Reality bites in the Pantanal
Trip Start
Sep 06, 2006
1
9
36
Trip End
Sep 01, 2007
Campo Grande,
Brazil
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Well we survived our flight with Gol Airlines everyone! Unlike the plane before us which crashed in the middle of the jungle and which took rescue teams days to find.
So Campo Grande? The town is just a hub for travelers going into the wilderness to come face to face with wildlife, i could already here dear David Attenbourgh in my head, "Here, in the Pantanal...." you know what i mean!
So another long old journey into the middle of the Pantanal we went with the promise of snakes, macaw parrots, alligators, more giant fodents, Piranhas and all sorts of other creatures!
Gone was our life in smelly hostels and we said a big Hello
Do you like my fish necklace?
! to hammocks and to roughing it! No hair curler for Cath now! ;-) We all slept in a straw hut with hammocks strung up from a central pole - Cath found herself on top a Swedish girl the first night, but after that they moved apart, shame! Iīm not sure that Cath was too pleased with the shower situation or the toilets for that matter, as everytime i had to accompany her, to look out for spiders, flying things and to make sure nothing bit her bum. One day i had 3 showers! Two for me (the second one was because i went swimming in my pants in alligator infested waters) and the third, yes the third because Catherine was too scared to go on her own, hhmmmmm! Pathetic! Our first day we wandered around for a couple of hours in search of wildlife. After our briefing i thought we were going to see wildlife everywhere but as we walked around the dried up marshes the stench of Death seemed more apparent - all we saw were a few stinky dead cows. However this smell should not be underestimated, I have never smelt anything quite like it! Absolutely distgusting! We also saw lots of mosquitoes and spent most of the morning applying OFF! S. America`s very reliable mozzie repellent. In 3 days we went through 300mls but still the little buggers managed to bite us, even at night they bit through hammock, sleeping bag and silk liner! They grow them big out here. Anyway skin is still attached after all the deet so thats good
Horse suffocates
. I`ve also been told that beer has a vitamin in it that is good for your skin so I had better get a double dose!As we wandered around some more the next day, I began to realise just how hard it must be for poor Sir David, the time the crew must spend locating all these fascinating animals, plus he`s getting on a bit now too. However, eventually we did see everything, from howler monkeys who started to wee and sh*t on us, red and blue birds I think were macaw parrots, Capybaras, Arrrrrrmadilooooos, Toucans and all i could think of was a nice cold pint of Guinness!
We did many activities in the Pantanal and oneday we went out horse trekking on the most flea bitten scabby horses I`ve seen, poor things. Cathīs was the smallest, mine was the slowest however then i found the whip, the horse was still slow but whipping myself took away the bordem at least! Our Italian friend had the best horse but then it all got a bit Broke Back Mountain, but thats another story.
We met some nice people in our tour group, who were a little more interesting than the guide who looked a little bit bored with his job (not really surprising as he had to take tourists out on the same paths every day); a group of Italians and a English man who was so stereotypically English it was all very funny
Hygiene in the jungle
. We named him Jungle Jim as he had every gadget you could think of and kept coming out with ridiculous comments, "this is all jolly good fun! What What! Glad there are no Germans around." I liked the red and white neckerchief he put on while we were riding, although I`m not sure his Brazilian girlfriend was too taken with it. What else went on? Oh yes, we went Piranha fishing! We had to wade through the waters knee deep as our guide said that was the only way to catch them, however as you did wade you could feel the baby ones nibbling on your toes (well my toes look like NikNaks anyway so you canīt really blame them!) Cath and I caught one each, while the guide caught over 50 for our tea. However, being rather competitive, Cath was just not satisfied with her one and was also getting frustrated with her meat dissapearing everytime it dipped into the water, so she loaded it up with 4 big chunks and thrashed her rod around in the water She caught something then, much to the guides excitement, a 5 meter Anaconder, not a risk on land but highly dangerous in water! And where were we again? Arrrrrhhhhh!!! The guides took over the rod while another one jumped in and tried to swing it on to the bank where i was standing, i moved pretty darn quickly I can tell you and barged into Cath who fell over. Fortunatly it was too big and strong and escaped the guides grip. It all made an intersting end to our day though and next time we go piranha fishing, i wonīt be wading in up to my thighs thats for sure!
