Day 212 - Campo Grande to Cuiaba

  Cuiaba, Brazil
Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Today was one of those 'travel days' where most of it was spent on a bus.

Our third and final bus connection landed us in the town of Cuiaba about 90 mins later than planned, which normally wouldn't matter but we were a little nervous this time because we had a guide & driver meeting us from the Pantanal tour company.

Fortunately the guide was smart enough to call the bus company before setting out, so he knew that we were running late and arrived accordingly.

It was the first time in the entire 8 month honeymoon so far that we've had anyone waiting for us with a "Mr & Mrs Fey" sign! 

Our guide was called Fernando and I've no idea what the driver was called, but they both seemed pleasant chaps, and Fernando's English was excellent.

We chucked the bags into the back of their Fiat space wagon thing and headed off towards our 'lodge', where we'd be spending the next 4 days.

The ride there wasn't unpleasant, we've arrived in the "receding flood" season, so there's water everywhere but it´s not raining.

Indeed the sun definitely had his hat on when we arrived and thankfully the van had air conditioning!



After about 45 minutes we turned off the asphalt road and onto a dirt track, which was pretty smooth compared to some of the others that we've seen here in South America.

Smooth that was until we started to approach a number of rather large puddles which spanned the road in front of us!



We negotiated a few of them without any real problems, but then we reached a really big one where a large truck had got stuck in the mud earlier and was in the process of being pulled out by a tractor! Grrrreat...

 

Either way you looked at it, it didn't look good.



We got out to investigate, Katie deciding to wade through the water to see how deep it was (knee high) before we left the guide & driver to formulate a plan for getting through all the water.



It was absolutely boiling outside, so after 5 minutes I had to find some shade because I'd left my cap in the van and the sun was really beating down. 

It was here that I designed a new cutting edge piece of eyewear by cunningly attaching two leaves to my frames, to shade them from the sun. I probably won't bother trying to patent them ;)



Eventually a digger appeared behind us, created another path through the water and our driver was able to cross with no problems, even if it looked a bit hairy. 

 

He fought his way through another 2 or 3 deep pools without us and then we reached the biggest yet, which had the added obstacle of having a large cement pipe running through the middle of it! 

 



The driver did really well to clear the obstacle without any obvious problems and we reached the end of the road (literally) about an hour later. 



The whole journey to the lodge was 'only' supposed to take 3 hour, but it had already taken longer than that before we reached the end of this road. 

When the road ended, the water began!



We$ now had about 15 minutes on a longboat (long speedboat), so after chucking the bags in and saying goodbye to the driver we set off, instantly needing to duck under a very low bridge before speeding off to the lodge.

We later learnt that our driver was unable to get back to Cuiaba because the lorry which originally broke down managed to destroy the cement pipes in the last big puddle. This caused even worse flooding and made the water impossible to cross, so he had to join us at the lodge instead because he had no other way back

It was quite cool to be staying somewhere which could only be reached by boat, it reminded us of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, but whereas the water there was brown and muddy, the water here was absolutely incredible.
 
It was so perfectly reflective that it almost looked like liquid metal. I kept thinking that the dude from Terminator 2 was going to appear in front of us!



We were excited when we saw the lodge in front of us, it had been recommended to Katie by a travel agent listed in the guidebooks, so we really hoped that it met our high expectations.



The room was fine, no tv, but not the end of the world and it had a really nice view outside the windows...



We dumped the bags and went to explore, finding a lovely pool and chill out area.

It also had a games room, which got me very excited until I realised that the table tennis table was actually curved at the edges, like stale bread, and to say the pool table had seen better days is like saying China is "quite a big place"!



It was rough as you like, but the balls were round and the pockets worked, so whatever. And it was free. Result!

The tv room was a bit crap because there was no cable tv (as promised on their internet site) and this was further compounded by a lack of internet access, because (and I'm not making this up) the manager wasn't there and no-one else knew the access code! One was not amused. 

No cable tv and no internet was a double whammy because Liverpool play Arsenal on Wednesday in the Champions League 1/4 final 1st leg and with no cable tv, I REEEAAAALLY needed to be able to find out the result on the internet. All I could do was hope that the manager was not off on holiday or something ridiculous. 

I think it's fair to say we were a little disappointed with the place at first considering how much money we'd pain, but I guess there are MUCH more expensive places in the area and we definitely didn't go top-end, so maybe we shouldn't expect too much...

We had an hour to kill until the buffet lunch and all things considered it was pretty good.

After that we relaxed by the pool, enjoying the sun and watching the wildlife around us.

We could see caymans (little alligators) in the water next to us, fish jumping out the water, and a plethora of birds flitting around and singing their little hearts out.

Here's a couple of photos of the caymans:





And here's one of the colourful and noisy birds:



It was really peaceful out there and bloody HOT!

We had a dip in the pool, which was like having a bath it was so hot! The water wasn't chlorinated (?) and it had quite a few things floating in it, so we didn't stay in there long, but it was good to relax for a while. 

After splashing around we sat in the shade with the iPod speakers providing a great soundtrack to our maxing and relaxing.

At about 4pm we were invited back into the boat and headed off for an exploration of some of the local rivers and bays.

See what I mean about the reflective water?
 



The sun was on its way down behind the clouds, which added another point of interest to the photos.





As we sped through the channels we could see local people fishing and gathering some of the plants and flowers.



We could also see lots of birdlife, like this heron (crane?)...



...and this hawk in a tree.



It was a really lovely trip, until our driver got very nervous about a storm front that he was watching, and fair play to him, he was absolutely spot-on.



Sure enough the winds picked up and the previously calm water really started to chop up, with the waves were getting bigger and bigger and lapping against the boat.

We slowed right down, found a sheltered space to wait for the wind & waves to die down and then headed back to the lodge as quickly as we could, which was a bit hairy at times, but we made it home in one piece.

All of us were a bit nervous about all the lightning going off all around us, especially as we were all sitting in a METAL boat! Bit of a design flaw methinks, it was like a metal bathtub with a motor ;)

After showering it was dinner time which was another buffet with a choice of fish for the lady and it again it was purty darn good, no complaints. We had to buy drinks which was a bit tight, but otherwise it was 8/10, very tasty.

My favourite soft drink over here is called 'Guarana Antarctica', which is fizzy "guarana" juice. The guarana plant is found here in Brazil and its fruit contains TWICE as much caffeine as a coffee bean, yet is more or less the same size! It really picks you up, but is a lot more natural than other 'energy' drinks.

We went to bed soon after dinner, after a poor night's sleep last night on the bus (which was semi-cama and very cold) and with a full day to look forward to tomorrow.

In the morning we are due to do a rather grand sounding "ecological trek" to look for animals & birds and in the afternoon we're due to go back out on the boat to do some piranha fishing, which sounds EXCELLENT!

We should also see a sunset if we're lucky and then head back to the lodge.

It's also the Liverpool v Arsenal game tomorrow, so with a bit of luck we can get a result at the Emirates and take them back to Anfield with it all to play for... COME ON YOU LEGENDS!


Lots of love,


Al & Katie xx