The Pantanal

Our last stop in Brazil was The Pantanal on the Brazilian and Bolivian border. Amazing marshlands and flooded forests, due to it being the wet season.

We hired an indigenous guide called Flavio, who was a right chunky monkey with eagle eyes. His knowledge of all the birds (650 different sorts apparently) and animals was incredible and he would just keep spotting things that you would never have noticed. This is us at the end of our trip along with Bianca, a lovely Dutch girl who went on the tour with us. We´re hoping we´ll meet up in northern Peru

Looking back it was more dangerous than we really considered at the time. The wet season meant it was properly wet. The whole area is flooded, up to a couple of metres deep. The horse riding was complicated by the flooding, meaning at times we were up to our waists in water on the horses. At one point mine had to start swimming after I´d had to go over a river, because it hadnt fancied the rickety wooden bridge.

The water was crawling with Caimans too (like alligators but smaller, 2-4m) so the horses get a bit nervey at times. We also got confronted by water buffalo one day. The nice little centre parting hide a grizzly aggressive nature.

We went out piranha fishing on a boat one morning with Flavio and Cesar (caught nothing but was cool feeling them pull at your line, the cheeky chappies).

We also went out on night safaris in combi vans and on a boat. The sounds you hear at night are just amazing. Our favourite sounds were those of the tiger herons (that growled) and the laughing frogs (that sound a bit more like they´re crying than laughing) .

We saw stupid amounts of animals, and birds. Mostly it was birds; lots of herons, cranes, kingfishers, waterfoul, parrots, parakeets, hawks etc. Animals wise; we saw alot Caiman, but also marsh deer and crab foxes, a few howler and capuchin monkeys plus an anteater up a tree. The termite hills were impressive too.

There´s these beaver things called Capyabaras that Nic fell in love with.

She went from being petrified of seeing one to adoring them, if she could she´d love one as a pet. They are the biggest rodents in the world, the size of pigs.

Two scarlet mackaws landed in gardens of our guesthouse one day.

They also have these herons that are 1.8m tall with foot long bills and 1.8m wingspans called Jabirus.

We stumbled accross a yellow footed river turtle on our first night.