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Published: April 3rd 2012
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More birdspotting Tuesday morning came round far too quickly and everyone was pretty hanging from the night before, Sara especially who was like a dead woman walking compared to her usual bubbly self. Brekko kind of sorted us out and then it was off for a jolly morning of swamp walking! 2 Canadians joined us for the walk which was all good until we went deeper into the swampy, tree-covered darkness, barefoot, and disturbed an ant’s nest, which resulted in everyone jumping around like crazy fools as ants crawled up their legs and had a feast. Rhonda’s sensible sandals that she still had on, came back to bite her in the ass as well, as the ants got stuck between her feet and the sandals, making the most of some tasty toe action. We did see some monkeys, and one with a baby clinging to its chest, more hyacinth macaws, some random pink bird eggs and fruit-nuts so it was all worth it, plus we did all think we were very brave having walked through mud and dark knee-deep water in the middle of the jungle. We had to turn back though once the water became too deep but we went on another
route, by which point we had all had enough, so much so that Sara had to vomit. So we were happy once it was all over and we were back at the Posada for lunch and some hammock action. Lisa had been bitten to the brink of death by this point with bites on every part of her body including her face and butt. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr tasty blood!
The afternoon brought a much more pleasant experience, however, as we went tubing. We had to walk across the flooded fields again to get to the boat and then sailed slowly upstream, where we had the luck of seeing a baby capybara on the river banks as well as more monkeys. Not so wonderful was the bloated, upside down corpse of a caiman floating at the edge of the river. Marcelo said that because it had remained untouched by vultures or other scavengers, it must have been poisoned, probably by a river snake. Seeing our faces react to the idea of poisonous snakes in the water we were about to jump into, he laughed and reassured us there weren't really any snakes in the water. Still unsure, we had no choice but
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Jabiru, the emblematic bird of the Pantanal to trust him and jumped into the river. The tubes weren’t that easy to get into and most of us ended up swallowing a fair amount of river water, which tasted baaaaaaaaaaaaaad.
Once ensconced in the tubes and over the fear of a caiman biting our bums, we took a leisurely float down river with Marcelo pointing things out to us from the boat, including more toucans flying overhead and the aforementioned dead caiman. We linked up at points forming tube chains, mostly through an unspoken belief that there's safety in numbers I think, while Nina’s tube gradually deflated until it was so tiny she could barely squeeze herself out of it at the end of the trip. When we got back to the campsite the current became much stronger and Rhonda and Lisa had to hang onto the high side of the boat with all their strength to be pulled into the shallower water while Ian came face to face with a caiman. No wrestling ensued (lucky for the caiman!) - instead Ian took a swift detour and then pointed it out to everyone. Marcelo then tried to encourage Ian to go after the caiman but eventually ran
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Floating spidey! fearlessly after it himself to which the croc responded by bolting down the river. Fun times!
Another trek across the field of water before a welcomed shower to wash off the river swamp, dinner and a few beers for Dutch courage before the night walk, which none of us, except Rhonda, really wanted to do. Saying that, none of us wanted to miss out either and some Yanks had told us it was the best thing they’d done on the tour so we thought we’d better give it a go. Off we went, with the Swedes and some Dutchies, head torches blazing, fully dressed and completely slathered in Deet to meet some caimans at night and walk through water up to our necks! (Thank god the second part was a typical Marcelo lie!) We got to see caiman with eyes sparkling in the darkness and a little guy up real close, but apart from that, all we really did was sweat a lot and get bitten by bugs as we were walking barefoot, meaning that even Gemma “I never get bitten” Mitchell was attacked. What the Yanks were talking about we do not know as this was definitely not
the best thing we had done, but then we remembered that they had said they were totally licked (drunk) for the tour which may go some way to explaining why they loved it so much. Oh well, at least we can say we did it. After some more de-swamping in the shower, we sat around, getting bitten to shreds, even with Sara’s repellent rings surrounding us. We were all feeling our age as 2 boozy nights plus 2 early starts caught up with us and so it was early-ish to bed (with the vodka shamefully unfinished) as we all wanted to be on top form for the horse riding the next day.
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fay sood
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Ugh !!
That all sounded absolutely disgustingly horrid Ian - you must all have been mad !!