The Pantanal

Thursday afternoon, before I climbed off the truck I knew this was going to be good.

There are lots of things I didn't know. The Pantanal is the worlds largest wetland. It covers Brazil's southwestern corner along the borders of Bolivia and Paraguay and provides a habitat for the greatest concentration of animals in the Western Hemisphere. Didn't know that.

Before I left the States, I had read about the Pantanal in guidebooks, and whereas the guidebooks sections on the Brazilian Amazon spoke mostly of the insects on could see in the jungle, the sections on the Pantanal featured large photographs of mammals and birds. So, when deciding where to invest my time in the wilderness I found the choice remarkably easy - mammals and birds over insects any day.

When I arrived in Campo Grande, I signed up for a four day Pantanal trekking tour with a company called Ecological Expeditions. They promised, among other things, horseback riding and piranha fishing, three hot meals a day, and a discount for "roughing it" with their camping option - meaning agreeing to sleep in a hammock rather than a bed.

Thursday morning, they loaded us into a van. When it stopped - and I woke up - the landscape had changed. The land was flat, the sky bright blue, and the red soil radiated heat. That's when we got on the truck and started down a dirt road that was arrow straight for as far as I could see. One of our guides said the truck drive would take a couple of hours. We sat on a bench in the back, and pulled our feet in under the shade of the trucks canopy whenever a jolt bounced them out into the scorching sun.

As we drove, the guides would pull the truck over to point out wildlife. I didn't know there are deer in Brazil. Apparently there are several different varieties. We spotted a female whitetail ten minutes in. I also didn't know that the Jaibiru stork - a bird that looks like it could take me in a fight - is both the largest flying bird in Brazil and the symbol of the Pantanal. We saw one feeding after about an hour, when the landscape changed again and gave way to a series of small caiman-filled ponds the truck crossed via wood plank bridge.

My first night in camp seemed strangely reminiscent of my time in the Amazon. The dinner was the same - salad, rice & beans, spaghetti, and meat. The table was segregated into English-speaking and non. And the stars seemed brighter, closer, and dizzyingly out of place when compared to the stars I see at home. I did, however, make quite a lot of friends when I demonstrated what my research had proven to be the most comfortable way to lie in a hammock. Sideways - you have to lie sideways.

The morning of Friday we set off for a boat tour. Back on the truck to get to the river. Into a small motor boat with six others including Alex, our guide. Though rainy season is due to begin in late November, the rains had not yet come. Its good for you - Alex said - because all the animals must remain close to the little water that's left, which makes seeing them easy. Bad for Alex though as the water in the river was so low that he spent a good deal of the three hour tout in the chest-high water pulling out boat out of sand dunes.

What he said about the greater concentration of wildlife seemed to be true. Before we turned to head back to the truck, I had lost count of all the different bird species and the number of caiman we had seen. A capibara had also graced us with his presence. This fact did, however, make Alexs insistence that we swim in the river a little hard to take. Even more so that it was "perfectly safe" despite the presence of caiman, piranhas, and stringrays - another thing I didn't know. There are freshwater stingrays?

I still cant believe I did it. But I did - dived in off the bank into the murky water. If it hadn't have been so nerve-racking I probably would have more enjoyed how cool the water was. It didn't help that as Alex pushed the boat clear of the bank a piranha bit him on the foot.

Horseback riding that afternoon. Why I got the smallest horse I don't know, but Carmelo seemed to have a bit of an inferiority complex. He made a habit out of nipping at the other horses and when given the opportunity to run would take off like a shot. On the home stretch, looked up and saw something pretty amazing. A tree full of Hyacinth macaws. Six of them, deep-dark blue, and gorgeous. The largest macaws there are - that I did know.

Spent Saturday on guided nature walks. I think it goes without saying that the medicinal uses of the Pantanals plants came as new information to me. Coconut water as an eye drop? Interesting. More surprising though was the presence of armadillos. Alex pointed out their burrows near the place he stopped to show us Puma tracks.

Fished for piranha my final morning and enjoyed it. I was rather dangerous to fish beside though, since for a long time I didn't pull hard enough to sink the hook, but hard enough to send yellow-bellied piranha flying onto the river bank. Nothing wakes you up more then having a flesh-eating fish come hurling at you first thing in the morning. I thought it was rather comical, but our guide disagreed and after my third pitch spent ten minutes teaching me how to properly sink the hook. I maintain though that it was my fish throwing that attracted the family of giant river otters to our section of the river. They were really cool to see.

Learned my last lesson in the Pantanal while cleaning our catch. Though you have caught, clubbed, and deprived the fish of water for over an hour, never put your fingers near a piranhas mouth. Luckily, our guide made us wise to this fact before any of our group suffered for our ignorance - but should you ever be in the Pantanal this could be one of the most useful bits of knowledge you gain from the things I didn't know.