Pantanal Safari - Day 5 - Cidade de Pedra and waterfalls

Our small family homestay in the middle of the countryside was surprisingly comfortable and we wake up refreshed. Breakfast is pretty huge for just the 3 of us. It’s on the terrace next to the kitchen and we finally meet our host.

Jean explains that we have to be 15 to 20min before the opening of the national park, because only a limited number of visitors are allowed inside at a time. We are Saturday and he worries that it would be busier today. 

As we drive there, we discuss further and Jean says that he rarely brings people here, most international tourists only visit the Pantanal in the region. Chapada dos Guimarães seems beautiful to me, and Jean shares about Bon Jardim, which is also close to Cuiaba and has crystal clear water and tubing activity. He shows us pictures and videos and I am astonished. If I had known, I would have stayed one more day to visit this. The equivalent in the south would be Bonito, but Bonjardim was nowhere mentioned for the North of Pantanal.

We walk a good 15 min to the largest and iconic waterfall: Véu de Noiva. We are in the dry season and there is a lot less water, yet it’s still impressive. And we are in luck, the Blue and Red Macaws are flying around the falls. It’s a whimsical sight ! 

We stay there a good 10min, just enjoying the scenery before walking the path that leads above the falls, that’s where the facilities of the national parks are. There are a few shops, a restaurant, toilets and drinking water refill station ! ( by the toilets ). We register to the trail entrance and get a small ticket with a number on it.  They also check what is inside your bags. Jean explains later that there were a lot of issues with people going in to make barbecues and cook, creating giant forest fires. The park was closed for years. Now they enforce a strict control on anything that can cause flames. You are also not allowed to smoke inside the park.

We walk the circuit of the waterfalls ( Circuito das Cachoeiras), which goes along 4 waterfalls and one natural pool. In each you can swim and they are all great spots to relax and spend a day with friends. We decided to enjoy the second and last one. The very last waterfall before heading back is called Andorinhas and is the most beautiful. 

We walk and swim for about 3hours and as we cross the bridge above Véu de Noiva, we see the Macaws again ! The closest we got to be, they were drinking at the very edge of the cliff. 

We are back at the headquarters for lunch in the small restaurant there. We had pre-ordered meat and I was surprised to see it arrived on a hot barbecue at our table. This restaurant mostly serves sharing meals – it’s clearly a family place where you can enjoy a simple meal. For the quantity of food, it was really affordable and considering it’s inside a national park – it really makes this all experience accessible and enjoyable. There are other walking circuit but they start from other locations, the other ones that I would have done, is the one that goes around the caves and cave pools. It seems pretty interesting too ( and you could also swim there ).

On the parking lot, we pick up another guide. If you want to visit the red rocks and cliff edges of the park, you need a local guide. The entrance to this path is closed off and you need a key. As soon as you get past the gates, it’s sandy. If you don’t have a 4-wheel car, you can’t get inside and to the walking path.

What makes this an interesting park are the rock formations and the red cliff edges that forms the plateau. We learned that all the region was a desert, then a sea bed before rising and breaking. Above is the plateau and below the Pantanal – the swamps. The cliffs and rocks are very fragile. They are like packed sands. If you take a pebble and scrunch it between your fingers it disintegrates easily. This is the reason why this section of the park is only accessible with a guide, the edges can fall and if people where to climb all over the rock formations, they would be destroyed quickly. The local guide tells us that before, people use to rock climb the massive cliffs, but it was very dangerous. Now actually, it’s very complicated to even get to the cliffs bottom, it’s so full of sand that most cars and jeeps break and get stuck. No-one hardly goes there anymore.

We take a lot of pictures of the various viewpoints and massive cliffs. It’s a nice little walk. We also got to see owls up-close and I got some very nice pictures again. We also saw with the binoculars a Macaw’s nest and some of them flying around. They nest in the rocks and cliffs in the national park.

The road back to Cuiaba was marked by a little technical issue with jean’s car. It smells funny, and we stop at a roadside stop, while he checks it out and let the car cool down a bit. It’s the shop that was in the documentary we saw at the festival yesterday, called Casa do Mel. 

I forgot to mention that Chapada being at the crossroad of the Ecuador line and a Meridien, people consider this place a mystical location with special magnetism. There were a lot of stones and other voodoo gadgets being sold. A lot of practitioners of various weird practices are around. It’s also in Brazil the place where there have seen the most UFO… Inside the national park, there is a higher flat plateau and people claim it’s a landing pads for aliens. 

Needless to say, it makes for fun shops around town and at the touristy spot. In this particular road side area, we find local food and biscuits, stones, aliens’ statues and even a buddha statue…

Once Jean is satisfied it’s safe to take the road back. We drive the last hour to our family hostel in Cuiaba and bid him goodbye. We had another interesting day and these 5 days in Mato Grosso were truly exceptional.