The Pantanal is a huge area of wetlands, which sustains a great many number of animals and is an incredibly important ecosystem. This also draws a lot of tourists of course, us included.
We arrived in Campo Grande on Sunday 8th following a 14 hour overnight bus journey from Foz do Iguazu.
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| Pantanal Mato Grosso |
This was on a more 'luxurious' bus but neither of us slept particularly well. We were met at the bus station by Alisson from Eco Adventures Travel. Alisson kindly took us to an HSBC cashpoint but apparently cashpoints in Brazil don't work on a Sunday either, so we were still short on cash to be able to pay for our trip. Alisson then took us to their hostel base with Santa Clara, with whom we would be undertaking our tour. There we had a very welcomed shower, before the next bus journey to Buraco das Piranhas, which took a further 4 hours.
At Buraco das Piranhas we changed to a jeep, to get to our hostel, Pousada Santa Clara, via the dirt tracks in the Southern Pantanal
Caiman. This was a further 25km, took a further one and a half hours, over 22 bridges, though we found it thoroughly bearable due to the amount of animals we saw along the way, including caiman, Toco Toucans, Cocoi Herons, Pampas Deer, Southern Caracara, Great Egret, Ringed Kingfisher, Savanna Hawk, Red Crested Cardinal, and Neotropic Cormorants.
We arrived at the Pousada and were met by our guide, Tom, who showed us around and explained that we would be going on a night safari that evening. More jeep time! We would rather have rested as it had been a long time travelling already. We admired the red and orange macaws, blue macaws, pigs and parakeets local to the farm, and prepared for the evening's jeep ride. On that we saw sleeping Toco Toucans, Capybaras, caiman, a dead and very venomous lancehead snake, a tarantula, and a crab eating fox.
After some food and a good night's rest, on Monday we went for a daytime jeep ride and walk in the Pantanal. The tours were well scheduled for early mornings and late afternoons, to avoid the heat of the day. On this trip we saw Black Howler Monkeys, Toco Toucans, blue macaws, red macaws, Capybaras, caiman, Ringed Kingfisher, Amazon Kingfisher, an armadillo and a Coati. There were also termites nests, leaf carrying ants, biting ants and wasp hives
A Red Macaw and an Orange Macaw. These were not so fun. We stopped to approach a caiman at one point, which was resting on the bank. We got within about 8 feet of it before it slid into the water. We also stopped to play with some fruit, which gives a blue coloured temporary tattoo (lasting about 4 days).
After hammock time over lunch and the heat of the middle of the day, we went horseriding. This was more about the experience and less about spotting animals. Jayna's horse was called Caramelo, and was generally well behaved. Ken's horse he nicknamed Bitey, as it kept biting horses which came alongside. There was a tropical rainstorm whilst we were riding, which meant we became incredibly wet, right through to having soaking wet boots. On the plus side this meant we stayed cool and there was a pretty rainbow to admire.
In the evening we started to be sociable with our fellow tour people. We got to know David and Jen, New Zealanders and doctors; Else and Jerone, Belgian travellers; Jorge, a German guy working in Brazil; and David and Mimi, a Chinese couple who we persuaded to extend their travelling to 5 months of the year. We drank plenty of caipiranhas and cervejas and got to know people.
The day that followed showed us the bruises from horseriding, and the numerous mosquito bites
A horsey rainbow. Jayna had 59 bites from the previous day. This was upsetting as she'd managed to only get 6 bites in the trip to date, despite being delicious to mossies generally.
The morning was a walk on the farm, through what felt like thousands of mosquitos. We chewed on some bark to help stomach ache (following the caipiranhas and cervejas from the previous evening). We saw tapir tracks, Buff-Necked Ibis', Southern Caracaras, Black Howler Monkeys, Toco Toucans, and lots more biting ants. Unfortunately wasps stung two of our party, Tom and Mimi, and Dave picked up ticks. To get out of the track we'd followed, we had to wade through a giant puddle, up to our knees. There was no hope for dry walking boots at this point!
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| Pantanal Mato Grosso |
In the afternoon we had a boat trip down the Arboral River, which was baking hot but very pleasant. We saw caiman, Black Howler Monkeys, a Green Iguana, Capybara, Neotropical Cormorant, Bare-faced Ibis, a Black and White Hawk Eagle, Jabiru, and a Ringed Kingfisher. Our guide, Tom, called over a caiman and fed him a piranha, getting the caiman to jump out of the water for it. We also stopped further down the river for a swim, so we went for a dip in the piranha and caiman infested waters for a while. From there, we also saw jaguar footprints in the mud, next to where we were swimming
The Southern Pantanal.
When we returned to the pousada, we took a dip in the swimming pool with Mimi and David, and later enjoyed dinner with them as well.
On the morning of Wednesday 11th, we were scheduled to go piranha fishing. We had already pre-warned the tour company that we didn't want to do this, and they had said we could do another activity in it's place. It turned out that we couldn't do another activity, so we spent the morning relaxing and packing up our belongings instead. Whilst Ken relaxed in a hammock, he saw a bird catch and smash a grasshopper against the floor, before swallowing it whole. There was a lizard in Jayna's hammock. She didn't sit on it. We checked out and caught our jeep, which only took an hour to reach Buraco das Piranhas, and then got our van to Bonito, a further three hours journey away.
Although we did not see any big cats we were blessed with sightings of many other birds and animals to sate our wildlife hunger. We were well taken care of by our informative guide Tom and very much enjoyed the company of the brief friends we met in the Pantanal.