Safari in the Brazilian Pantanal

We took a Brazilian bus into the Pantanal. After living in Bolivia for three months, where we became accustomed to holding it or pissing on the roadside, it´s hard for me to believe that this bus bathroom has toilet paper, towels, soap and warm water! (Granted, the water is war only because it´s over 100 degrees outside!)

The Pantanal is a vast wetland, the size of Belgium, Portugal, Switzerland and Holland combined, and one of the world´s greatest wildlife preserves. It´s mainly in Brazil but spills into Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina. Our visit was during the last few weeks of the wet season, and much of the Pantanal was still flooded.

Our Footprint guide to South America says:

"The Pantanal plain slopes some 1 cm in every kilometre north to south and west to east to the basin of the Rio Paraguai and is rimmed by low mountains. One hundred and seventy five rivers flow from ehese into the Pantanal and after the heavy summer rains they burst their banks, as does the Paraguai itself; to create vast shallow lakes broken by patches of high ground and stands of cerrado forest. Plankton then swarm to form a biological soup that contains as many as 500 million microalgae per litre. Millions of amphibians and fish spawn or migrate to consume them. And these in turn are preyed upon by waterbirds and reptiles. Herbivorous mammals graze on the stands of water hyacinth, sedge and savanna grass and at the top of the food chain lie South America´s great predators - the jaguar, ocelot, maned wolf and yellow anaonda. In June at the end of the wet when the sheets of water have reduced to small lakes or canals wildlife concentrates and then there is nowhere on earth where you will see such vast quantities of birds or such enormous numbers of crocodilians."

We stayed in a lodge in the southern Pantanal between Corumbá and Campo Grande, Brazil. Stayiing at the lodge reminded me of summer camp! We had a rustic cabaña with mosquito screens, a bathroom and a fan. We could hear small animals scurrying on the roof. Our cabaña was on stilts, literally above the river. And on the wooden walkway to our cabaña, a semi-domesticated capybara lounged! One of the guides found him as a baby. His mother had died, and so the guide brought him to the lodge to live. Now he is two, but not yet full grown.

The capybara is the world~s largest rodent, and can grow to weigh as much as Gary. This one, whose Portuguese name means cutie, is the size of a large dog. As far as I could see, Cutie spends his days lazing on the porch and being petted by tourists. He especiallylikes petting between his ears, and he sometimes makes a purring type sound. His fur is coarse like a pig´s. You wouldn´t know he´s a rodent at all unless you see him yawn, exposing his rat-like teeth. Sometimes the lodge staff have to crack down on him, because he goes into the cabañas and sleeps on the beds, scaring the tourists. When Cutie is not lazing on the porch, he lazes in the river water, eating a diet of plants.

Immediately upon arriving at the lodge we went on a boat ride on the river. Our guide, Marcello, spoke excellent English which I must admit was a relief after two days of struggling to understand Portuguese. We motored down the Miranda River, which is a tributary not of the Amazon but of the Paraguai. We saw tropical birds, including tucans with their bright beaks, and tiger herons. We saw howler monkeys high up in the trees, and we heard them howling! The males howl over some sort of territory issue. We saw lots of caiman. After boating for awhile, we went swimming in the river, in the same water with the caiman and piranha! The caiman are not aggressive like crocodiles and alligators, and the piranhas only go after you if you have a bleeding would or are menstruating. Swimming in a river is wonderful on a hot day. And it was hot! Over 100 degrees, with humidity around 70 percent! My hair was almost curly!

We had an hour to nap, read etc., and then we had dinner in the dining hall, just like at summer camp.

The next morning we went on our safari! We saw tons of animals: great horned owl, blue macaw, stork, parakeets, a type of ibis, hawk, kingfisher, tucan, caiman, capybara, 9-ring coati (related to the racoon, and different from the coatis we saw in Bolivia), fox (gray and more dog-like than foxes I´ve seen in the U.S.), deer (much smaller than U.S. deer), howler monkeys, wild pigs, armadillo, blue morphos butterfly, and aguchi (a small mammal). We did not see anaconda or jaguar.

The blue macaw were beautiful bright blue jungle birds, and Gary collected a handful of their feathers on the ground below the tree where they perched. The stork was tall, standing in the water almost as tall as a fence post! The parakeets were flying free, not in cages the way I´ve seen them before. They are a beautiful green.

Caiman were everywhere, lying on the banks of the water. At night, they spend 5 or 6 hours under water, and in the morning they need to lie in the sun to warm up. The capybara were wet and on the side of the road, probably having just eaten plants in the water. In several areas, 9-ring coati were everywhere, sleeping or playing in trees, running on the ground. They cuddled together and watched us.

The howler monkeys made their strange howling noise that reminds me of Jurassic Park, and our guide, Marcello, called to them with his monkey call. They had a dialog for awhile.

The wild pigs that we saw were actually on a farm, mixed with domestic pigs and some that were crosses between the two. The domestic pigs are fatter and have wider faces. I was surprised that there are wild pigs here, since pigs came from Europe and are not native to the Americas. I know people have brought many domestic pigs to the Americas, but why would people import wild pigs? Marcello told us that during the Chaco war between Paraguay and Bolivia, Paraguayans imported wild pigs from Europe and let them loose in the Chaco so that soldiers could hunt them for a food source. Now there are lots of them, and they have spread into several countries.

I was bitten by fire ants! But it only hurt for a couple of seconds.

I know that in southeast Colorado we have wild pigs which are escaped domestic pigs that have become completely wild after several generations. But I wonder if we also have wild pigs that were imported from Europe. Where did Arizona´s wild javelina population come from?

Now, at the end of the wet season, the Pantanal is mostly flooded with a few islands that are above water. On our safari, we hiked on those islands and drove on the road that is between them. During the dry season, much of the flooded area will be come savannah.

Much of the Pantanal is ot accessible by road this season, and people can only enter on horseback or by airplane. On the river, we saw a house that is only accessible by boat during the wet season. The Pantanal is a mixture of wilderness and cattle farms, or fazendas. Some of the cattle look like Texas longhorns. Some have huge humps on their backs, and all are skin and bones because their grazing area is under water.

The next morning we went piranha fishing. I was secretly glad that nobody caught any fish. Then we went tubing on the Miranda river! Tubing was a much different experience from tubing on the Poudre in Colorado. The Miranda river is wide and deep and slow, and there are no rapids or rocks to dodge. But the Poudre has no caiman or piranhas! I love tubing, on either river.

In the afternoon, we went on another boat ride, and saw a caiman basking on the bank. Our boat pulled up, and it dove into the water and we went swimming right next to where the caiman had been!

Every day, more and more land was visible in the Pantanal, as we approached the dry season. We watched a beautiful sunset over the savannah.

Two of our safari companions are a couple from New Zealand. They spent six months last year in a Colorado mountain town, and they plan to do the same this year. They enter on tourist visas, and are actually working illegally. They said it´s quite easy for them, but they have noticed that it is much harder for their Mexican counterparts who are not usually able to get tourist visas because they are from a poorer country.

Because the New Zealand couple is white and speaks English as a first language, noone suspects them of being undocumented workers. They have seen many cases of a group of construction workers getting stopped and the Mexican workers getting detained by immigration while nobody questions the undocumented workers from New Zealand.