7. Campo Grande and the Pantanal

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Travelling on a budget is an adventure in itself. Thinking of ways to save a couple of Reals here and there is good fun, though ultimately pointless once you’ve then spent twice that amount on churros. One idea which does make a lot of sense is catching night-busses. You save the cost of a bed for the night and get where you want to go without losing too much of the day.

When possible, go for a ‘cama’ bus. They are more expensive than the rubbish bus and a night in a hostel combined; but faster, more comfortable and allow what some may call sleep. Despite our first impressions, let’s be clear, it isn’t sleep. Comfortable as it may be the difference between lying down on a bed and leaning back quite far on a seat is actually quite large. It’s more like a hypnosis caused by the endless sound of tires on tarmac and streetlights swooping past. Occasionally that spell is broken by sudden braking and the running over of animals, or the smell of the on-board toilet door being opened. Or, worse still, having to change busses in a sleepy haze.

All of these things happened on our bus(es) to Campo Grande. When we arrived, we were surrounded by scouts offering tours to the nearby Pantanal wetlands. A guy called Matt whom we had befriended on the bus had booked ahead for one of these, so we followed his tip and signed up.

Campo Grande sucked. It was a stopover town. Eventually we found a nice pizza restaurant where Matt and I had a battle of who could eat the most. I proudly won, as I always do. Matt made various excuses about jet-lag and suchlike. Apparently he was a web-designer, and was stereo-typically built for a tougher contest. What a disappointment.


It was at this restaurant that we first discovered the bizarre Brazilian custom of Pressured Pizza Consumption (PPC). Your pizza arrives, and the waiter kindly presents the first slice to your waiting plate. You calmly eat your portion, wondering why said waiter keeps looking over. Your slice is finished, but, what’s this? The waiter springs from behind a plant to load the next piece for consumption. Your plate has become a Pez-dispenser. This has to be experienced to be understood, but the pressure to eat and keep on eating, or get the hell out right now, is stupendous.


We began to think we were being taken for a ride and getting laughed at, and developed various Service Block Manoeuvres (SBMs) to keep our own pace. The waiters looked disgruntled as we dished up another slice with half of the previous one remaining, or chewed on crusts until they weren’t looking and then piled up slices on our plates; but we felt the warmth of pride and achievement. We had won.


With nothing else to do, we went back to the hotel and I had a shave. The man at the desk smiled and said I was like a new man. Little did he know then that I had foiled the PPC.


The following day we would be leaving for the back of beyond, sleeping in hammocks, playing with parrots and paying through the nose for beer. We made the most of our ‘en-suite’ facilities/cupboards whilst we had anything resembling them, and lay awake in bed with grins of excitement.

25th July.

When the next day arrived, we stocked up on water and headed to the tour meeting point. We expected to arrive at some kind of camp site a few hours later, but after a coach took us four hours north, to a town called Miranda, we were told to wait for an hour for the next ride. There was a tourist restaurant and shop nearby which we browsed. For sale amongst stuffed piranhas and deer skulls were stuffed caiman in various poses. I found them hilarious, but Laura was appalled. I wonder if anyone actually bought something in that shop, and took it with them on safari. The thought of one of the people in the hammock next to us having a pair of caimans doing the waltz in their backpack was too funny for words.


Soon, we were greeted by a grubby little man chewing on his hat. He gestured us into the back of his off-road ex-military transport vehicle, and drove for another five hours into the Pantanal proper.

The ride was fantastic. Initially the road was worn, compacted dust. We sat on the rear edge of the vehicle and watched the ground rush away by degrees. “Look” boomed an impressive voice belonging to the tallest man on the continent. An extraordinary finger directed us to a poor of water. Around it lumbered giant guinea pigs (capybaras), and dozens of alligators. Cool. These pools were all over the place, as were larger swamps. Amongst and around the reeds we saw countless more alligators, deer, coati, anteaters and various large birds. There are of course countless reasons why it is better to see these animals in the wild than, as we have, in the zoo. But at that point we were filled with non-verbal appreciation. A feeling of gladness that your internal dialogue ignores is surely one of the greatest sensations.


