Hey team! Craig is still sorting all the photos so i´m writing the blog.

I think the last time he wrote we were in Corumba about to head into the Pantanal wetlands for some hard core wildlife spotting, so i´ll start from here.

Getting our entry stamp into Brazil took ages and was boring of course. Their system is inefficient. Line up for at least an hour to get a form to fill out. Then re-line up to hand the form in and get your stamps. Why can´t border controls around the world all take a look at eachothers systems and see which works best. But anyway, we got our stamps and then caught our bus into the Pantanal. Our package included a dorm room at Santa Clara lodge with the 5 other people we´d be doing all our activities with. 2 English, 2 Norwegian, 1 South AfricanMalawian and us.

First night we had no activities so we all went for a walk to the nearby river to see the local friendly Caimens, and then hung out at the lodge where the facilities are fabulous (swimming, volleyball, pool, foosball, and table tennis) and the food is amazing too. The next morning we went for a walk through the jungle where we saw monkeys, tucans, blue macaws, an armadillo and thousands of mosquitos! We learned that the rains have not yet hit the Pantanal this year which meant the grounds were really dry. The normal rainy season is from Dec to April, so we were expecting the place to be flooded, which can make wildlife spotting easier (as they have less high ground to hang out on) but our walking less comfortable as it would normally have been through muddy thigh deep water. And just quietly, i get a little nervous when we do walk through it because you can´t see what´s in it with you.

That afternoon we went for a wee drive in the jeep to go for another jungle walk near a water source. On the way we saw a boa constrictor that our guide decided to moleste so we could get a better photo (not sure how felt about that). On our walk we saw capybara, jabaru stalks, caimen, quoati, many other birds that i can´t remember sorry, and a beautiful sunset.

Early start again to go horse riding, which was much more fun for me being my second time on a horse which allowed me to figure out how to make it hurt less. Didn´t see any wildlife sadly but it was a fun morning all the same. Then that afternoon was probably the highlight of the trip for me. We went fishing for Piranha to eat for dinner. Since the rains haven´t arrived, the rivers are low and the piranha are mega hungry and concentrated in smaller areas than they perhaps would normally be. Which made for great fishing for us :) Well i found it frustrating because i struggled to get them hooked on. But soon figured out that you really have to kind of fling them out of the water with a quick wrist flick so in the end i caught some. Craig caught more than me. Jealous. What made this so fun was the presence of the Caimens. They would get closer and closer until someone felt uncomfortable and scared them off. It´s something you wouldn´t ever imagine doing with the crocodiles in Australia or Africa, but here it was relatively safe as the caimens were small-ish and well fed on fish. I think all up we caught about 10 legal sized fish for dinner. Most of them were piranha and a few were sardines and one pacu. The piranha were our favourite to eat by far. They were delicious!

For our last morning we went on a boat ride up the river to see what we could see. Was lovely and serene and we saw loads of birds, capybara and caimen again. Our guide quickly caught a couple of fish to feed his favourite caimen (once again not sure how i felt about this part) but it made good photos once again. And then it was all over, our little wildlife adventure was finished so off on a bus to Bonito we went.

Bonito is a small town near the Pantanal that thrives off tourism. It´s main highlight is it´s natural spring water rivers that are chrystal clear and abundant with fish. There are other attractions like caves and lakes and waterfalls and things, but we only chose to do the one activity which was to snorkel down the river with an underwater camera and marvel at the size of the fish. It was beautiful, there´s always something amazing about being able to swim around loads of fish. We both loved the swim and didn´t mind that we possibly paid too much for the rental of the camera because it was worth it. We even got a photo of Craig´s legs being nibbled by the little fish. You can pay a lot more for that fish treatment in spas these days :p

And now after an 18 hour bus ride we´re in Foz do Iguaçu. We plan to stay three nights and enjoy the falls from both the Brazillian and the Argentine sides. So expect loads of photos of waterfalls in our next installment.

Tootles
Marisa