Bonito

Bonito is not a place you improvise. Each attraction sits on private land with a fixed daily quota, and access is sold as timed vouchers through the town's agencies, so a trip is assembled slot by slot well before you arrive: something at nine, lunch at the fazenda, something else after two. Guides are compulsory and group sizes capped, which keeps sites from feeling crowded but makes a washed-out day hard to reshuffle once the week is booked.

Both of the scuba options are odd ones. Abismo Anhumas begins with a practice descent on a rig in town the afternoon before, then a rope drop through a hole in the ground into a chamber where you kit up on a floating deck; the exit is hauling yourself back up the same rope, which asks more of you than the dive does. Lagoa Misteriosa is the opposite in character, a walk down a trail to still water, with a firm recreational ceiling and cave-trained teams working below it.

The river floats are why most people come, and they are snorkelling in the plainest sense: you step in from a bank, drift at walking pace and keep your hands to yourself, some operations without fins so nobody stirs the bottom. The clarity is usually explained by dissolved limestone binding fine sediment and dropping it out of the water column, and the springs stay cool enough that a wetsuit is standard even in high summer. It is an easy place to travel with non-divers, and a frustrating one if you came for tanks.