The day dawned bright and fresh - when up and dressed I went outside to look at the birds making a noise - more curassows, chachalacas and on exploration of a tapping noise I found a very pretty pale breasted woodpecker (endemic)- which I watched and tried to photograph for ages - when they are intent on moving and tapping its quite difficult to get a photograph in focus.
At 6.40am we went off to breakfast - Fabricio arrived at 7am after a night helping his wife with the children ( aged 3 and a few months) who remain sick and tearful.
As we left breakfast we watched a multitude of yellow beaked cardinals and the odd silvery beaked tanger on the bird feeders - we also saw the arrival of very healthy looking brown capuchin monkeys who were fed fruit by hand - not sure it's a good thing but they don't seem to be the marauding kind of capuchins found elsewhere and they didn't hang around or return throughout the day so perhaps they have the balance right and there is enough wild food for them?
At 0730 we headed off up the river - very peaceful and it made a change watching wildlife from a boat - the only other people on the river were tourists enjoying the wildlife, most were fishing for piranha with chunks of meat on their lines! The fishing is 'catch and release' primarily because the piranha are too small and bony to eat. Interestingly we saw a cayman missing some of its tail Fabricio surmised that it had probably injured it and then had it nibbled away by piranhas - a good reason not to put anything injured in the water!
I got a great video of a black coloured hawk fishing but I still don't know how to download video onto my iPad - photos are easy - perhaps I can only watch it on my computer which seems perverse - perhaps iPad 4 will solve it!
Our new sightings this morning included:- ringed, amazon and green kingfishers, chestnut bellied guan, red and blue throated common piping guan, black skimmers, neotropical cormorants, anhinga, blue fronted parrot eating, wattled jacana, lesser kiskadee, toco toucan, chestnut eared aracari, striated heron, peach fronted parakeets, and a squirrel cuckoo.
We got back around 1015am - you could already feel the heat building for another Pantanal day well over 30 degrees. I did some reading -my camera handbook at last, but I am not sure I will venture off the auto focus - and then I went for a swim in the hotel's very nice pool before going to lunch.
A siesta and then at 3.30pm an afternoon boat ride going in the other direction this time - looking for giant river otters. When we met up at 3.30pm Fabricio told us that the power outage we had had from 2.30pm was not,what I thought, a normal power saving cut but exceptional and due to a cattle truck crashing into and bringing down the main power line which serves the whole of the Pantanal - when it would be back on nobody knew! Luckily the hotel cooks with gas - so we can at least have dinner by candlelight!
Our search for otters proved almost elusive - I did get to see one through my binoculars that another boat was watching but despite looking we didn't get a close up. The boatman was however very good at getting the black collared hawk, coqui heron and cayman to take fish. One canny female hawk and her juvenile had an interesting strategy she came first to collect a fish for her offspring, handed it over, and returned to take one for herself. Try as I might I couldn't quite photograph the antics, I was either not quick enough or watching rather than clicking - hey ho - I prefer natural events anyhow!
Before we turned round to slowly wend our way back we saw black (male) and gold( female)howler monkeys eating in the top of a nicely bare tree......so we could see them even though they were high up. The boat then pulled in to the side of the river to show us an iguana - green with a brown tail - it's superb camouflage made it really hard to spot sitting on a branch of green leaves.
We also saw some new birds this afternoon - pale legged hornero, little blue heron, white winged swallows, yellow rumped cassiques and an undulated tinnamou - we heard this very rarely seen bird this morning, this afternoon it flew low and fast across the river, no doubt quickly reestablishing a very low ground hugging position.
We returned to the hotel to find not unsurprisingly that the power was not restored - luckily there was enough light left to find our head torches......John packed ready for tomorrow's departure .....I didn't as it won't take 2 minutes tomorrow when it is daylight. Fabricio left to help his wife with the children and an order from us for 4 (6 litre) canisters of water - as buying water daily will cost a lot - we are using at least 8 small bottles (4litres) as it is so hot @ 24reals per day whereas the 4 big containers will cost the same amount and last for about 6 days.