Advertisement
Published: April 20th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Hi everyone.
We´re desperately cramming in our last few blogs before we return to England so you may have to read a few back-to-back, sorry about that!
After leaving Iguazu Falls in the south of Brazil we headed straight up to the west of Brazil to an area called the Pantanal which boasts more ecological diversity than any other region on the continent. We had booked a four day trip which would include my 25th birthday as well - not a bad place to celebrate! We arrived at our campsite after a four hour journey from Campo Grande (the nearest city) over some pretty rough terrain to find a beautiful wooden hut on stilts right by a lovely river, the best part though was that our beds were hammocks! That evening we lounged around waiting for dinner and swimming in the river with the Caimans, Piranhas and man-attacking Otters (more on those later) before getting an early night.
On the second day (the 6th!) I woke to a lovely selection of pressies from Janice (I was thoroughly spoilt) and to find that our first activity was going to be Piranha fishing for lunch! I´m proud to say that
I caught the first fish but it was only a Catfish, we were for the most part thwarted by the pesky Piranhas but a few people managed to land some ensuring that we wouldn´t go hungry. After some lunch we chilled before going on a late afternoon jeep safari followed by a walk through the bush. We were lucky enough on this particular trip to see quite a few of the local inhabitants; Wild pigs, a lot of Cows, Caimans, a friendly Armadillo, Capybaras (big rodent), a Fox and our personal favourite; a group of Howler Monkeys. Our guide could perform a strangely similar call to the Howler Monkeys that they seemed to take as a threat which allowed us to hear them in full voice-quite an amazing sound!
Next morning we took a boat up the river to see what creatures hang out by the water. We saw an amazing array of birds on the trip; Kingfishers, Jabiru (one of the biggest birds in the world), Tiger Herons (and their babies) and Toucans with their lovely orange beaks, to name but a few. Once we had reached a certain point our guide let us get out of the
boat and into tubes to float back down the river to our camp. All sounds well we hear you cry, but we were in for a surprise. After about an hour when the group had become quite seperated Janice, our friend Vish and I were on our own at the front when we saw a little otter playfully swimming near by. A few minutes later we heard screams from behind us to get out of the water as quick as possible, we thought it was a joke so we stayed in until our guide came racing down the river in our boat to fish us out. We found out that the Otters aren´t little (they get to a metre and a half) and they aren´t cute; they regularly attack humans in packs! Fortunately none of us were harmed but our guide did have to jump in to save one of the guys in our boat from being bitten! Later that day after relaxing a little more (you may be sensing a trend here) we went on a bush walk again and were lucky enough to see a lot more wildlife including two Captain Monkeys that were introduced by a local
but won´t breed so they are the only two in the Pantanal. The evening was nice, a Brazilian tourist and one of the guides clubbed together and bought a load of drinks for everyone so we had a little birthday party for me-it was lovely.
On our last day we went horse riding (which was a first for me). Janice was unlucky enough to get the short straw and ended up with a small but dependable mule whilst everyone else got horses! My horse was from a different stable to the rest which meant that the other horses didn´t like him and he got kicked by one of the other horses which missed my right leg by about 6 inches-no hospitals in the Pantanal so I counted myself lucky!
We left for Rio de Janeiro the next day on a bus, a mere 24 hours later we would arrive in the very last destination of our year away!
Thanks for reading.
Love Adam and Janice xxx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.088s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0428s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb