Lowering our standards
Campo Grande was two flights and an entire world away from Rio de Janeiro. We were met at the airport and taken to the travel agency we had booked through (the day before, things were happening quickly). The travel agency had booked us a hotel for the night and after confirming arrangements we were taken to “Hotel Paris”. The hotel had a flashy name and a flashy sign, but that was where any connection with Paris ended. When we walked into the room Sara looked shell-shocked and said “are we really staying here, it looks like a prison cell”, her response was priceless. She was right though, there were no windows and our small room was very basic. She then pulled back her bed sheets and saw that the under sheet was threadbare with holes. To get away from the misery of our hotel we headed to the bus station where we needed to call our banks (once again they had cancelled our cards). Making an international call to the UK from Brazil – easy or hard? Take a guess.
After using three international calling cards to basically say “Hello UK!” and have our money run out, we sought an alternative. A kind lady in a tourist shop sold us an international calling voucher. One and a half hours later we realized that international in Brazil is not truly international, and only covers the US. The lady gave us a refund and we used the very expensive method of using a mobile phone to call our banks. We then bargained hard with a stubborn taxi driver to take us two minutes up the road to Hotel Paris. It was was pouring with torrential rain.
At the hotel Sara had yet another amusing conversation with a Brazilian (by this point she had decleared them all retarded). Since there was nowhere nearby to eat, we ordered delivery pizza through the man at reception, The interaction went like this:
“We’d like to order pizza please”
”OK” as he dials the number. “What would you like”
“This one please”
“They don’t have that one”
“OK, this one”
“They don’t have that one”
“How about this one”
“OK, they have that”
“We would also like some water please”
“They don’t have water”…
Eventually we got a pizza and two bottles of coke ordered. Once the man at reception had hung up the phone, another guest came over and asked for a bottle of water, to our astonishment he opened the fridge behind him and sold him a water.
“You have water?” asked Sara
“Yes of course”
“But we wanted water, you could have sold us some water”
“Oh, but I though you wanted THEIR water!”
Sara and I ate possibly the worst pizza of our lives, which had none of the ingredients on that we wanted. (Who wants canned peas on their pizza!) The company obviously knew that their pizzas tasted disgusting because they supplied us with ketchups and mayonnaise!
A sachet of mayonnaise to go with your pizza madam?
Sara wondering whether life in the jungle is going to be any more difficult than this hotel
Queens of the jungle
After a surprisingly good night’s sleep in our hotel cell, Sara and I were taken to the bus station, for our bus into the Pantanal. The Pantanal is a swampy plain dotted with jungle in the South West of Brazil (bordering Bolivia). It is home to 80 different mammals, 650 bird species and has the highest population of crocodiles in the world. In fact if you are interested, the country of Brazil even has the biggest population of mammals in the world.
Our first bus was large and comfortable and drove us four and a half hours into the wilderness. At this point we were dropped off, and picked up by a jeep. Sara and myself and our new travel buddies; Srikant from Boston, and Leah and Richard from London, sat on the open jeep with all our luggage and were bounced over unpathed roads and rickety bridges for the next hour. The journey was a real eye-opener and we were amazed to see two caiman, a snake, and a family of jungle pigs on the road, together with parakeets in the surrounding trees.
Portuguese Princess hits the jungle
We eventually bounced up to our new home for the next four days, the Santa Clara Lodge. It was like an oasis in the middle of the swampland; a collection of buildings, hammocks and walkways next to a lake. After dumping our luggage and having the first of many showers at the lodge (I think we averaged three per day) we headed to the lake to watch the sunset and to get eaten alive by mosquitoes. One of my resounding memories of the Pantanal will almost certainly be the mosquitoes, I could write reams and reams about how we suffered with them, but let’s just summarise by saying I had over 100 bites by the end of four days and Sara and I looked as though we had some horrific skin condition, with many of Sara’s bites blistering and weeping. (as I write this Sara and I are sat in an airport scratching our entire bodies).
The wildlife living around the lodge was amazing in itself, with many parrots and parakeets in the trees, and a family of friendly tapirs (boars) wandering around the grounds. The friendliest of the boars was Marisa who made a purring noise when you tickled her under the chin.
That first evening, Sara and I met some of the local guides and witnessed an amazing sunset. After the sun had disappeared we dined, drank caipirinhas, and went to bed, full of anticipation for the next morning’s activity; horse riding.
Cow girls riding across the savannah
At the stables, a friendly parrot took a liking to Sara and tried to rearrange her hair. When we were assigned horses, our guide Levi gave Sara the biggest horse, which worried her. However he was very docile, as were all the horses, in fact it was as though they had been sedated, which suited us just fine. We walked or trotted through the Pantanal in the blazing heat. It was really tranquil until we hit the first water. There had been rain for weeks before our stay and so the water levels were gradually rising and areas were flooding. The track which was normally dry went through long stretches of brown murky water which reached up to our horses backs, we tried to keep our legs above the water but in the end it was futile and so we were wet to our knees. This seemed to make us even tastier to the mosquitoes who had taken a liking to Sara and I already.
Who needs hair straighteners when you have a portable parakeet!