We soon left this relatively smooth track to bounce through sand dunes and dense foliage. Later the sun slowly abandoned us. Never has the sky been so dark. Like a firing range, the sky displayed a billion tiny stars, planets, and, not a cloud, but the Milky Way. Neither of us had ever seen anything so beautiful, and nor have we now. Except, of course, when Laura first set eyes on me.


Eventually we arrived at our destination, where we were greeted with chicken curry and rice. I’ve long been in favour of quantity over quality where food is concerned, and I certainly had it.
Our hammocks were surrounded by a huge mosquito net which may well have worked if not for the large gash in the door. In any case, we were knackered, and slept soundly through the puncturing of our skin.

26th July. The Pantanal.

In the morning I nursed my bites with a numbing cold shower whilst Laura had a guide make her a necklace from a leaf and an alligator vertebra. How they got waterworks out there at all is a mystery. We wondered about the camp and admired the general scene. There were several small shelters, the mess hall - wooden pillars with a corrugated iron roof - the showers and toilets, and two sets of sleeping quarters for about a dozen people each. I love bushcraft - Ray Mears, Bear Grillis, etc. and the site had been designed and built in that simple but effective tradition. Log seats surrounded a fireplace in the centre, where a short, slight, dark Brazilian man petted a red macaw. I was walking over as it flew to a low branch above my head and dangled upside down by its claws. It squawked as memories of the bird park in Foz came flooding back with a cold sweat. We had a little chat with the Brazilian man, Bobby. It turned out that the macaw had somehow become attached to the campsite and spent most of each day there. I told him about the last macaw we had met, and showed him the video we had made on our camera. He thought it was the best thing he’d ever seen.


Those of us who had arrived the day before gathered around the fireplace and were divided into groups and designated a guide. We had Bobby as our man, and were in a group with the huge Czech man, his little girlfriend, and a Dutch couple (“but not a couple”) Quentin and Karen. We left to trek through the surrounding forest, as we would spend must of the next two days doing.


The Czech must have had a screw loose. He towered above all of us with his massive face, and took twenty photographs a minute. Any attempt at conversation with him scared off nearby birds with tectonic ripples. We left him to it and enjoyed the sights at lower altitude.


Wild boar families grazed in the distance, and the scenery of semi-parched, semi-swamped grassland dotted with patches of beautiful rainforest was home to dozens of Indian bovine, lolling inexplicably out of the bushes with blank expressions and cacophonous bells. Flocks of blue macaws flew and settled, scattered and cawed as we moved amongst them, and exploring the forest provided glimpses of toucans, a dead armadillo and a torrent of giant ants.


These were not your regular large ant. These were unstoppable machines. Thousands of them stretched in either direction. Bumper-to-bumper they ran along, having created actual roads with their repeated journeys. The sandy earth, usually covered in twigs, leaves and plant life, was bare wherever they trod. Their motorways stretched for miles, sometimes bisecting each other with terrifying-looking squabbles and frantic negotiations. Inch-long ants carried huge leaves, berries and other debris home to a network of holes.

Examining the scene more closely was fascinating. An area of several metres squared contained dozens of these little holes, all pointing towards a central point. Different parts of this area were populated by different sized and shaped ants, doing different jobs. Some were collecting food; some were removing dirt from the holes; some were moving larvae from one hole to another; and some were carrying bits of shell, only to turn back after being mocked by their peers. Ant life is nuts.

We left the forest and were confronted by an emu (or maybe ostrich), who turned and boinged its way away from us after seeing Quentin’s hideous face.

