Day 86: Bonito, Brazil

“Who wears a hairnet into a cave?“ Lin looked at Saben as he stretched the gauzy white net over his head. “You look like a lunch lady,“ Lin teased. She put hers on, taking great care to tuck in the ears, invoking a serious bout of laughter from Saben. All he could manage to say as he laughed was, “Awesome.“ Yeah, we looked pretty awesome in our hairnets and plastic hard hats. The guide insisted they were for sanitary purposes but the helmets still smelled sweaty and felt damp like they hadn`t been properly dried from the day before.

We had piled into a mini bus and driven 30 minutes from the hostel to the entrance of Blue Cave. From there it was only a 5 minute walk to the monstrously slippery stairs descending into the mouth of the cave. It was a drag to be on such a lame tour but Lin really wanted to see the awesome blue water. Apparently there are a couple of fossil¡zed Ice Age animals (a giant anteater and a saber tooth tiger) below the surface that were found by the 2 guys that discovered the cave and who went diving to see how deep it went. The only living organism in the water are tiny shrimp that blink and glow like tiny flourescnet lights beneath the water`s surface. The bottom of the cave is bright white rock and as the sun shines in, it gets trapped and reflected back into the water creating a blue effect which is really just a reflection of light. Since blue is the first color in the spectrum, that`s the color that dominates the water. It`s perfectly clear, ranging from a few feet in some places to a few hundred feet in others, not to mention the partially still unexplored areas.

Lin by the blue waters

Blue water in the cave

Returning to the hostel, free of helmet and hairnet we didn`t have enough time to eat lunch. We had to leave for the afternoon`s snorkeling excursion on Rio Succuri so cookies and water had to suffice. At the park, 7 of us piled into a tiny row boat with our insulated wetsuits, booties, and masks and settled into our seats as we prepared to go upstream where we would begin our downriver float. Instead, the boat “captain“ handed everyone oars and said “Help me, help me please.“ Ok, Ok, so we all paddled (correction, some of us paddled and others kept taking “breaks,“ the lazy bums) upstream about 1 km to a half sunken wooden platform. We poured out of the boat up onto the platform, received a few instructions (don`t swim, don`t take anything from the water, don`t stand on the bottom because it`s a national park, etc etc), and plunged into the freezing cold water. Even in the thick wetsuits, the water was shocking as it met with any exposed skin. The float took about an hour, each person going at a different speed, and we saw tons of fish–big, small, cute, gross, curious, shy.

Amphibious Saben

Fish!

Rock and water plants

We even saw several monkeys who were hunting for snails to eat but were momentarily interrupted with curiosity at what kind of fish we could possibly be! The discarded snail shells fall to the bottom of the river, ranging in depth from a couple of feet to 12 feet or so, where they pile up and crack or break with time. Some were typical small snail shells but many were huge, like the size of a woman`s palm! And there were thousands and thousands of all different sizes of snail shells, some inhabited and some already eaten. It was a fun day snorkeling, well worth the cost and the coldness of the water.