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I had planned to make an early start from PJC the next day, and catch the 6am bus to Campo Grande. Yes thats right 6am. I can see you sniggering in the back. And snigger even more, because I pulled my favourite trick and missed the bus. Never fear, I just got a later one, and pulled up into Campo Grande at 10pm. One free night in a hostel, and excellent Brazilian breakfast later, I was signed up for a Pantanal tour and hitting the road! The van escorted a group of 7 of us - myself, Mac, Marty, Donna, Pipin, Inge and Emmanuel - towards Brazilian´s famous wetland, often thought of as the best place in South America to see jaguars. What excitement! Unfortunately, the group was split early on by a division in social class, whereby Marty, Donna, Pipin and Inge opted to stay in the fancy lodge, leaving the other 3 of us to rough it in the camping. We still did all the activities together, but the four of them took every opportunity they could to lord it over us. The rotters.
We arrived in camp in time to watch a few folk not having much
luck catching piranhas, then after a hearty meal and a lazy evening it was time to hit the hammocks. I was quite excited by this, as I've never slept in a hammock before. The fact that everyone who had been there for more than 1 night was sleeping on the floor should have told me I was in for an uncomfortable experience. Sadly, at about 4am I had to abandon hammock and join them. Bah!
Anyway, enough of that. You came here for tales of the Pantanal, and all you've had so far is two stories about me sleeping. I do apologise. The caiman around the camp were a fixture for all of our time there, and we were joined for breakfast on the first day by a group of macaws. A good start. From the camp, we went to pick up the upper class citizens, then made out way to the river for a boattrip. And a jolly good boattrip it was too, with more birds than you can shake a stick at, as well as Capayabras (the worlds biggest rodent fact fans), monkeys, otters and more. Quite definitely the highlight though was when our guide Gabriel caught
a few piranhas, and used them to get the caiman to come jumping out of the water. Great fun!
After a hearty lunch (you may complain I'm reusing the word hearty, but they reused the food, so fairs fair in my book), we went out on the jeep for another bout of wildlife watching. This time, we had to use our legs, to go for a sunset walk around the Pantanal, when logic suggests you should see more animals. And we did, as as well as seeing most of the things we'd seen on the boat, but up close, we got to tick off armadillos and coatis for our ISpy books (do you remember those). I was particularly happy to see that not all coatis are like the mutant food grabbing things at Iguazu, and in the wild they're actually pretty cool critters. We drove back to camp in the dark, and used the jeeps light to search out anything that might have come out fancying a snack. There was the odd tarantula or 2, and then in a pool by the roadside about a thousand caiman, but all we could see was their eyes reflecting the light. Pretty
creepy.
Day 3 began with horse riding. This was probably the thing I was least looking forward to, mainly because I was terrified about losing control of the silly thing. To be honest though, it was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be, and by the end I was hoping we could go a bit quicker. As for wildlife, unless you count cows we saw none. Which sounds rather disappointing, so I'm going to allow cows to be included, as these were no ordinary cows, they stalked us for a good 100 metres.
Yet another hearty (yup, it was the same again) meal later, it was time to put on our fishing hats, and catch us some piranhas. I was slightly upset that the bait was steak, it seemed a bit of a waste to me, but this ceased to matter as within 10 minutes I had proved myself to be an expert fisherman, and had bagged 3 piranhas, while the most anyone else including the guide had managed was 1. I put the success down to the fact that even though I said we put on our fishing hats, it was kind of
a royal we, as I was the only one who actually possessed such an item. Unfortunately, my early successes proved to be my only successes, and by the end of the day, I was languishing amongst the also rans of the piranha fishing world. This didn't stop me from eating one later on though, and to be frank for a moment (whereas usually I'm Stewart) I was a bit disappointed. Should have kept the steak.
Our final day was a sunrise walk around the Pantanal. And this was a huge disappointment. Even our guide seemed disappointed by it, saying that this trail was pretty useless, as there's no water around so therefore there are no animals. It was nice of him to apologise, but when you've got around 8 people a day each paying at least 350 Reals for a wildlife tour, you'd hope they might take you somewhere where you can expect to see wildlife. I know that there are no guarantees for what you see, but I'd think it was the duty of the company to maximise your chances, and this walk just wasn't doing that. I hope that for future tour groups, Gabriel goes through with
what he told us he was going to do, and takes a couple of days off to cut a new trail near the river. I think sensing our disappointment, he took us the long way back to camp, which involved walking through chest high in caiman and piranha infested waters. On the first crossing, I plowed straight in, and reached the other shore just behind Gabriel. I think we both looked back in surprise to see Emmanuel still there on the other shore, getting stripped down to his undercrackers before he was prepared to go in. Trust the French!
All limbs intact, it was back to camp for breakfast, and all we had to do then was sit around playing pool and volleyball with fellow campers until our bus came to take us out of the wilderness. It was a really fun tour, but I really hope that they do something about that morning walk. Even better, I hope it rains soon, and gives the area the water that it desperately needs.
Stewart
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