Paraguay & The Pantanal - July 2007

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After a month of hard graft at Iguazu Falls, I took early retirement and escaped across the border into Paraguay. Iguazu Falls and the rivers that feed her are on a triple frontier splitting Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. By entering Paraguay it also meant I had completed the gringo bingo full house of Latin American countries. (Again, in my book Suriname is not truly Latino, being a former Dutch colony and all, so no letters of pedancy please). I quickly conceived a route that would take me into the Pantanal of Brazil, through the major cities of Paraguay. Major cities in Paraguay are like minor towns in the rest of South America. The majorest city of Paraguay is Asuncion, the capital. This was my first stop.

Paraguay is the whipping boy of South America - although at one point its power rivalled Brazil and Argentina. But its politics have invariably been headed by blinkered meglomaniacs, whose insatiable hunger for greater power and territorial growth inevitably proved its downfall. In 1865 it tried it on with Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay all at once, who needed no second invitation to trounce their army and wipe out more than half their population (something
The Chaco War (1932-35)
like 300,000 of 500,000 Paraguayans were killed during this war). Then in 1932 it had a pop at Bolivia, the only other landlocked country in South America, over who owns the Chaco region between the two of them. Think of it like two poor homeless bums having a tug-of-war over a Curly Wurly, whilst everyone else is down the beach eating ice cream, complete with Flake, and dangling their feet in the ocean.

Asuncion claims to have a population of a million people, though I have no idea where they were all hiding when I was there. The downtown streets were almost deserted and most of the shops were closed. It is one of the oldest cities in South America, so there were enough historic buildings to snap for a few hours, whilst I waited for the Korean restaurant to re-open for dinner having been kicked out when they stopped serving lunch.
Asuncion lies on the banks of the Rio Paraguay, which weaves its way north through Paraguay and into Brazil. Once a week a passenger boat departs Asuncion and ambles along the river to Concepcion, a crumbling old town in northern Paraguay. I hauled my backpack on board,
Super Super Mario
paid the 40,000 Guarani (about 3 quid), strung up my hammock, and prepared myself for watching the odd moment of riverbank activity, interspersed with 30 hours of tedium. At least I had a bumper Suduko book to keep me occupied - which I'm sure I would have completed were it not the Spanish version.

After my whistlestop tour of Paraguay to justify the stamp in my passport, I took a bus to the Brazilian border town of Ponta Pora and then switched bus to Campo Grande, the main city in Brazil's Pantanal region. The Pantanal is a vast area of flat marshlands and savannah in southwestern Brazil, with slight overlaps into Paraguay and Bolivia. The wetlands onomatiopoeically wield a wide world of weird and wonderful wildlife, the density of which amazed me even more than the Amazon or the Galapagos Islands. Its giant star-studded cast list include Giant Otters, Giant Anteaters, Giant Armadillos, giant Anacondas, giant rodents (Capybara), and a giant number of black caiman (estimated up to 30 million).

From Campo Grande I joined a 4 day "eco-tour" (whatever that means). There were 7 of us eco-tourists and our guide Mario. Super Mario, to you. Therefore, it
Donkey Donkey Kong
was only fitting that we allocated ourselves the identities of the other 7 members of the Mario Kart grid. I became Donkey Kong - who I always found to have slower acceleration on the straights than Mario, but with superior cornering abilities.
Mario was my type of tour guide. Observant, knowledgeable and reckless. ie. He would notice the most inconspicuous of animals from hundreds of yards away, explain all about their habits and evolution as we crept towards them, then try to pounce on them. He needed no encouragement from me to grab the odd Capybara, but I still gave him plenty of it. I tried to pick up one Capybara myself, managed to hold it aloft for a second or two, before dropping the unfortunate oversized rat on its head. He stumbled off to lick his wounds in the undergrowth. Ooops. Mario did make it crystal clear that he'd rather we didn't let the other guides or tourists know we were having such a hands-on experience. I gave him my word I wouldn't speak of it to anyone. I promised nothing about blogging it though. I also suggested he could rely on my discretion far more if he taught
Dropping a capybara on its head
me some of his techniques. As I mentioned, Mario is a spotter of master proportions. He explained to me that you should go against your instincts and scan the landscape the opposite direction to which you read. When reading, you will automatically skip the occasional word as your brain fills in the gaps (even as you read this passage you will be subliminally jumping over the odd JOIN irrelevant THE filler ARMY word) The same principle applies when scanning the scenery. If you force yourself to view from right to left, you will naturally spot more - apparently. I still need to perfect this one.

The other trick of the trade he taught me was how to catch a crocodile (a caiman actually, but I'll call them crocs as it sounds more impressive). The minute he finished explaining the theory I wanted to go bag myself a croc. At first I think he thought I was joking. I wasn't. So while the rest of Team Mario Kart (that'll be Luigi, Princess, Yoshi, Bowser, Toad and Koopa Troopa, as I'm sure you already knew) had their lunch I stalked and captured my first victim. Looking at the photo now, it
Creeping up on a caiman
only appears about 4 foot in length, but I can assure you the photo must be out of perspective or something. Oh, and believe me, its teeth were much sharper too. Anyway, even the great Mick Dundee himself must've started somewhere. Once I had lifted and removed the caiman from the swamp and onto the bank, Mario showed us a fascinating technique of putting him to sleep. Not in the same way a vet puts your pet dog to sleep, but more the way Paul McKenna puts a therapy patient into a hypnotic trance. It remained in this state for 5 minutes or so, before the little living handbag woke up and scarpered off happily and untraumaed back to the swamp. What's more, it no longer had an addiction for cigarettes.