Later, skirting along a patch of forest Laura and I were beckoned madly by Bobby. The rest of the group were far behind, so we hurried to see what he wanted. His beckoning became more furious when we weren’t fast enough, and on our arrival we could see why. In the leafy undergrowth, sitting in the shadow of a great drooping branch, was a baby jaguar; one of the rarest sights in the country. Mad fumbling with the camera and startled intakes of breath scared the little guy off before the others joined us, and we set off to track it down.

After 10 minutes of hunting we came to our senses. We were chasing, nay hunting, a very young jaguar whose mother must surely be nearby. We were threatening her child. Have you ever seen Apocalypto? We gave up and glumly minded our own business.

The evening took our and Matt’s group to a beautiful lake. As we arrived, a six-foot alligator lumbered round the corner and stopped in front of us. “Don’t worry amigo,” charmed Bobby, “Is ok. You can do this,” he said as he stroked the placid reptile. It turns out that the difference between crocodiles and alligators is that the latter are a bunch of limp-wristed pussies who only eat fish, soy beans and malt loaf. For some reason I decided to push my luck, and had my photo taken biting its tail. “Ah… be careful amigo…” muttered a grimacing Bobby. Even wimps can snap, but luckily not this one.

Matt and I swam in the lake. Bobby assured us it was safe, but the numerous slimy eyes resting above water did their best to put doubt in our minds as they slipped menacingly below the surface. We survived, but I did feel like I’d done something a little bit careless. Their teeth were real, and so were the alligator instigated scars which all the guides except Bobby bore on their limbs and torsos. Pissing off wildlife, I decided, was best left to the Chinese.

Having said that, the next day I spent a quarter of an hour chasing a baby anteater through a cactus patch. I hope it fared better than my legs. It looked fine, if a little bizarre, as it climbed a tree to escape and then retraced its steps upside down. It stretched across two tree trunks like a naked Alf, tiny penis pointing at me angrily. “You crazy, amigo.” I think Bobby liked me.

After a beautiful trek through the forest on horseback, we were taken to the camp’s second base, a place called The Lodge on the bank of the Rio Negra. The horse riding was enough to keep us laughing for weeks. Seeing the Czech ogre on a horse was like watching a giraffe ride an elephant. Also of note was the big crowd of annoying Israeli teenagers. Dressed like homeless hippies, they pranced around, bizarrely, being loudmouthed Americans. There’s always one particularly annoying Israeli teenage guy. We saw several groups of Israelis on our travels, but there was always one. He generally had long hair, a massive face with flapping lips and a complete lack of anything interesting to say. Somehow he managed to have crowds of pouting girls, Israeli or otherwise, surround him. The cowboy gave him the smallest horse he could find.

In the morning we went fishing. We caught twenty something piranhas which we then ate for supper. A pointless exercise really, as they seemed to have nothing edible on them at all except the gunk in their spinal columns. The fishing was the fun part, though. Apparently that kind of piranha doesn’t eat people unless they are bleeding, so a couple of us waded into the water. One of the strangest sensations I’ve experienced is that of small leeches attaching themselves to my legs, only to be pulled off by piranhas a few moments later. I began to wonder if the leeches were big enough to make me bleed. Laura opted for having her leeches removed with Bobby’s machete. Wimp.

That afternoon was our goodbye to the Pantanal. We sat down to the same meal we’d had for the last three nights and chatted to the Czech and Dutch couples. Matt had left on the way to The Lodge to fit in more sights before his brother’s wedding in Rio.

There was a frog on the wall. “Surely that’s plastic” I said. “Ya”. No-one else agreed, so I decided to prove it. I took up my fork, thought better of it, and went over with my plate. On closer inspection it didn’t look any more alive than it had before. I gave it a hefty porcelain nudge and watched it fly into the air. It narrowly missed Christo Redentor who let out a powerful “ooorgh”, and painfully bounced its way across the floor. I felt all funny. I’m not religious, but praise the lord I didn’t use the fork.


The massive man and the rest of the group went back to Campo Grande, whilst Karen, Quentin, Laura and I went on to Bonito.

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