The Pantanal Reloaded

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  Campo Grande, Brazil
Saturday, September 24, 2005

The Pantanal is full of weird and wonderful animals - French, Israeli, Swiss, English, Portuguese, Brazilian, Australian, Canadian - they are all there on display to gawp at and poke. We have nearly run out of memory card from all the pictures we took.

The journey to the Pantanal is over 8 hours from the main town of the region, Campo Grande. It is a trip that involves numerous changes of vehicles as the roads get progressively worse. As we moved further into the Pantanal we moved on to a succession of smaller and smaller vehicles, with bigger and bigger wheels, and more and more gears. We thought by the end of the trip we´d both be on mountain bikes with our rucksacks on our backs and water melons between our legs. The journey to and from our camp involved one moment when we all had to push and dig the van out of the sand, and a catastrophic breakdown - we could hear the dulcet tones of Michael Burke preparing to explain our fate

Anteater´s bottom!

. We finally arrived at ´base camp´at about 20:00 and were presented with our three star accommodation of a tent with a broken zip conveniently large enough to let the mosquitos in. We also learnt what the Brazilians mean by mattress, and it is sadly very different from our interpretation - chiropractors would have a field day in the Pantanal. The next few days involved hiking through the Pantanal, cruising on the river and searching for animals. Here is what we saw:

Mosquitos
Anteater
Mosquitos
Alligators
Four Puppies (originally there were four puppies. But all we know is that four went down to the lake where the alligators live, there was a loud commotion, much splashing and thrashing, and then only three puppies returned looking like they´d just met a hungry Mike Tyson)
Capybaras (the world´s largest rodent, but Helen thinks very cute - but they are rodents)
Black collared Hawks
Jabiru Storks (the symbol of the region, they are very big and noble looking)
Howler monkeys (who mistook us for toilets)
Tucans
Mosquitos
Macaws/Parrots (we didn´t realise, but they´re staple diet is black watches - certainly had a good munch on mine(Neil´s) as it was attached to my arm)
Cotimundi (from the Racoon family)
Ibis (the hotel)
Agouti
A tree frog (in our bathroom - they use it as insect repellant, or rather an insect receptacle)
Anaconda
Rhea (like an emu, and apparently the largest new world bird)
Mosquito
Pirahnas (we spent a great deal of time fishing for piranhas and then eating them - they are very ugly fish but surprisingly tasty

Armardillo

. We had to kill them ourselves after catching them. Unfortunately the French with us had an aversion to hitting (the fish) - an historical trait perhaps - and therefore tried to push them to death! The piranhas are quite hard blighters and didn´t respond too kindly to this approach. They feigned death to stop the assertive fingering of the French only to re-awaken hours later as they were being prepared for filleting by our guide. It was he (Paolo, our guide) who incurred their wrath as they bit down on his finger, he´d been there before of course (he was not sporting a full set of fingers anyway) and quickly dispatched the offending fish with his knife. As for the French, they were relieved of any piranha killing duties.

We got to swim with the alligators as well, we didn´t realise it at the time, but as we were crossing a waist high lake the alligators were swimming all around. It was only when we came out of the lake and Helen stumbled that we realised the log she was just about to steady herself on actually had a row of teeth, four legs and a strange grin on its face.

The Pantanal was exceptionally good for our tans, or so we thought at the time. But on returning to Campo Grande to embrace our first hot shower in four days we realised that our tan was not skin-deep - it was the Pantanal´s version of fake tan, a layer of dust that could penetrate all areas (an all over tan indeed!)

We are now waiting for our bus to the waterfalls (Foz de Iguacu) down in the South West on the border with Paraguay and Argentina - we have also heard that the town we will stay at has the facility to transfer photos..

Capybara and baby :-)

. we shall see and hopefully so shall you!

Did we mention that we saw mosquitos? Some very close up in fact, they were very friendly and have left a real mark on both of us.

A very quick aside - we saw our first Brazilian strike before we went to the Pantanal. And if this is how the Brazilians strike our entire employment plans have changed and we are coming to work for the Brazilian national post office. They were striking for better pay, no corruption and no to privatisation - standard stuff, but it was their political methods which encouraged us. We chanced upon the ´picket line´ which consisted of tables and chairs, and a large stereo playing music. They were all engaged in games of dominoes or were sunbathing. And if they were peckish, there was the ubiquitous cake trolley parked next to them - this is one picket line that no-one wanted to cross! Sign us up!

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

Dinner :-)	Elmo meets Ana - Conda	Elmo traumatised as parrot eats exp. diving watch	Happy truckers!
Mmmm - roast pirahna	See you later alligator!	Some of the friendly Pantanal locals	Where´s my husband?
Yucky swamp crossing

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