We took several different forms of transport through the Pantanal. We rode horses across the damp plains, rowed boats down the gentle rivers, drove trucks across the raised roads, and trekked barefoot through the piranha infested swamps. Despite their reputation, a little piranha is not going to take a nibble at a fully grown human. Just don't play dead. In fact, we spent half a day fishing for
Crikey !!
the critters. It was not a competition by any means, but just so you know, I caught tons of them. High five!! This was our dinner that night. And the night after.
Over the four days we saw toucans, howler monkeys, giant otters, macaws of every colour, and hundreds more caiman. But the highlights had to be the family of Giant Anteaters and the pair of Nine-banded Armadillos we encountered, both sets of which literally passed within a few yards of us. The latter also allowing me to throw a couple of my favourite Armadillo facts out there:
The nine-banded Armadillo always produces exactly 4 offspring, all of which are gentically identical.
The armadillo is the only mammal with an exoskeleton (hence, unlike a Dime bar, which is soft on the outside and hard in the centre).
Team Mario Kart left the Pantanal Cup GP totally satisfied. Well, almost. I have yet to see a Big Cat in the wild and the Pantanal was one of the likeliest places to spot Jaguars. I also never saw a monkey bareback riding a tapir nor two sloths having an arm-wrestle. I've always struggled to understand how the sloth still exists. It seems
Mine's bigger
to be living evidence for the argument against evolution theory. Over millions of years it has evolved no useful attributes - its slow, short-sighted, and not highly reproductive. It is also an easy meal for anacondas, eagles, jaguars, and any other jungle carnivore. If Darwin's theory is to be believed, evolution should either have got frustrated with its pointlessness years ago and wiped it out or at least developed it some sort of defence mechanism (like laser eyes). So maybe there is something in this whole God's Creationism after all.

From Campo Grande I decided to treat myself to a flight to Rio de Janeiro, via Sao Paulo. My TAM flight touched down in a wet Sao Paulo airport 24 hours before a sister plane skidded off the runway and into a petrol station. By this stage I was safely arriving in Rio.

Rio, with its golden beaches, silver surf and bronzed bodies is an Olympic quality tourist destination. As such, it is hosting the Panamerican Games (a bit like the Commonwealth Games, but with less former British colonies competing).
Its world class beaches are crammed full of the beautiful people (both men and women). With magazine tans
Giant Anteater
and stomach muscles, the women would catwalk along the sands in just about enough material to be called bikinis and the men strut their stuff in uncomfortably small Speedos. Although I was more Michelen Man than Muscle Man, I was happy to mix it with the locals at some beach volleyball or beach football - or even my new favourite sport, beachfootvolleyball. In comparison to these Brazilians, my usual flash skills were seen as no-nonsence football. I was well and truly out-showboated. The Brazilians are football mad. They have won 5 World Cups and dozens of other tournaments. But as such, they fully expect their team to win every competition they enter. I was in Rio when a second-string Brazil team beat the All-Stars of Argentina to win the final of the Copa America (their equivalent of the European Championship). If this was England, we'd have a national holiday and hand out some knighthoods, but this is Brazil and it was nothing more than demanded of them.

When the Portuguese first arrived in Rio de Janeiro they ignorantly thought the large bay was the mouth of a river and so named it River of January. Rio is famous for
The Son of God....
...with the saviour of all mankindits Carnival, samba, the Maracana Stadium, shanty towns (Favellas), a bit of street violence, the Statue of Christ, and several monolithic rocks that protrude from the water's edge, the most recogniseable of which is Sugar Loaf mountain.
I missed the Carnival season, don't have samba feet, the Maracana was closed due to the Panamerican games taking place in the new stadium and I didn't even get to see any street violence on my Favella tour. I also misjudged the time of sunset and reached the peak of Sugar Loaf mountain long after the sun had disappeared.
But I did go up to visit the Statue of Christ the Redeemer atop Corcovado mountain. This has just been voted one of the New 7 Wonders of the World. Hmmm. I am at the end of this leg of my trip, so I am possibly suffering from travel fatigue, but I was overly underwhelmed. The statue itself is JC with arms outstretched, giving it some "come on then" like a Chelsea hooligan.
The final list of the New 7 Wonders of the World was announced earlier this month. Unsurprisingly, the Great Wall of China, Taj Mahal, Petra and Macchu Picchu got the nod,
Rio by night
along with the Colleseum in Rome and the Mayan temple of Chichen Itza. But I'm not sure how the Statue of Christ can sit among that elite list, in my mind being a lesser version of the Angel of the North (though admittedly in a more romantic location). Plus it was built as recently as 1931, so is not exactly a miracle of ancient architecture. But what do I know?

So now I am coming to the end of my Latin American odyssey. Back to the UK. There are things I have missed from home, of course: Bacon, milky tea, new British music, Deal or No Deal, Heat magazine.
Likewise, there are things I will miss from here: Steaks, fresh coffee, Shakira Shakira, Negocio o No Negocio, Scorchio magazine.
But I will be home for just 2 weeks before I start the next leg in Asia. Enough time to appreciate all the good things the UK has to offer and enough time to get bored of them again.
Also, enough time to relax and forget about writing a blog for a short while, before I embark on that "difficult second series".

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Photos

The Son of God.....
.......with the saviour of all mankind

Comments

[Carlos]

Keep writing
Great blog! Keep it up, I really enjoyed reading it.