A day of near disasters!
We had planned all our activities through an agency. The first planned activity was Ceita Core Farm at 10 am, which was about an hour from the hotel (all locations seemed to be about an hour from the hotel).
We were about 15 minutes from the farm when we Sheila got a message from the operator “Hi Sheila, how all is well, since you didn’t show up for your tour.” Evidently they had sent a change of plans to Sheila. It was all in Portuguese, but seemed to be referring to a later tour, so Sheila had asked for clarification on English, but didn’t worry about it. As it turned out, the agency had swapped our tour days, and we were at the wrong place.
Since we were so close, Sheila said we should just go in and see if they would take us that day.
I was upset – didn’t know what the point of continuing on if they didn’t have us included in the tour. As we turned down the (long) driveway, we saw this owl standing next to a tree. Sheila said she didn’t know why I was complaining – we’d both drive an hour just to see the owl. (She’s right.)
(Once nice thing about the two of us traveling together is that we tend to melt down at separate times, so there’s usually someone dealing with the situation rationally.)
We approached a man who looked like the tour guide, but he didn’t speak English. A man wandered over “can I help?”
We explained to him, and he explained to the guide the mix up. They said, sure, we could join the tour. We quickly got ready – the tour was just starting. It was all in Portuguese, and our new friend translated the basics. We missed a lot of the information about the river and area, but as Sheila pointed out, “we usually forget that stuff anyway”.
The first place to swim was the mouth of the river – the water came up from a cave 155 meters deep. It was crystal clear and there were fish swimming all around. We had the option to jump in with snorkeling gear and diving down, which I did.
A short time later, the guide came out of the water, holding our rental car key. In my haste to get ready I had put them in my swimsuit pocket, and they had fallen out. We were so lucky that it wasn’t an electronic key, and that it hadn’t fallen into the deep cave!
We floated a short distance in the steam, seeing fishes, them got in a van that drove us to a forest trail.
We would walk through the forest a bit, come to a pool with some feature (waterfall, zip line, deep pool, etc.), where people could swim (and take pictures), then continue through the forest.
The day was … fine.
As we were driving back, I suddenly noticed we were almost out of gas. It was a long dark drive through the country, and there was no gas stations, and we didn’t have any phone number to call if we got into trouble. I was coasting down each hill, and watching the gas light blink.
Fortunately, on the outskirts of Bonito, we ran across a gas station. It was full serve! One guy filled up the tank, and the other checked under the hood to see if anything needed to be topped up. Very strange.