This is the Pantanal, not carnival

I spent the last days of my 30th year in the Pantanal in Brazil (vast wetland south of the Amazon) on a tour, which turned out to be quite eventful in the end. What follows is a brief summary of the excitement:

Day 1:

Got to the camp in the middle of nowhere, and grabbed a hammock. Also met the people who had turned up the day before after an hour or so, looking wet on the way back from their boat trip. Found out they had nearly been capsized on their boat, by a log in the water, and that 2 people had had to jump out to save it from sinking (in parana and alligator waters)...guess it could only get more exciting....It did around 11.30, when a massive storm came in the roof of the hut started leaking on my hammock. Still, luckily I wasn't in the other hut where quite a bit of snoring seemed to be going on...

Day 2:

After a couple of hours of sleep, woken up at sunrise to be off on the road at 7. After an hour ride on back of bumpy truck, jumped off to go parana fishing. With rod, hook and bait we then set to work. A surprising number of parana were caught in our group, especially by the irish guys- in fact only person to not catch a parana was me! (though still managed to pose for a picture anyway). Then off to another campsite where paranas were cooked for us while we rested from the mornings efforts in hammocks. However, not being able to rest too long I decided to get up and go for a walk, only to be confronted by a monkey, barring all and starting at me from a tree. Looking around I noticed that it had several other friends with it, including a black male and so decided to make a diplomatic retreat.

Anyone for Parana??

After lunch of lime parana (quite good really once you had cut off the teeth) and rice we then headed off (past monkeys, who had retreated to higher branches by that time) to do the afternoon activity- my first horse riding since I was 10 years old. This was an experience not only for the wildlife encountered (guide caught amardillo, water buffalo, birds etc), but also for the unpredictability of my horse. Content with walking slowly for the first half of the trip (i.e. more slowly than everyone elses' horses) it suddenly decided to stop in the middle of a big open area, and seemed to refuse to go anywhere, despite my coaxing and kicking as I had been told to do. By this point, I was half a steepland away from everyone else, and it took one of the Irish guys (who seemed a pretty proficient horseman) to gallop back and wack it over its behind with my whip to get it going again. After this it seemed rejuvenated, and headed off at a pace. She was especially animated at the end of the ride, trying to gallop and trying to neigh (resulting in scratched legs as she whisked through the undergrowth). Doubting whether my horsemanship would stretch to holding back a crazed horse to the end, she suddenly calmed as her foal appeared around the corner...So, my horse was suffering from some sort of post-natal depression, resulting in unpredictable behaviour- someone might of told me to start with!...

Will this horse go anywhere??

Day 3

Another 6 am start, for trip for hiking, supposedly starting at 7. I say supposedly as I came out of bathroom at 6.45 am to get changed and get stuff together for walk, only to find everyone on the truck, with the guide telling me to hurry up. Still wondering about how I was going to figure out ¨Brazilian time,¨ I jumped on truck, leaving must of my stuff behind.. A 3 hour walk through swap and forest followed, seeing more monkeys, birds (Toucans, macaws), and raccons. Also told to watch out for leeches when walking through swap (walk quickly..), and flees laying their eggs when they bite- luckily no leeches attached on to anyone (though not sure about the flees).

Afternoon was devoted to boat trip- as only one of the 3 boats worked, we had to go in relays via a restaurant-hostel half way on the trip. This worked well until the way back when 5 of us were left by the side of the river whilst a tropic storm rushed in, pretty much from nowhere (in the space of only a few minutes high winds and lashing rain came rushing in). Deciding that the avaliable open wooden shelter at the side of the river was insufficient for the task at hand ( i.e. we were soaked through in around 10 seconds), we made a run for the pasada (hotel place) Luckily they had a covered area with a stove and made us tea to get warm. Unluckily the woman at the Posada seemed to think that the chances of us getting back to camp were thin (something to do with things that eat you in the water covering the road- were these paranas?). However, when the rain eased and in fading light, they were able to get the boat back to come and get us, the boat guy looking a bit confuseded about the whole thing..I guess unpredictable things happen quite a lot with the weather around here, and afterall (as the guide told us later), this in the Pantanal, not Carnival...

The sun goes down on the Pantanal..