The Pantanal

Yet another bus journey into Campo Grande this time and we were set to start our trip into the Pantanal, the worlds largest wetlands and home to amongst other things the Anaconda.  Having seen the film Anaconda with Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube I was needless to say very excited about the prospect of running into such a plastic looking real life animal.

So we arrived at the camp and our home for the next three nights at about 7pm to be greeted by a group sat around the camp fire awaiting our arrival with baited breath, not so they could welcome the new boys with open arms, but so they could get the dinner hut open for business!  After the scran went out to check out our digs for the next three days, which consisted of a hut wrapped with mosquito netting that had holes in the size of footballs and eight hammocks.  With not much else to do than get into bed, we all decided to jump into our hammocks at the late hour of 9.30pm and tuck in for a cold nights sleep before the 6am wake up panning.

Day 1 - Wake up call at 6am, bit of a surprise to find breakfast consisted of bread and petrol like coffee, as opposed to the full english more than one of us had been expecting.  Wasn't long before I had a full stomach, and was fully fuelled for the day ahead!  7am rolled around and off we went in the jeep to do a spot of early morning piranha fishing.  On the way to the spot we were treated to our first bit of wildlife in the form of the endangered Giant River Otter.  As you will no doubt work out over the next few paragraphs most of the animals we did encounter were either giant or endagered, maybe a bit of hyperbole on Maxi's behalf but my god it felt like we were getting our moneys worth!!

Got to the lake about an hour later with our guide Maxi and his mate 'the silent assassin'.  Was quite a relief to know that piranha's aren't man eaters like James Bond leads you to believe, as Maxi and his mate had gone wading through the water to get to a better spot and expected us all to follow.  Grabbed our bamboo rods and chicken bait and fished away.  Don't think piranha fishing is quite the leisurely hobby that fishing is back home.  Literally dip that chicken in the water and they are tearing it to shreds.  After less than an hour the group had bagged 14 piranhas that were going to be lunch in a matter of hours time.

Got to the camp for lunch and me and Kye being the Ray Mears and Bear Grylls of the group we volunteered to help descale the pirahna´s with the big dog Maxi.  Not the easiest task at first and got a bit of a ripping of Maxi for our poor technique, but after a few piranha´s we had the knack and were racing through them.  Maxi and his mate got there cook on while we chilled in the hammocks, and shortly after dinner was served.  Maxi rolls up with the piranhas and some piranha soup which is supposed to be a natural viagra, needless to say didn´t thave too much of that as we were horse riding in the afternoon and didn´t want my horse getting any funny ideas!!

After a good scran, bit of chilling out time to allow the food to settle before we knocked out another first of my life having eating piranha and now a bit of horse riding.  Spafe!!  I was pretty much the least experienced in the group and Sean the standard Irish guy took that as a sign to keep belting my horse so it started flying around.  Wasn´t too bad in all honesty, my horse was pretty much a lazy bastard so apart from when Sean was hiting it or Maxi threatening it it rarely went above 5 mph.  The day has to be remebered though as the day that Cowboy Kye and his Sorry Steed made there emergence into the world!!  Kye must have pulled the short straw as his horse had a serious tendency to not trot on through the water.  Pretty hard to believe that Kye had bagged the only horse in the Pantanal, the worlds largest wetlands, that was afraid of water!!

An afternoon of lazy trotting around followed, getting absolutely murdered by all the mossies and other biting flys out there, pretty much i get battered by them and Kye remains untouched.  Afternoon picked up an hour or two later when Sean challenged Maxi and ´The Silent Assasin´to catch a wild pig, gold!!  Off the two of them blasted through 7 foot grass and reeds.  A couple of minutes later we saw onne of the horses running away without ´The Silent Assasin´onboard.  We rode over to find the silent assasin on the ground having jumped off his horse and pinned down a pretty big and angry wild pig.  You should have seen the look on the boy`s face when we said we weren`t that bothered about killing it for tea!!  As the night drew in we trotted back towards the Jeep and and headed back towards camp.  As would be the situation for the next three nights we were treated to some sort of meat and spaghetti for tea, got a bit tiring after the first day!!

Day 2 - Bit more of a chilled out day in prospect but with just as early a wake up call, which was made a little bit harder to swallow by the face the first night s sleep in the hammock wasn`t anything like my mattress at home and it was a bit brass in the wee hours of the morning.  The AM was to be filled with a wet walk through parts of the marshland, with the PM taken up by a dry walk.  Unluckily for us our gruop was to be joined by a Bolivian couple who pretty much embodied all I have come to dislike about South America.  Off we set on the walk under instructions from Maxi to keep as quiet as we possibly could so as to increase the chances of seeing more wildlife, this must have fallen on deaf Bolivian ears!!  The two of them like lovesick puppies didn`t stop talking, pushed infront of people as they were walking and insited on numerous public dispays of affection much to the disgust of as married couple doing the tour with us!!  Needless to say me and Kye made our feelings known and even embraced some South American ways by pushing in front of the two of them while they were admiring the scenery!!  Nobbers!!  The afternoon was pretty much characterized by the same rude behaivour of the Bolivians which by this time had alienated them from a group who held manners in high esteem!!  To make the day worse we didn`t see an Anaconda for the second day running and time was quickly running out.

Day 3 - Our last day in the Pantanal, and having seen loads of wildlife there isn`t much chance of seeing strolling down Market Street, we felt pretty good about our past three days.  The final treat in store for us was a trip down the Rio Abrobral by boat, I use the term boat loosely as it was more like a tin can with a motor tied onto the back.  Pretty good trip by all accounts, lucky to have a good guide who literally spotted wildlife from miles away.  We were treated to some Howler Monkeys fooling around in the trees on the banks of the river, also some pretty big Iguana`s, countless varieties of birds from Kingfishers to Vultures, obviuolsy hundreds of Caymen and also a similar number of Capybara`s.  So looking back on the three days we saw pretty much all the wildlife that was in the region exept for the elusive Anaconda, ney mind, will have to try and catch one when we head over to Thailand.  Jus a quick recap of what we saw in our time in the Pantanal - Savanna Hawk, Giant Anteater, Armadillo, Giant River Otters, Cayman, Tucans, Jabaru Storks, Macaws, Capybaras, Buffalo, Wild Pigs, Piranhas, and probably loads more that I can`t remember the names of!!  Next stop Bolivia!!!