The Pantanal: A South American Safari

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After visiting Iguacu Falls in the Brazilian state of Parana, I was highly skeptical that anything could match the sheer natural splendor of the mighty waterfalls. Lucky for me, I was proved wrong only 24 hours later when we arrived in the Pantanal to spend 3 days in a wildlife paradise.

Straddling the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso do Norte, and small parts of Paraguay and Bolivia, the Pantanal is a vast alluvial floodplain 20 times larger than the Everglades. It floods in the wet season (Nov.-Apr.) and slowly dries out between May and October, forcing animals to gather around the shrinking lakes and rivers for water. It is the best place to view wildlife in all of Brazil, because the landscape consists of scrubby brush and outcroppings of subtropical trees that are much less dense than the Amazon forest. We stayed at a fazenda (ranch) called Barranco Alto ("High Embankment") on the banks of the Rio Negro at the center of the southern Pantanal, 120 km north of a town called Aquidauana. To fully appreciate the isolation of the people who live in the Pantanal, I will tell you that it took us 10 hours to drive from Campo Grande to Barranco Alto, a distance of 240 km (~160 miles). It costs $300 to hire a 4-wheel drive vehicle to drive you into the Pantanal (in the wet season, you can only enter by plane because it is so flooded), but once you've driven in it seems like a downright bargain! The first 120 km zip by on a well-paved 2 lane road from Campo Grande to Aquidauana, and then you turn off onto a red dirt road that is just somewhat bumpy for the next 70 km. This is where the adventure begins. At the end of the dirt road, we turned off into what is essentially a cow pasture, and for the next 50 km we meandered through fields, across flooded wetlands, and over rutted, muddy ponds more than 3 feet deep. Every few minutes you have to open and close one of the innumerable gates along the way, nudging cows aside and watching macaws, rheas, and giant storks called jabiru through the windows. Our pickup truck got stuck in the mud 5 times, and at one point three gauchos (cowboys) had to wrap their whips around our fender and attempt to pull us out using their horses! THAT was quite a lesson in humility for modern technology, watching horses nimbly navigate the marshy land while our truck spun its tires in futility. The cool thing about our trip was that we encountered 2 other vehicles along the way, and in a place like the Pantanal people ALWAYS help each other out. A white Toyota helped us get out of the mud several times, and even took on extra passengers when the Land Rover we were traveling with blew the motor fan and had to be abandoned in the fields. All in all, it took us 6 hours to traverse the last 50 km (35 miles), and we arrived at Barranco Alto at 6pm as the darkness fell across the land.

After our somewhat-harrowing adventure coming in, arriving at Barranco Alto was like stumbling across an oasis in the desert after days in the sun. Out of the dusk emerged a beautiful hacienda situated on a gentle rise in a grassy plain, overlooking the banks of the Rio Negro and surrounded by flowering trees and shrubs. We were greeting by Carol, who manages the property with her husband Hugo, and ushered into a beautiful one-story building that reminded me of the houses ones sees in Arizona. Barranco Alto is a private ranch owned by a couple named Marina and Lucas, the former of whom was there with her daughters during out stay. Barranco Alto is one of only 5 or so fazendas in the southern Pantanal that welcome guests, and I would say that we really lucked out when we decided to stay there. The people at Barranco Alto are fantastic, and the accommodations are positively luxurious when you realize that everthing there has either been flown in, grown onsite, or brought in by 4x4. Hot showers, soft mattresses, and top-notch meals in the detached dining room contribute to the sense of disorentiation from the "civilized" world, making you wonder if perhaps the city-dwellers of the world have everything backward. A place like Barranco Alto offers the ideal combination of nature and creature comforts, and the fellow travellers we met there reinforced the impression that we were in a truly special place. There was a couple from South Africa who have traveled all around the world; a father-son pair of amateur photographers from Brazil who had been to Africa 9 times in the last 7 years to photograph wildlife, and the an ex-pat couple from Canada currently living in Santiago after almost 10 years in Japan. It was quite an eclectic and cultured group, to say the least, and our dinner conservations ranged from the relative merits of our respective healthcare systems to the best hiking vacations around the world. Eric, Toni and I considered ourselves lucky to be in such good company, not to mention the astounding setting, 120 km from the nearest convenience store (not to mention cell phone signal!)

Not only did we have great accomodations, but we also got the privilege to see the most diverse array of wildlife in South America south of the Amazon. Barranco Alto is an 11,000 ha. ranch (~22,000 acres), and each day we were taken on guided horseback, boat, canoe, and jeep safari tours. Wildlife was everywhere, and we counted at least 50 species of birds alone during our short stay. Some of the most exciting animals we saw were pumas (2 of them, spotted at night hiding in the bush!), giant anteaters (7 of them, including one with a baby on her back!), a capybara sitting on the riverbank close enough to touch, yellow howler monkeys, hundreds of caiman (similar to a small alligator), and jabiru storks (they're like 5 feet tall, and somehow they manage to fly and nest in trees!) We also saw lots of hyacinth macaws, which are endangered elsewhere but prevalent around the Pantanal thanks to a WWF-funded project called the Hyacinth Macaw Project. In addition to the hyacinth macaws, we saw green-and-blue macaws, green-fronted and blue-fronted parrots, savannah hawks, burrowing owls, night hawks, herons, plovers, Amazon kingfishers, blue-collared kingfishers, and so many more that I will need to revisit my bird dictionary before I can list them all. Groups of capybara, white-lipped and white-collared peccaries, and feral pigs are everywhere, and there is even a family of giant otters who live nearby that we got to see several times. The only big animals that eluded us during our stay were the solitary jaguar, tapir, and ocelot. I guess I'll just have to go back someday...

Our three days in the Pantanal were like a little slice of heaven, reminding us that there are still wild places in this world where humans and and wildlife coexist in harmony. The next time I come to Brazil, I will be spending a full week in the Pantanal, and bringing my telescopic lens! We left on Monday and made the return journey in a speedy 6.5 hours, much to our relief. Several flights (and one sketchy hotel room) later, Toni and I arrived in Buenos Aires to meet our friend Sandra for the Argentinian leg of our trip. There is much more to said about that beautiful city, but right now it will have to wait, as an excellent bottle of malbec is calling my name!

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