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Published: August 23rd 2006
So as you may have gathered Heather has headed home. Last Saturday she headed back to La pAz and I continued on for a few more weeks. I was very sad to see her go.
What Heather didn´t mention was that Bolivian night clubs are an interesting place where they seem to only play late 70s and early 80s disco music (OK yes I was in heaven...). What interested me most was that they don´t know the YMCA dance...we tried in vain to teach many of them...but they didn´t get it. Wierd!
Our compact group of hardy travellers - now down to 3 tourists and 2 guides headed for Brazil. We caught a flight (AirSur who gets reject planes from Mexico) to Santa Cruz before catching the so called train of death. As a brief aside Santa Cruz is an interesting plce with relatively lots of cash since they grow the coca with the big leaves (that cocaine is made from) and all the drug lords live here. We managed to chill out waiting for the night train. After all that I had read about this train that ;leaves when it wants and arrives when it can...it wan´t too
Alligators...lots of them
As prehistoric as you get...bad. The Bolvian exit immigration post didn´t even ask for any money (this would not be legal of course) on the way out.
We were now in Brazil the country the size of a continent. It does actually take up half of south America. As we passed over the border from Bolivia suddely the roads were wide and paved...yes for those Canadians it was like driving from Saskaskewan to Alberta.
After a couple more hours drive we were in the middle of now where in the Pantanal. This is a wetland half the size of France that I had never heard of before this trip. it also has the best wildlife viewing in South America. Our camp was rustic...and I had a hissyfit about sleeping in a hammock (since I fall out) and got a tent that initially didn´t shut. Who needs Malaria nets in an area endemic with malaria after all...?
We did have visitors to the camp that night - 2 bright red macaus that are actually on the endangered species list. Pretty cool.
There are reputedly (despite poaching) somewhere between 8 and 20 million alligators in the Pantanal and we saw about 5 million
Piranah fishing
Our guide...who did have a finger missing...? previous fishing expedition? (ok so maybe not quite that much but a fair few indeed). Lots of Capybaras which are the largest Rodent in the world and look a bit like a giant (wild) guinea pig. We also saw abunch of animals with a name i have forgoten, but as you´ll see from the photo they are closely related to racoons.
Our piranah fishing (mark 2) was funny since we were supposed to stand thigh deep in water with Alligators swimming around us. Initially we caused a wild jungle cow stampede when we climbed the fence..ok so maybe they were just cows but they were scary. We were doing ok until I asked why this lake that had taken us 40 minutes drive to reach - the answer I got was that there are less leeches in this lake. Finito for the fishing. We did fry up the piranahs that the guide had caught and had them for lunch.
We had a horseriding afternoon - which was my first unhelmeted horse rising experience. See blog 1 and the lack of safety standards in South America...no wavers, etc, etc. My horse I named Hamish, we also had a Dougal, Barry and a
Storks
With a little baby in between...thankfully they didn´t leave me with one! Josephine. I´m afraid that my horse didn´t seem to understand english or Spanish ...until I discovered the whip. Then he went really fast!
My saddle was perfectly decorated with faux fur in Dundee United colors (orange for those not in the know)...but wan´t quite so comfy. We did see howler monkeys, storks, owls, foxes and more.
This morning we had a boat trip and we saw many birds including a peregiun falcon catching some prey. We then headed on a 5 hour drive to Campo Grande which is the cowboy town of Brazil. Coming from the cowboy town of Canada I´m not sure if I´ll be impressed. We just here as an overnight stop before heading to Igassu falls. The good news is the weather just is getting warmer...and the skies bluer. Maybe I´ll have a tan after all.
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Lorraine
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alligators
Hey Sheila, love the pic of the alligator, took me a minute to figure out the it was the "eye" looking at me, but then again , that could be the result of just one too many martini's! It is interesting to note that dr's apparently have as bad spelling as math teachers, hmmmmm.....where did we go wrong??? I can't wait to see Heather in a few days, hope the rest of your trip is exciting. Keep blogging.