Anaconda Diving Trip Report 2026

Bonito, Brazil
August 29 - September 4, 2026

August 29, 2026. Arrival Day

We made it to Bonito.

Sadly, our friend Antonio’s bag, with his entire camera kit, has not. It got lost somewhere in transit. Thankfully, he has an AirTag in the bag and can see that it’s sitting in São Paulo, but so far, that’s as far as it has gotten.

I really hope his bag makes it. He came all this way to experience and photograph these animals, and I want him to be able to document it.

Once we arrived in Bonito, we made our way to Juca’s office, our host operator, and sat down to fill out forms.

You know the forms.

The ones that remind you that what you are about to do is not necessarily safe. That we all knowingly agreed to jump into the water with an apex predator, and that if something happens to us, they are not responsible.

Those forms.

I can’t tell you how many of these I have signed over the years…

Countless.

After the briefing, we headed to the dive shop to pick up our dive gear, wetsuits, and fins.

Man, I love this part.

Knowing we are about to head off on an adventure!

It gets the juices flowing.

Once we got all the gear squared away, we headed to the hotel to start charging batteries and prepping everything we brought with us.

Batteries charging. Camera gear coming out. Memory cards ready. Everything getting organized for tomorrow.

And, of course, I got Gloria all dolled up and ready to dance.

Tomorrow morning, she goes back into the water.

I am using lights on this trip because snakes like to hide in the shadows and tuck up tight along the river edges, often beneath trees and rock ledges.

Natural light doesn’t always reach them, so for this trip, the lights come with us.

At 8AM, the real adventure begins!

August 30, 2026. Day One

8AM. LET’S GOOO!!!

We woke up to a warm, sunny sky.

That’s what we need. A hot, hot sun so the snakes will come out of their hiding spots and sun themselves.

It’s mating season and the dry season, which means the giant females are hanging out near the rivers, sunning themselves and releasing pheromones to attract males into the area.

This is what helps us find the snakes.

During the wet season, the snakes have so many places they can go and so much habitat to search for prey. But during the dry season, life has no choice but to come to the rivers to drink and cool off.

The predators know this.

This is why there are so many jaguars along the rivers in the northern Pantanal. And here in the south, there are green anacondas.

This is the reason we are here…

Our adventure officially begins.

We stopped by the dive shop to pick up our gear and the boats and headed over to the river.

This is all done on private land. Access to these rivers is through private property, which our host has permits to use.

Which means…

The rivers we visit have no real infrastructure. No ramps. No boat docks. Just small dirt paths leading down to the water.

These rivers are truly wild.

We have to carry our metal boats down by hand and lower them into the water. It’s not easy, but it is so worth it.

We got the boats in the water, loaded them with our gear, and off we went.

Man, I love this place!

We motored slowly down the river, searching the banks and looking through the tall grasses growing alongside them.

After about an hour, we decided to check a spot where we had seen a snake before.

Lucky for us…

She was home.

We moved away from her, geared up quickly, and dropped into the water.

She was tucked underneath some bushes along the riverbank. She was a little exposed, which these snakes don’t seem to like, so she left the spot and began swimming across the river.

Our topside eyes started yelling,

“She is coming out of the grass!”

I was in the water scanning the area for her, but I couldn’t see her.

Then they yelled at me to turn around.

When I did, I admit…

I jumped.

She was already halfway across the river, and I had absolutely no idea that this giant snake had just swum out, inches away, and right behind me.

I laughed at myself, snapped a few shots, and swam over toward where her head was.

She is a huge snake.

Thick and at least 5½ meters long.

Just massive.

She continued swimming out in the open along the river bottom.

Which is exactly what we were hoping for.

We snapped some fun images of her as she moved through the open water before eventually reaching the other side of the river.

Once there, she began looking for one of her familiar hiding spots.

We were hoping she wouldn’t find it.

But she did.

She tucked her head and more than half of her body deep underneath an overhang covered in grasses, dead tree branches, and plant roots, trying her best to disappear from us.

There was just one problem.

She was way too big for her hiding spot.

Her entire back half was still sticking out.

We hung around waiting for her to come up to breathe, which she eventually did, and we managed to get a few more shots of her.

After that, she tucked herself back in tight and clearly wasn’t going anywhere.

So we left her alone and went to have lunch on a pier next to the river.

There was a small lagoon right beside our lunch spot, and the boat crew told us there was a dwarf caiman in there with some babies.

We ate lunch quickly.

Because, of course, we had to go look.

We jumped in and found the caiman, and once we were in the water, we spotted a few of the babies.

Super cute little things.

Cuvier’s dwarf caimans have such beautiful color patterns on them. They are super elusive and very hard to find.

The water in the lagoon was incredibly shallow, which made it very difficult to move around without silting everything up.

It took us some time, but eventually we figured out the best way to approach and photograph this beautiful little caiman.

I tried to snap a few images of the babies, but they were way too fast and knew exactly how to hide themselves.

Momma was also not happy that we were there, so after we all got a few proof of life shots we left her alone.

Antonio managed to get a few video clips of the babies, with the GoPro I let him use.

And speaking of Antonio, we got some good news.

His missing camera bag was found by the airport and is supposedly en route to our hotel this evening via an airport courier.

Fingers crossed, everything is all still there.

After our time with the caiman, we went back to check on the anaconda.

She was still there, but now her head and about five feet of her neck was sticking out from her hiding place.

We got back in with her and photographed our beauty for a little while longer.

She tolerated us for a little while longer before slowly disappearing back inside her home.

We happily left her alone.

Day One was a huge success.

Can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.