Sitting outside a wooden shack at dusk with a jukebox playing on the veranda, I spotted a tiny green flash just in front of me. Fireflies! We sat there watching them come alive all around us as evening fell, drinking cans of beer with the locals and wondering what wildlife we would see tomorrow. A magical evening!

The Pantanal is an area of wetland that is almost the size of Great Britain, and in the tiny corner that we explored I have never before seen such a concentration and diversity of life. From monkeys to caimans, jabarus to toucans, and red-capped cardinals to black-collared fishing hawks, we were seeing something interesting almost every few minutes from a boat, on foot, and on horseback. We were disappointed in not seeing an elusive jaguar or an anaconda, but were told that the boa constrictor in the road was a rarity and our guide also got excited by an osprey flying over the river. Personally I enjoyed seeing a visit to the watering hole by a group of wild pigs.

This is the last stop before the Atlantic Coast, where we are looking forward to escaping the thousands of mosquitoes that are plaguing us here.

Posted from the UK, 13th August 2012.