Rio de Janeiro, intercity with a difference
Dec 17 2010 By Gill Martin
Gill Martin travels from the ‘Paris of South America’, Buenos Aires, to the verdant mountains and sweeping beaches of Rio de Janeiro.
A majestic dorado fish, golden scales gleaming and mouth agape, brushes past my outstretched arm as I snorkel in the clear, cool spring waters of Rio de Prata, the Silver River.
The biggest predator on the block displays an impressive set of teeth and a swagger to match.
A procession of pacu, indigo blue and as large as dinner plates, passes inches beneath my wet-suited body as I drift with the gentle flow.
Constant two-way traffic has wide-eyed snorkellers riding down-stream with the current as hundreds of fish fin up-stream, Hoovering up tasty morsels from the sandy riverbed and gulping floating snacks.
It’s like swimming in a gigantic aquarium, playing a game of dodgems with the elegant inhabitants of a watery world bursting with colour as vibrant as an artist’s palette.
Monkeys chatter overhead as sunlight filtering through the forest foliage catches the iridescent silver curimba fish that dart around our masks, sometime nibbling our lips, our shins, any exposed area. They tickle for Brazil. Laugh and your mask fills with water.
Our guide, biologist Francisco, is taking half a dozen of us on journey of discovery in the Aquario Natural of Baia Bonita, in the Pantanal, the world’s largest wetland, which lies like a green blanket in Central West Brazil.
He has frog-marched us for two kilometres along a winding forest track in our sweltering black wetsuits to the clearing that marks the start of our adventure: 90 minutes of swimming with 55 different species of fish in one of world’s best freshwater snorkelling areas, rich in calcium and magnesium.
