seekingmygreaterperhaps

Oi! It has been a little while since I’ve written. I’ve blinked and we are already at the end of October! During the month of October, our school had a week long holiday. I took a trip with my friends Mali and Sofia to the Pantanal and Bonito. Mali organized the whole trip through ABN travel, and we sure had a great time. Our trip was in 2 different locations, so I’m going to focus on the Pantanal here.

The Pantanal is the world’s largest wetland area, and the world’s largest flooded grasslands. We went to the southern Pantanal via Campo Grande. It was about a 3 hour car ride there. We arrived at Fazenda San Francisco around noon. This is where we would stay for our 2 night/3 day visit to the Pantanal. While staying at the “farm” all meals were included, but the drinks were not. The meals were delightful! Everything is truly farm to table here from the vegetables to the meat and dairy. I ate freshly made doce de leite on top of their fresh cheese, and it was scrumptious.

People travel to the Pantanal to see jaguars in the wild. But- they hunt or come out at night, so during the day people look at different animals in the Pantanal. It’s a very animal focused experience. Our first activity was “piranha fishing.” A big group of us boarded a double decker boat and went along a body of water through lily pad-esque greenery.

Then the jacare were the focus! Jacare is Portuguese for “alligator.” They are quick swimmers, and fun to watch. We also saw a ton of different kinds of birds, capibara, and fish. Our guides brought out bamboo fishing poles for us to try and catch piranha. I lasted about 10 minutes because it was quite hot and I was getting eaten by mosquitos. (This, I would find out, was quite the feast for mosquitos… great for them, horrible for me.) A couple people in our large group caught fish, and a little bit later in the tour the guides fed them to the jacare, and we were able to see how high they jump out of the water!

I’ll swim in pools whilst in the Pantanal, thank yew.

At night, we boarded a safari-like vehicle and went on a night safari! It was open air, but high up. A guide sat on the top of the cab and had a light that he swooshed over the land to try and scope out animals. Over our stay, we did 2 night safaris. Many people go to the Pantanal and never get to see a jaguar, so they offer the night safari’s every night. On our safari’s we saw marsh deer, birds, huge owls, an ocelot, a family of lobinho’s which are huge foxes, a gamba (like a racoon), and *drumroll* 3 JAGUARS.

The first night, we saw a male and a female who had just finished a hunt. This is very rare, according to our guides! We watched the female for a while, and then we backed the truck up and the male jaguar (who is HUGE) was maybe 2 meters from our truck. Mali had a front row seat and it was awesome. Jaguars are majestic and dangerous. The second night, we saw another jaguar, and we “chased” this one a little bit in the truck. Not to scare it, but just to watch it, and then it escaped into the jungle. But it walked just right in front of the truck, so the headlights illuminated it. It was a male, and he was limping. That’s where I learned that during mating, females will claw up the male jaguars. Probably to let all the other jaguar honeys know that he is taken.

During our stay at the fazenda, we also did a morning safari and were able to see different kinds of animal. We saw water buffalo, more capybara, and rhea (which look like emus). I learned that water buffalo actually protect cattle from jaguars because they circle around the calves who are still little and the jaguar can’t get in. The rhea were very fun to watch, and the daddy rhea are the caretakers of the babies. Marsh deer have black feet so they can hide from predators when they walk in the water.

Our final activity during this stay was horse back riding! I haven’t ridden a horse in a while, and these horses are very well behaved. We saw rhea, cattle, and blue skies. It was quite nice!

One thing that really surprised me about the Pantanal (where we stayed at least) was how flat it is. The Pantanal essentially backs right up to farmland and reservoirs that have channels of water to irrigate the crops. These water sources have actually helped keep the Pantanal alive. Animals, like the jaguar, will come out to the channel at night to drink. That’s where we always saw them. Symbiosis, a beautiful thing.

The honest truth- mosquitos ruined this section of the trip for me. No matter how much repellant I wore, no matter how many layers of long sleeved items I wore, I got eaten alive. I was miserable. When we weren’t on a safari, I stayed inside the modest hotel room while my friends were able to drink at the outside bar. If I sat still, the mosquitos found me. On our first excursion to see the alligators, when I got back I had 60 bug bites on my legs. It was the beginning of the mosquito season, and I guess they were hungry. I couldn’t catch a break. If you plan on visiting the Pantanal, bring loose fitting light colored long clothing. No matter what repellent you use, the mosquitos will find you.