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Published: August 10th 2007
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The Itaipu Dam (almost) and some retail therapy After bidding a sad farewell to Iguazu it was time to head even further north (hurrah for the beautiful weather) into Brazil. Time and money constraints meant we couldn't stay for long, but couldn't come so close without visiting a couple of key attractions.
First on the hit list was the Itaipu Dam, a hydroelectric dam on the Paraná River located on the border between Brazil and Paraguay. It's impressively the second largest dam in the world and provides 80%!o(MISSING)f Paraguay´s (guess who has the largest proportion of renewable energy in the world) and 25%!o(MISSING)f Brazils electricity. We were slightly less than impressed with the fact that the lake for the $25bn dam flooded a set of waterfalls, Sete Quedas, which were apparently more impressive than Iguazu. Hmmmm.
We arrived in Foz do Iguaçu and spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to get money out of the bank. For some reason Cath's bank card that had worked perfectly well a few kilometres away in Argentina no longer did what it should in Brazil. Rob spent a good 90 minutes roaming the banks of the town before finally
Home sweet hammock
They look fun, but are a nightmare to sleep in at first. giving up and changing US dollars. Stopping only to note the large amounts of shops selling Havaianas we left our bags at the bus station and caught a bus out to the dam...
It was not to be. The Lonely Planet (bless it's imperfections and copious mistakes) gives reams of information about the Paraguian side of the dam, noting the free tours etc... Having made the decision to go to the Brazilian side instead we should have become suspicious at the lack of information in 'the book'. One vital piece of info missed was the fact that the dam itself was 7km from the visitors centre, and they don't seem to want to let random tourists just wander about on it (security risks and other silly reasons). Given that a tour cost $30 and that we'd missed the last one for the day we decided to give in gracefully and opt for retail therapy by shopping instead (Havaianas!!).
The Pantanal Our next stop was Campo Grande, where we booked onto a tour to take us to visit the Pantanal for a few days. The Pantanal is the world’s largest wetland area, covering about 150,000 square kilometers. It
Am I bothered!
Lazing in the branch of a tree, these Coati were so not bothered by us. Oh for a decent zoom lense! (click on the image to enlarge) is thought to be the world’s most dense flora and fauna ecosystem. It's home to 3,500 species of plants, as well as over 650 birds, 400 species of fish, around 100 species of mammals, and 80 species of reptiles. Not surprisingly we were a little excited to be headed there!!
We booked onto Ecological Expeditions, recommended by other travellers we'd met, and they came through with the goods immediately. As we'd been on an overnight bus they gave us free breakfast, a shower, and a free nights accomodation for when we returned! Hurrah! We decided to head off that day rather than wait about as we'd had a bit of sleep on the bus. The three day tour didn't start until the next day, so we reluctantly got back onto a bus again for another 4 hour trip out into the Pantanal.
We had already met another member of our Pantanal group, Silvio, and noticed two other travellers just behind us on the bus. As fate would have it it was yet another smelly bus journey, with the air conditioning seemingly filtering through the toilet before coming out into the bus... Such discomfort led us to strike up
Yes I am
This lesser anteater was disturbed by the driver on a path. It first assumed a karate kid style "crane position" as self-defence, then realised the size difference and ran up this tree and assumed the "you can´t see me" defensive position. a conversation with the other two travellers (Helena and Nadine), and before you knew it we'd been such a bad influence they abandoned their plans to travel to Bolivia that day and instead jumped off the bus with us.
We met the remaining three members of our group (Sarah, Oly and Simon) and were picked up by one of our guides (Max). He took us back to the EE camp, about half an hour from the main road, via a small shop where we all ensured that we had enough vodka and beer to celebrate (or commiserate) any wildlife (or lack of it). The wildlife spotting started well with many caiman along the sides of the road and birds galore. Our sleeping arrangements involved hammocks inside a hut. Rob could hardy contain his excitment at this point and jumped straight in, whilst Cath viewed them with a little more trepidation.
As there were so many of us they decided to split the group, and we had a guide called Sandro. Our first morning saw us woken up at 6am for breakfast, and a 7am departure for a nature walk. Breakfast was interrupted by cries of 'Toucan' and the
Howler monkey
Rob for some reason (nothing obvious!!) was able to perfect the call of the male Howler Monkey, encouraging this male to take a closer look at the competition. more excitable of us sprinted outside to take silly amounts of photo's of the Toucan that had decided to fly into the camp and say hello. So beautiful.
Now we know there are never any promises about seeing wildlife, but due to a mixture of Sandro's skill and sheer luck we were tripping over wildlife the whole morning! We saw toucans, vultures, macaws (red and blue), monkeys, coaties, deer, a lesser anteater, loads of other birds and most exciting - an ARMADILLO!! We walked into a clearing and it was just standing there looking bemused. After obviously deliberating what to do it ran off to a bush and stuck it's head in a hole. We spent a good 20 minutes taking loads of photo's and a movie of it, then it waddled off into the bush.
After lunch (they certainly fed us very well during our stay, carb overload) and swimming in what we later found out was a caiman and piranha filled river, we had another walk which was not quite as successful as that morning. We saw a mini capybara looking animal, marsh deer, many birds, and had our hands dyed blue by a bush fruit
No Fishing Here
These Caimans obvioucly couldn´t read the sign. (thanks Sandro).
Day two saw us piranha fishing at 8am! Yep, waist deep in piranha filled water with only swimwear on our bottom halves, we were rugged up to the nines on our top halves due to the suddenly cold weather. It was brilliant fun, everyone caught at least one piranha, with the female team coming out ahead by one at final count. Rob perfected the catch and release (often in one motion when he whipped the line out of the water and the fish sailed backwards off his line) and he returned all his to the water. Gutting and cleaning them back at camp, we enjoyed piranha soup for lunch. Yum!
A horseride in the afternoon saw us pretending that we had any idea what to do on the back of a horse. Cath's stubborn beast seemed very content to meander along at the back of the group, until Sandro provided her with a branch, at the sight of which the horse miraculously became much better behaved! Best sighting of the afternoon were the giant anteaters (of which we saw 5!). The first sighting saw the 9 of us leave our horses behind and fan out running
The boys bombing
Apparently, the Piranha and Caimans in the river didn´t bite! across a field with military precision to surround the beastie and take many, many photo's.
On the final day we went looking for otters first thing in the morning. They were found just outside camp, spread out across the river and hiding in the reeds. We then took a boat trip up the river and spotted a capybara up close and personal. It didn't seem at all worried by our presence and posed for the camera. Tiger herons, kingfishers, caiman, many more birds, and a monkey sighting all followed and we returned very satisfied to camp.
Sadly that was the end of our Pantanal adventure, well worth the detour and amazing fun. We bid goodbye to the others, and pausing only to buy 4 more pairs of Havaianas we made our way to the border of Paraguay the next day.
Oh, if anyone was wondering about the title of the blog (those who weren't living in the UK in the late 90's) it's from a chocolate bar advert with Harry Enfield...
Click here to see it
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Martin
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Capybara and bird
Looks like a Brazilian wood rail to me! Martin