Wow! The Pantanal! Wow... That was disappointing!!! I bet u didnt expect that... No, but seriously, in all fairness we know that The Pantanal is a truly remarkable place, but both regarding the season we are in, the few animals we saw and the f*cking mosquitos we didn´t exactly step out off Pantanal with the best of feelings. Actually left one day earlier than planned coz we couldnt take anymore mosquitos. And we kid you not, it is totally insane. Never ever have we seen or experienced this kind of mosquito horror. There wasn´t a single second going by without getting bitten and we are honestly counting more than 200 bites each... Mosquito repellent is worthless, there´s so many of them they don´t care about it. Clothes are useless, they are sucking blood through pants, shorts, sweaters even raincoats. We are covered in bites. And the worst is, what we just wrote, it´s an understatement.

As u can see, the mosquitos was a huge problem and it was hard for us to really enjoy The Pantanal due to constantly smacking them, but here´s some of our Pantanal highlights.

We left with private transport from Bonito and the drive to our Fazienda took about 4 hours. The first three was on smooth highways and the last one was on a mudroad, which flipped your insides upsidedown. Arriving the Fazienda we were placed in a small dorm occupied by not less than 14 people. Hammockstyle... Sleeping in hammocks for two nights is not to comfy, specially with different species of snoring monsters lurks the night. Our first activity was a walking tour. Stepping out off the camp into the bush and in matter of seconds we were covered by those nasty little mozzies. Covering ourself with repellent and moving on, seeing little of interest we weren´t paying to much attention when suddenly the guide screams: GO BACK GO BACK, and then he actually comes running past us. When a guide does that, it´s usually a good idea to run with him. A snap later we could hear the buzzing bees coming towards us. We were under attack!! Not to worry, the bees was more or less harmless, but they did bite and it did hurt. The rest of the walking tour was spent fighting mozzies. And the following shower was spent picking bees out of our hair...

Lunch followed and as dusk set we were going on a nightdrive. Covered with clothes and repellent the mozzies kept on coming and we kept on fighting. Nighttime didn´t offer too many sightings either. A lot of eyes tho, evil eyes, from the ENORMOUS and terribly horrifying caymans.

The next day started as the first with another walking tour. And the neverending fight against the evil bloodsuckers continued. This walk however offered some animals at least, worth mentiong are caymans, deers, small things, capivaras (biggest rodent on earth) red and green macaw. The best spotting of the day was the endangered hyacinth macaw, nearly extinct and there´s only around 5000 species left in Brazil. But again we had some trouble enjoying the walk coz of the vampyric bugs. Second activity of the day was a boat trip up the Rio Miranda, slow, boring and little of interest sums it up.

A tip of advice, dont´t visit The Pantanal in the rainy season. Not coz of the rain, the rain is a blessing. But coz of the mozzies. The second day we were so molested and raped by mozzies we decided to leave earlier than originally planned. Another sleepless hammocknight followed with the same monsters from the night before lurking the premises.

Third day, the best day and probably the day that saved our Pantanal impression was great. We started out with a game drive seeing many different mammals, reptiles and birdies. Giant otters, anteaters entertained us the most. We also saw more hyacinth macaws. The game drive ended with piranha fishing, and we got A LOT of fish. Nasty little b*****s. Standing barefooted in the water, fishing piranhas with caymans watching you inches away is a fairly tense and explordinary experience. FUN!!! And finally the adventure we expected from Pantanal. It was so enjoyable we actually for an instance there forgot bout the mozzies, but we were soon to be reminded. Bringing piranhas back for lunch we headed back to camp much more pleased then the prior days. Freshly caught Piranha is yummy!

We can also inform that Norway/Chile vs. Brazil is football (barefeet) is an easy match! We chrushed the brazilians 5-3 and we´re pretty sure from their expression that they were not used to loose to tourists. G R U M P Y!

Now we´re in Campo Grande and have just bought tickets to Goianas. Today, after 7 days as illegal immigrants we finally sorted out our entrystamp with the immigration office. It ended well, but could easily have gotten quite expensive for us. We got a guy from the hostel to help us, but at the immigration office they needed proof of the time already spent in Brazil. Of course we´ve thrown away all physical evidence of us even being here, bus tickets, vouchers, everything was gone. And they wouldn´t give us any entry stamps without documentation bout why the hell we hadn´t reported in sooner. Left the immigration office again and back to the hostel were the management wrote us a new fake voucher, called the hostel in Bonito to back up our story, and back to the office. This time they were satified. We got our stamp, but it´s only valid for 20 days, as a punishment I guess. Fairy nuff, but usually we get 90. Anyhow, it was NOT the time to start complaining about formalities as we just avoided a hell of a fine. Pheeew...

Wow that was a freakisly long blogpost and you better enjoy it! Spoons signing out...