Pantanal adventures

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The Pantanal is a big wetland. And I am a big wetland nerd (it is Jeff here, if that wasnt obvious enough). Consequently, the Pantanal was always going to be high on our list of sites to visit in South America. But before we get to our adventures, and in the interest of wetland education, a little background...

The background

At around 210,000 square kilometres it is the biggest swamp in the world - thats three times the size of Tasmania! The Pantanal is located pretty much in the middle of South America, mostly in western Brazil, however it is so big that vast areas of the wetland also cross the borders into Bolivia and Paraguay.

The Pantanal floods on a seasonal basis - each November to March flood waters inundate massive areas of the alluvial plains or floodplains. Consequently, the advice in our guide book seems reasonable when it states "The best time to watch birds is from July to September, when they are at their rookeries in great numbers, the waters have receded and the bright-green grasses pop up from the muck."

In the past year however, that plan didnt quite eventuate - according to our tour guide in the south Pantanal, it just didnt flood! This really shows in the landscape. Away from the river channels most of the floodplain is bone dry (unfotunately a very familiar site for me after working in the Murray-Darling Basin for the past few years). In the small section of the Pantanal which we visited, most of the floodplain lakes were close to drying out, if they hadn't already. Whilst very concerning and disappointing for us, in the least as we weren't seeing the Pantanal in all its glory, it does make wildlife spotting that bit easier for the time-being. The drying together with a recent ban on the hunting of caimans, means that most remaining lakes are heavily crowded by very hungry individuals of this large reptile, as well as capyburas (the world's largest rodent), and the poor birds that have to search for a drink and do their best not to be eaten by a caiman.

The Tour
Today most of the Pantanal is an agricultural landscape, supporting the grazing of millions of Brahman cattle. With almost all of the land in private ownership, it is quite difficult to tour the Pantanal independantly. So instead, we shopped around for the best tour we could find - and a few hundread Reals later were in a van and on our way into the wetland. The accomodation and base for most of our activities was a riverfront property on Rio Miranda - a fast flowing river in the south of the Pantanal. Our first activity wasnt the most inspiring - riding hot and tired horses around a dried floodplain paddock. On the way back to camp the horses finally broke into a trot, and Jen laughed at all us boys who had no idea how to ride properly and were bouncing around all over the place!

The next day an early wake up and jeep tour out along one of the very few roads in the southern Pantanal proved far more interesting. Stopping at waterholes along the way our guide Juca amazed us all with his spotting and calling abilities. At one of the larger lakes he attracted a group of Great River Otters a few hundred metres closer to us by hollering an identical call as their own. We saw hundreds of caiman lazing about along the shores of several lakes, before walking for a few hours through some floodplain woodland where we saw howler monkeys, coatis, and a few more bird species. A similar jeep trip that night proved far less fruitful (only a couple of marsh deer) probably due to the 5 large trucks that overtook us early in the trip, honking their horns as they went. It seems that not everyone likes a tourist!

While the floodplain was generally dry, hot and more often than not devoid of wildife, along the river channel the wildlife was everywhere and relief from the heat was just a quick dip in the caiman and piranha infested waters away. We took several boat (punt) trips up and down Rio Miranda spotting countless animals along the way. At first the sight of a capybura or caiman had us all excitedly pointing and reaching for our cameras, but we soon realised they were everywhere. By the second or third trip it was all about spotting a new species of bird - there were various herons, jabirus egrets and hawks at regular intervals to keep us entertained - and above all searching for a jaguar along the banks. Unfortunately we were without luck on the big cat front, however we did come across an dead caiman hidden near the bank by one of the jaguars as a meal for later on.

We also spent one lazy afternoon floating several kms downstream in truck tyre inner-tubes. My choice of inner tube wasn't the best, as a hiss and slight bubbling came out from under the water as soon as I climbed aboard (and I knew the bubbles weren't from me!). Thankfully though we survived the float back to the homestead, albeit in a less relaxed state than Jen and the other fellow tubers. My lack of luck continued as we all tried our luck at piranha fishing. No sooner had each of us thrown a line in than Daan, next to me, pulled out a chomping piranha, followed about 20 seconds later by another. Everybody else (with the notable exception of English Josh) managed to catch a piranha within the first 5 minutes. When we wrapped up about 2 hours later Josh and I still hadn't troubled the scorers, while Jen claimed the trophy with 3 big ones. Thankfully she was kind enough to share them with us over lunch. I can report that piranha is actually quite tasty, though I'm sure it was much better tasting one's own caught fish for Jen and the others...

