boats and kayaks roam, on journeys that can go into the night.

It’s when it gets dark that it becomes easier to see jaguars on the banks, although the event is very sporadic. Trying to find one reminds you of that old game about the blue Beetle, when you punched the person next to you if a car of that model and color passed on the street.

The reporter didn’t see a single jaguar, but they did come across a starry sky that puts any Van Gogh painting to shame. And he also saw many birds, like the big joão, translated by the tourist guide as “big John” for the various foreigners on the boat.