The Wild Wild West

The Wild Wild West
Pantanal, Brazil

Pantanal, Brazil

Choosing a trip to the Pantanal is tricky business, there are the super expensive options, the cheap as chips options and pretty much everything in-between. We had been given a recommendation for a tour by Arrogant Tim in Paraguay and after a bit of research decided that it seemed like as good an option as any and was actually deeper in to the Pantanal than many of the other lodges or Posadas.

The word Pantanal in Brazilian Portuguese means swamp, bog or wetland. The Pantanal is the largest tropical wetland in the world. It is a huge gently sloping basin that receives run off from the upland areas and slowly releases it into the Paraguay River. The Pantanal is between 140,000 and 195,000 square kilometers and extends from Brazil into Bolivia and Paraguay. 80% of the Pantanal is underwater during wet season and that is why visiting during the dry season is the best time to visit as the animals are easier to find at the few water holes which remain through the dry season. The Pantanal ecosystem is thought to be home to 1000 bird species, 400 fish species, 300 mammal species, 480 reptile species and over 9000 different subspecies of invertebrates. It is also home to 3500 known plant species. Sadly this amazing piece of nature is under attack from so many different angles, over fishing, pollution, deforestation, hunting, poaching, cattle ranching and uncontrolled tourism to name just a few. Sadly less than 2,000 square kilometers of the Pantanal is protected national park, a tragic statistic.

We booked a tour with Ecological Expeditions and I would suggest that no one else follow our example, potentially we were just really unlucky as they seemed to have massively overbooked the lodge and didn’t have enough guides or transport and also seemed to be massively lacking in the promised English speaking guide department. But don’t get me wrong, the Pantanal was amazing regardless of the guides or tour company!

We had a brief overnight stay in Campo Grande where we met the fantastic Rodrigo, I assume the owner of the company who filled us with relief that we had booked the right tour, he was enthusiastic and professional and spoke perfect English. Sadly after saying goodbye to Rodrigo that was where the professionalism and enthusiasm stopped.

After a 4 hour mini bus we arrived at the entrance to the Pantanal and all the lodges had their big converted safari trucks waiting. Except for us, we were the last to be picked up and for us a little pick up with 4 seats inside and a plank of wood across the back arrived. An Aussie and his German girlfriend enthusiastically jumped into the back of the truck and then spent the next 2 hours regretting that decision as we were thrown and bumped down a dirt road in beaming sun to get to the Posada.

The Posada was amazing, compared to most jungle type lodges, it was luxury. We had a sealed room, with a huge bed, air con and even a swimming pool. The grounds were swarming with amazing birds and it was just everything we had hoped for.

We met one guide who told us a few details about our stay in broken English, luckily for us in our tour group we had a Spanish couple Seve & Karmen who were living in Brazil and spoke perfect Portuguese and English. I am not sure what we would have done without them, but I suspect it would have involved a lot of frustration and charades.

Disappointingly we didn’t have any activities our first day or night which seemed odd, but we made the best of it and explored the grounds ourselves and discovered an rather feisty pair of caimen and a huge array of birds, from Hyacinth Macaws to green parrots and even a pair of huge Jabiru (the largest bird in the stork family).

Thankfully the next morning we set off on a hike to explore and the Pantanal put on a spectacular show for us. Despite being about 40 degrees in the shade with 400,000 mosquitos all out to suck our blood we trekked for a good 4 hours and saw so much. Male and female howler monkeys, coatis, more Hyacinth macaws, some rare Scarlett Macaws, an agouti that was faster than my camera skills, a huge owl being tormented by a pair of black birds and a jaguar footprint. A small jaguar footprint but still a pretty awesome thing to see, and it was only a day or 2 old and so close to our Posada.

