It was early Wednesday morning and I had a shocker of a sleep at the wild camp near the city of Campo Grande. I decided to brave the disgusting restrooms and grab a much needed shower avoiding eye contact with the Brazilian chap sat on the toilet doing his business in the doorless cubicles.

My team cooked a big breakfast for the camp, a mini meltdown followed from myself when packing my tent away.. hate the thing! It was insanely hot too so the shower prior was a pointless exercise.

We set off about 7.30am to continue our journey to Brazil's Southern Pantanal region where we visited a local eco-tourism ranch (or 'Fazenda') for 2 nights. The Fazenda San Francisco in Miranda is a stereotypical looking cattle ranch which is also home to a restaurant, an outdoor pool, hammocks, a bar area and many dormitories overlooking beautiful countryside full of wildlife. Capybaras, deer, ocelots, anteaters, caiman, giant otters, hawks, macaws and even jaguars are all found here.

We arrived mid afternoon, had lunch in the restaurant, then we were given two activity options.. either horse riding or canoeing. I chose the latter as I didn't fancy trotting around in close to 40 degree heat. Canoeing was later cancelled but I wasn't fussed too much as it gave me chance to check in with Ria and Oli.

Oli and I got chance to watch the Champions League game between Barcelona and PSG before dinner which was amazing to witness Barca's incredible 6-1 come back.

An hour or so later we had the option of a night safari.. not usually my kind of thing but I thought I'd give it a go. Mosquitoes had already been ripping me to shreds throughout Brazil but apparently this was the worst place for them - great! Wearing skinny jeans and a long sleeved shirt isn't the ideal sort of clobber to wear in that sort of heat but needs must.

The night safari lasted 2 and a half hours and it was probably one of the most mind numbingly boring experiences of my life, I even managed to fall asleep at one point.. as did others. All we saw was an ocelot, some deer and 3 foxes. Admittedly I didn't deal with being trapped so well.. I had my second meltdown of the day and just wanted to get the hell out of there. I can laugh about it now, the others certainly didn't let me forget about it!!

I couldn't have jumped off that truck any quicker when we returned to the ranch! The night improved massively when Ria, Emma, Oli, Thomas and myself hit the rum and cokes, had a laugh and played a few drinking games.

On the way back to the room we found a small snake on the pathway. I stupidly got up close to take a picture only to find out later from one of the local tour guides that it was poisonous! Ooops!

I woke up in the morning to find I'd been eaten alive on the safari.. these mosquitoes are on another level.. they'd managed to chomp their way through my jeans and shirt somehow!! Turned out they'd annihilated most of the other people too.. so many of us were walking around covered in big red dots like some sort of plague

I'd gotten up early that day and went to chill by the pool in what was already mid-30 heat. Lunch was served and then we had piranha fishing lined up in the afternoon which would be another first for me. I made sure I covered myself up again, this time borrowing Saskia's baggy 'Aladdin' style travel pants for protection.. a different look for me but I made it work! Ha. Thanks Sas!

The fishing trip was a lot of fun even though I didn't catch any.. I got a few nibbles but no catches. Oli did though which you'd have thought was the biggest achievement of his life seeing how smug he was afterwards! 'Hmmmmmm' ;)

It was really cool to see caimans in the river too.. they scoured the perimeter of the double decker fishing boat for any piranha we missed out on. We even got to feed them which was awesome to see their razor sharp teeth in action. We also saw giant otters and fed a pair of eagles too. We came back to the ranch after a few hours for piranha soup (tasty!), popcorn and cake while watching the macaws.

The evening saw us head over to a nearby field where the ranch had organised a big meaty BBQ with local cowboy music and dancing which of course I had a crack at after a few Capirinha's! It was another great night, enjoyed by all, except for maybe Oli who left early because he felt sick the poor little princess.

Tomorrow will be a lazy morning, we'll have our final lunch at the ranch before making the short journey to Bonito.

Caio Caio xx