In the swamps - The Pantanal

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June 5th 2007

Published: June 5th 2007

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PJK

Photo9

A friendly caymen that entertained us while we were fishing for piranas

The Pantanal is apparently Spanish for swamp. It is a large expanse of land in South West Brazil which continually floods and dries out. As a consequence, it is a very fertile area and there is a huge amount of wildlife. Rather surprisingly it is 100 m below sea level.

I was on a three day trip with a company called Pantanal Trekking. We were living in a small camp in the middle of nowhere, several hours drive down dirt roads from the nearest town. At the camp we were sleeping in hammocks and eating pretty basic food: rice, beans, beef and fruit and spent the evenings chatting around the camp fire drinking Skol beer - the local brew.

Over the three days we did a number of treks in the swamps, horseriding, pirana fishing and various boat trips.

We saw some fantastic wildlife including: Monkeys, red & green macaus, crocodile-like Caymens (although not quite as dangerous) were everywhere, anaconda (BIG swamp snakes), armadillos, some massive anteaters, racoons, giant otters, and copabarras (the worlds largest rodents which are the size of a big pig), amongst numerous other species.

The horseriding was awesome. Whenever I have been

Photo1

Swimming with Caymen (Can you see the caymen in the back left)

riding before I have been told to go so slow and barely been allowed to canter. This set-up was pretty relaxed and I will never forget galloping at full speed accross the savannah plains and through water as the sun was going down. It was so exhilerating.

We were swiming in the river by the campsite which was full of croc like caymens (see pics) and piranas. The caymans are not aggressive and the piranas here are relatively young and not dangerous.

We went pirana fishing one day and caught loads of fish. The amusing thing is the best bait to use was fresh pirana flesh! The fish we caught were not full size but their teeth still looked pretty vicious!

There was a good crowd of people on the trek and there was about 3 groups of people there at anyone time. The travellers were from all over the world and all sorts of ages - it was very convenient for me that the universal language seems to be English.

There were a group of Scandinavians (Claus, Matilda, Jacob and Jebber) that I spent a fair bit of time with and we decided to head