Next up we ventured to a water hole for a spot of piranha fishing, again fighting the sun and the mossies and also our total lack of fishing skills. Sadly we survived the sun and the mossies but couldn’t overcome our fishing skills, this could have been due to my refusal to stand in the water deep enough to get to the fish as we were told to curl our ‘white toes’ so as not to lose them to a piranha. Seriously why is anyone standing in the water here. My decision to stay out of the water was further confirmed as the right decision when the next second a caiman pops its head out right at the end of all of our lines and just watches us, with a knowing kind of look. Seemingly I can’t read caiman as this idiot proceeded to get hooked on our Aussie’s lines resulting in a broken bamboo fishing rod and potentially a new piercing to rock in the water hole. With a few fish caught (none by Tim & I) we moved locations to a slightly more comfortable bridge and suddenly the piranhas were jumping out of the water to get our bait, sadly not taking the hook, just the bait. I think that this activity should be called piranha feeding rather than fishing as they was plenty of the former and a distinct lack of the later. Feeling frustrated we got distracted by a caiman lying below the bridge and we all headed down to take a closer look. Our guide attached a leaf to a fishing rod which got the caiman excited and moving and lead to possibly the biggest laugh that the Pantanal has ever experienced when the caiman about turned from the fishing rod directly towards Tim who was stood on the other bank. Tim is not renowned for his swift and spritely manoeuvres, however that all changed when a caiman was headed his way and he took off like a little girl whilst we all rolled around wetting ourselves at the manly display he had put on. Oh how I wish I had been making a video at that moment, it would probably replace the sneezing baby panta in my favourite movie clips file. The few fish that we had caught were then fed to a resident wild caiman who after a fish supper let us pose with him for a few photos.

After yet another amazing dinner of rice and beans and salad we set off on the safari truck with a spotlight to check out the Pantanal by dark. Things didn’t start well as the rain started, but then minutes after leaving the gate the spotlight smelt like it was going to melt. With the majority of the guides and drivers sat around the camp fire tucking onto beers we seemingly got a shortened night tour along the road outside the Posada where we saw one Capybara and the same caiman that had chased Tim earlier, our guides made a swift return back to the campfire and beers.

Along with our English speaking guide we should have had more treks and even a horseride trip on our tour but they seemed to be missing in action but thankfully our promised boat tour was our final trip on the last morning. From everything we had read this was the best place to see a jaguar so we watched the banks like hawks and saw pretty much nothing. We saw a few cool birds and a few fat capybaras just hanging out, but not much else at all. At the end of the river we moored up and had another attempt at piranha fishing. Annoyingly our lovely little group of 6 had grown to 10 overnight and with a seriously rude brazillian and his girlfriend on board I was smacked in the face with a baited hook numerous times before being smacked in the face with a live piranha. There was not enough room on the boat for everyone to fish as one side of the boat was being monitored by a caiman and I certainly didn’t want to catch one of those. So after my success in the Pampas in Bolivia I decided to let Tim regain his manliness after running like a little girl f
rom the caiman and the boy did good. Every hook he put in the water came up with a piranha on the end and some times the piranha just jumped into the boat and flapped around our flailing feet. After an impressive catch of 6 huge piranhas, the biggest haul on the boat, Tim hung up his fishing rod and taunted our super fisherman Aussie for the rest of the journey. Our next stop was to feed the majority of our piranhas to a resident caiman. I don’t really agree with feeding wild animals but you couldn’t help but be wowed that we stopped the boat, banged the sides and shouted Charlie and the next second a hungry caiman appeared for a fish and a photo shoot.

So that was it, our tour was done. We had seen so much in such a short time, the Pantanal well and truly lived up to our every expectation even if the tour company didn’t. Sadly the jaguar remains on our ‘want to see’ list, along with the armadillo and giant otter, but it just gives me more of an excuse for some more jungle trips.

Our exit from the Pantanal was just as exciting as our entrance, luckily there were two groups leaving and the second group had obviously arrived in comfort as our group were like greyhounds after a hare to get seats in the trucks as we watched the guides lodge a wooden bench on the back of the other truck for the remaining group. With rain clouds looming we cozied up and enjoyed the view of the young unsuspecting Germans struggling to hold on and put on rain coats whilst being bounced across the Pantanal at 40kmph on a park bench on a truck in the rain, ha ha ha.

As we arrived at the entrance to the Pantanal and were bundled into minibuses to our respective destinations, unsurprisingly the price of the mini bus suddenly went up by £2 each, but hey ho, what can you do.

4 hours later we arrived in the pouring wet rain on what felt like a British summer evening in Bonito.

Time for some sleep and a whole new town to explore.

Thank you Pantanal and your amazing wildlife for an amazing, amazing experience.