At dusk each night we also keenly partook in Brazil's second favourite sport, volleyball. At first our half-Australian half-Brazilian team had alot of trouble deciding who would attempt to the ball each time. The portugeuse for 'me' sounds a bit too much like the english 'you' for effective team play but we all had a lot of fun.

All in all the southern Pantanal tour was a load of fun and one of the most amazing wildlife experiences we had both experienced. There was one niggling concern however - while the river experience had been awesome, we hadn't really seen the famous Pantanal floodplain in all its glory. Surely hundreds of kms away up in the north of the Pantanal it would be a different story??? Well, there's only one way to find out.

The Transpantaneira

A few days and a few long bus trips later and we were driving a small 2wd hire car down the Transpantaniera. This unseald and often unpredictable road cutting 150km deep into the core of the northern Pantanal was begun sometime in the 1970s. The government had planned to build the road right across the Pantanal, however, by the time 150 small wooden bridges had been built and they came to Rio Cuiaba the project lost steam. It is quite possibly now one of the worlds longest 'dead-ends'.

But what a dead-end! It was apparent from the first few bridges that we crossed that last years floods had at least reached the floodplains of the north. There were egrets and jabirus everywhere. After about the 5th bridge over a waterhole we realised that we wouldn't be able to stop and marvel every time we saw a new bird. Further into the wetland we came across caimans and capyburas once again, more egrets and jabirus, hawks, herons and kingfishers hanging out in picturesque floodplain lakes full of plants, algae, fish and critters. Soon the day was getting away from us, so we drove on to a spectacular sunset over massive open floodplain wetlands with the skies full of birds and mosquitoes. We reached Porto Joffre - pretty much a single permanent building town - as it became dark and began to look about to see whether we actually could camp for the night. We found the fishing/camping 'park', started up a riverside fire to lose the mosquitoes and cook some food and fell asleep under the brightest stars of the Pantanal. If we hadn't have woken up to the roar of the parks generators we would have woken to the eerie roar of howler monkeys just after dawn. A nice morning walk failed to spot these monkeys, but we did see a few other monkeys and some toucans, macaws and other parrots!

Not long after starting the trip back towards civilisation we realised that we might have a small issue with petrol. So rather than stop and start our way back along the road to revisit the previous days sights we continued on and very thankfully made it back to sealed road and the town of Pocone on the sniff of an oily rag. We left the Transpanteneira amazed by this incredible wetland and all its inhabitants. It is still quite mind-blowing when we look at a map of where we travelled and see how small a part of the whole Pantanal we covered in a week or so - it really is one of the massive natural wonders of the planet!

Speaking of which, next we're off a little known river basin a bit north of the Pantanal. I think theres a few plants and animals there, and a creek or two....Bring on the Amazon!!


Pantanal Bird List:
(disclaimer - anything but a complete list; and done by very amateur birdspotters; and kudos to Daan for much of the hard work identifying)

greater rhea
divaceous cormorant
white necked heron
great egret
snowy egret
woodstork
jabiru
buff-necked ibis
tiger heron
roseate spoonbill
black vulture
great black hawk (? think we saw this on the Transpantaneira)
savannah hawk
roadside hawk
crested caracara
speckled chachalaca (did I read this correctly??)
southern lapwing
white winged dove
red and green macaw
toco toucan (I've got a great photo of this, but forgot to upload it)
white-rumped swallow
screaming cowbird
rufous tiger heron
white collared swift
amazon kingfisher
giant woodrail
yellow billed cardinal
red crested cardinal
yellow billed tern
southern screamer (an afl reference??)
grey hooded parrot
canary winged parrot
crimson crested woodpecker
giant cowbird

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Photos

Pantanal wildlife collage
Giant otters (heads poking out of water) get swooped by a heron, while a caiman (top of photo) wanders by

Daan kissing a paranha he caught
Daan caught 2 paranhas within the first 20 seconds of dropping a line - and then no more for the next 2 hours

guessing competition
how many birds are in this photo??? Then find wally

Roadside Hawk
spotted along the roadside, funnily enough

Rio Cuiaba sunrise
and the view from our tent

Jabiru eating a snake!
for better or worse this was the only snake we saw in the Pantanal

afternoon snack
caiman eating a cormorant, and trying to keep it from his jealous friend

roseate spoonbill
check out the algae band on the neck too

Comments

[Troy]

Noice!
Ok - now to convince Keryn that we need to go to the Pantanal. Nice work guys!