Sunday June 15th The chukalaka birds (the Pantanal alarm clocks) woke us up around 6am and we had breakfast. Our guide Flavio then took us on walking tour around the forest and wetlands around the Pousada. What an amazing trip. Like Kruger national park, the Pantanal is a bird watchers paradise! On the walk we saw, black faced night monkeys, Capuchin Monkeys, Toucans, red banded Manikin (Flavio told us he had been a guide for 13 years and had only seen a red band...

Saturday June 14th After the emotion of the game it was nice to be able to "sleep in" and in fact it was the first night in which we (in particular) Spencer had a jet lag free sleep. After our breakfast we relaxed around the hotel pool and watch some of the Colombia v Greece game. Our guide from Pousada do Rio Mutum picked us up from the hotel around 1pm and once we had picked up the other members of the party we headed out into the Pantanal. Once outside Cuiab...

We had read that the traffic in Sao Paolo was dreadful so we were up early to get out the airport on time for our 9am flight. We thought leaving 2.5 hours was enough but we still struggled to get there in time and organized chaos at the Garulhos airport meant we just made our flight to Cuiaba. I will never complain about Sydney traffic again! Cuiaba is located in the Matto Grosso state of Brazil - a two hour flight north west of Sao Paolo. It's known as the gate...

The flight from LAX to Sao Paolo was long and uneventful....everyone on the plane was going to the World Cup, lots of Mexicans who cheered loudly when we landed. The usual FIFA admin when we arrived, pick up game tickets (but machine didn't work), long line for Forex, etc but this is Brazil and we need to get into its rhythm. We caught the Garucoop taxi to our hotel in Jardins - a leafy part of central Sao Paolo. The traffic wasn't as dreadful as expected and a...