Panthanal

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We had a few more nights out in Rio after this. I kissed a sexy Isreali girl one night before we headed onto the Panthanal. We made the mistake of travelling to Corumba, a one hourse town that belongs in a county like Laois, to enter the Panthanal and ended up retracing our steps for 2 hours to enter the National Park. The Panthanal is an area bigger than France, made up of swampland and jungle. We were greeted by a jeep with a big box on the back that brought us to Santa Clara Pousada, which is in fact a farm. We were worried by the lack of guests on the first night and are fears were compounded each day as the numbers dwindled and not a single bird never mind a looker in the bunch.




Our activites included a walk (shit), a horse ride, good as it was my first time, (I think its a bit slack on the horses though, kicking them to make them speed up and ripping a rope in their mouth to make them stop), a boat trip (excellent), a jeep trip (average) and piranaha fishing (shit). Our boat trip was in a small boat with edges two feet out of the water which could easily be described as a cockleshell. During it our guide caught a couple of piranaha using a string and bait and proceeded to use this to goade the caymen. Holding the bait above the caymens head, the caymen jumped three feet out of the water three times, hitting into the boat twice, before grabing its breakfast on the third attempt.




The animals we saw included caymens (smaller (2m crocodiles)), howler monkeys, deers, capeveras (big rodents that resembled Alf), parrots, tucans, storks, kingfishers, hawks and makaws. Snakes and Jaguars also inhabit the swamps but we didn´t see any of these either because the guides were very adventurous or the large crowds in each group scare them off.




One problem I had with the Panthanal was that we had to travel very far to see the animals, and then we might not even see them and quite often they were too far away to take good photos.

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