| The Pantanal |
[Apr. 24th, 2008|07:48 pm] |
Hey all,
This will be a bit of a garbled post, have already forgotten some things from the Pantanal, blame the beer.
The 5 hour bus ride to the Pantanal was mostly boring, I made some instant friends by sharing a packet of biscuits around the 8 backpackers on board. We then took a jeepy-thing to our accommodation. The camping part was awesome. A really relaxed, laidback place filled with interesting backpackers. All of us (between 10 and 15 depending on the day) slept in a big room with hammocks slung from wall to wall. We had two bats living in there, they ate the mosquitos which was good because the mozzies were vicious there. My ankles have still not recovered from the first night.
The first night was great, mostly because one of the Israelis had a guitar. We got a campfire going and passed the guitar around - why is it most backpackers can play guitar? No Jan, we did not sing kum by yah. Spelling?
On the first morning we went piranha fishing (sigh, again). This time I was more successful and caught two piranha and a catfish. The catfish was weirdlooking but quite delicious. The piranha tasted ok, since I don't normally eat fish I can only compare them to the catfish and they were worse. I tied with a Kiwi (James) in number of fish, Daniel (Israeli with guitar) didn't catch anything and vowed never to fish again. Our guide Sandro showed us how to clean the fish, quite icky but mega-fun! Then we handed them over to the cook for lunch.
We went horseriding for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Boy, was that stressful for the first 20 minutes. My horse was in fact a sheep that had to do whatever the other horses were doing. Unfortunately I was riding with more experienced people who rapidly galloped off into the distance. And off went my horse with me clinging to the saddle, trying not to drop my camera, shouting "Pare! Stop!" and commands in any other language I could think of. Happily, my horse (nicknamed Bastard) soon tired out and began to plod along at a much more amenable pace. Riding was good after that, although we didn't really see much wildlife.
Tuesday was a trekking sort of day. We spent a few hours walking in the morning, and then drove to a more remote location for more walkies in the afternoon. We saw a load of monkeys, armadillos, toucans, macaws and, most importantly, capybara. The capybara were cool, just like giant guinea pigs. I want one. We watched sunset as we drove back, spectacular again. Then the stars came out so everybody asked me questions and I had no idea which constellations were which since I was in the wrong hemisphere. So I made some stuff up. They'll never know...
That night James, myself and an Aussie called Daniel had a few too many drinkies and took our guide Sandro for a special tour of the Pantanal. I was the experienced tour guide since I had been in the Pantanal for almost 4 days by then. We showed him many things including the dangerous Brazilian woodsnake (looks and acts a lot like a stick). The boys and I didn't get to bed until 3am which was a mistake as James and I were leaving the next day and had many many hours on uncomfortable buses ahead.
Our final activity was floating down a river in rubber tubes - perfect for those nursing hangovers such as James, Daniel, Sandro and myself. As we reached the halfway point Sandro started shouting "Get out of the water!" So we swam to the bank and pulled ourselves out, wondering what was up and hoping it was something big and scary like a huge caiman (alligator). Turns out Sandro thought he had seen giant otters but in fact he saw a couple of girls from camp swimming. In a fight between a huge caiman and a giant otter, the giant otter would win, they're very aggressive apparently. Good to know because they look sort of cuddly.
My time in the Pantanal was amazing, mostly because of the people rather than the wildlife I went to see. The crowd was so chilled out, loads of fun to hang out and swap stories with. In particular, James and Daniel were great, we spent hours talking in the hammocks outside. I was sad to leave, but it was time to move on. Next stop: Foz do Iguaçu and Argentina.
Some photos have made it onto picasaweb.google.com/rach150384 but I'm paying extra to use a computer with available USB ports and will only spend another 10 minutes uploading. They'll make it eventually.
Rach |
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| Comments: |
Floating down rivers in rubber tubes sounds mega-fun! If you can't bring back an anaconda, I'll take an otter! | |
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