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Published: September 28th 2010
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The Pantanal is a massive wetland located pretty much in the middle of South America, mostly in the west of Brazil. It floods on a seasonal basis and is now in the dry season which meant we didn't get to see it in all it's glory but it is the best time for spotting jaguars and it meant we didn't have to wade through chest height water with swarms of mosquitos.
This time the flights were cheaper than buses so we flew from Rio via Sao Paulo to Campo Grande, one of the gateways to the Pantanal. Unfortunately David's bag did not arrive with us. Bit of a pain really, but if there's anywhere you can get by with just the clothes on your back it's the jungle! The tour company we went with arranged to collect his bag from the airport which would hopefully come on the next flight that night and ship it out to the campsite for us.
Part of booking the tour was that we got a free night's accommodation in Campo Grande before we set off the next day. I was pretty sure from the look of the hotel from the outside
that it was a sex hotel and my suspicions were confirmed when we found a pair of pants in our room. Anyway, we were too tired from navigating round Campo Grande on 3 buses to care, it's amazing the levels of grottiness you learn to put up with while travelling! The next day we set off into the Pantanal, our campsite was somewhere in the middle of the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, on the riverfront of Rio Miranda. Most of the floodplain lakes were close to drying out and the remaining lakes were crowded with caimans, capybaras and the poor birds that have to search for a drink while trying not to be eaten by a caiman.
At the campsite there was only us, two Austrians and four Brazilians. Over the next few days we saw loads of wildlife, even at the campsite there were wild pigs, parrots, crazily colourful birds and a toucan who came to visit every lunchtime. We quickly learned that the riverfront was not the place to become engrossed in a book, before you know it six caimans have crept up silently from the river. You can actually swim in the river
as long as you keep moving to scare the caimans away. The caimans and piranha are a different breed from those in the Amazon and won't attack you unless you stand on them. However if one should happen to take a bite, the rest of them would finish you off!
So David's bag didn't come that night, or the next day, or the day after. I'm pretty sure by the third day he was scaring off all the wildlife with his stench and this is why we didn't see any jaguars. We did activities of horse riding, a jeep safari, boat trip and my favourite, piranha fishing. Turns out it's really easy to catch piranhas, we used pieces of beef as bait and within seconds of throwing a line the piranhas are chomping. Most of us caught a few bigs ones but one of the Austrian guys didn't catch anything while the whole time the guide was shouting "no piranha, no lunch!" in his face. I can report that piranha is quite tasty but there's not much meat on them and too many bones.
We were well looked after at the camp, the food was locally
produced and eco-friendly wise they seemed ok - we were never chasing down wildlife in the jeeps and no-one was pulling anacondas out of the water or anything. Over the three days we saw howler monkeys, giant otters, capybaras, snakes, a tarantula chasing a frog, massive wasps nests, coaties (not like the mutant food grabbing ones at Iguazu) and of course lots of caimans. On a night safari we went to a lagoon, the guide cut back some tree branches then shone his torch over the lagoon and what you see is like something from a horror movie - hundreds of pairs of orange eyes flashing in the pitch black, showing the extent of the numbers of caimans in there.
We drank back some caipirinhas for the last time and said goodbye to Brazil and on the last day we were dropped off at a bus stop on the Transpantaneira road to catch a bus to the border town of Corumba. No tickets needed, you can pay the driver so we were told. So the 2pm bus came, was full and went. No problem, the next one was at 5pm. There was a tiny shack shop and we
chatted to the man there in broken Portuginglish for a while. The 5pm bus came with a really angry driver who would not let us on without tickets. Very annoying, we tried to hitchhike but no trucks were going our way and any offers we did get were going the wrong way. The 8.30 bus came and went with the same story. Eventually we were allowed on the 10pm bus, thanks to the shopkeeper who fought with the driver for us - probably because he knew we would be crashing on his floor if he didn't!
Onwards to a cheaper life in Bolivia!
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