At one with nature, damn nature!
On our first afternoon we jumped back into the jeep and bounced deeper into the Pantanal with our jungle buddies. Along the way we saw lots of amazing birds, caiman, taranjalas, and also passed a herd of 300 cattle with their cowboys.
Once our bottoms had suffered enough, we left the jeep for a walk through the jungle. Very soon it became apparent that we would need to walk through water in order to follow the track. The water was brown, had quite a strong current and stank (our guide told us it was cow urine). Levi offered to carry us all over, but we all agreed we would cross on our own. It was disgusting and that day marked the end of the road for my walking boots and trousers. I couldn’t help but giggle seeing Sara up to her knees wading through stinking brown water, for a girl who hadn’t worn walking boots before and had bought mini hair straighteners to the Pantanal, she was doing amazingly well. On our jungle walk we saw monkeys, wild boar, and caiman, and were bitten more by mosquitoes and ants (we literally had ants in our pants). It was getting dark as we bounced back on the jeep to camp, and the views of the changing sky were beautiful.
Levi, our guide, showing us the way
Sara and I follow, and get in deep, smelly water
Giving our spotty botties a rest
The next day we were up early and headed to the river for a boat trip. We had been advised to wear shorts, and with our legs on show we were quite the tourist attraction. No-one could quite believe how many bites we had, and someone even asked if they could take a photo of my legs! To be honest (and I probably shouldn’t be sharing this with the whole internet), our legs were the least of our problems, our bottoms were covered in bites, and after a few hours on horses and an afternoon on the jeep our bottoms were really suffering. The boat trip was very picturesque and tranquil and I almost fell asleep a few times, only to be awoken by someone shouting “Tucan!” or “Monkey!”
That afternoon we decided to pass on the afternoon activity of a walk, and instead Sara, Leia, Richard, Srikand and I relaxed by the swimming pool. Two Germans went on the walk with our guide and when they came back, the girl who was very tall indeed, had dirty water up to her chest where she had been forced to wade through deep water. When Sara stood next to her, she was completely below the water level, so it was a good job we hadn’t gone for the walk or Sara would literally have been swimming. That evening we drank caipirinhas and learnt how to dance ‘fuohore’, a typical Brazilian dance.
Me - The next Steve Irwin
On our last morning in the Pantanal, we baited out hooks and stood along the river fishing for piranha. It was boiling hot, and since we only had crumby bamboo fishing rods with a few metres of line we didn’t think we stood a chance of catching anything… we were wrong!
Within about an hour, our guide Levi had caught a piranha. He held it and opened it’s mouth to reveal it’s razor sharp teeth. He then threw it on the floor near the river, I had no idea why. The piranha flipped itself over and over on the ground, and then from no-where a huge caiman emerged out of the water to eat the piranha. It was only about two metres away from us, but I was soon to get a lot closer to a caiman!
I was desperate to catch a piranha and so I climbed onto a moored boat to get closer to where Levi had caught his piranha. There were movements in the water and so I was hopeful that something was going to bite. It was sweltering hot and I was being eaten by mosquitoes but I didn’t want to give up. I saw a caiman rise above the water and swim over towards the boat, he then disappeared as he got closer. Having watched a dreadful film about a man-eating crocodile recently, I was a little worried that I couldn’t see him any more, and I searched the water for any signs of him. And then, there was a tug on my fishing line. Was it just a coincidence that I couldn’t see him anymore, and something had taken my bait? No. I had caught a caiman!
He pulled on my line and I stood firm. I thought maybe he would just break the line and swim off, but it turns out that those fishing lines are made of strong stuff, and he wasn’t going anywhere whilst he was attached to my line. I shouted to Levi “Levi, I’ve caught a caiman!” I heard laughing from around the corner, clearly everyone thought I was having a joke. “Really! I have caught a caiman!” I shouted, and very quickly everyone emerged around the corner, to see me on the boat holding a fishing rod with a caiman on the end of it. I don’t think people knew whether to laugh or scream, but when Levi started laughing, everyone else joined in, even me. Levi directed me to slowly climb off the boat and to drag the caiman around with me. He was going to try and take the hook out of his mouth. At one point I had to walk very close to the angry caiman, and my heart skipped a beat. Levi positioned himself by the water’s edge and told me to drag the caiman onto land. I did so and Levi edged close to the animal ready for his Steve Irwin act. Just as he got close, the caiman got scared and whipped his head around with real power, the line snapped and he disappeared into the water. My heart rate returned to normal and we all had a laugh. We couldn’t quite believe I had caught a crocodile!
The caiman I caught
Emerging from the jungle
After hundreds of mosquito bites, sightings of exotic reptiles, birds and mammals, making some good friends, catching a caiman and binning some clothes, it was time to leave the jungle. We bounced out of the Pantanal on the jeep and waited in the sweltering sun for a van to pick us up. It arrived a typical hour late and then drove us to Campo Grande airport, where we had seven hours to wait until our 3.30am flight. The airport had nothing to entertain us and so we divided our time between games, intellectual pursuits (don’t ask), eating, drinking, kinder eggs, and exercise. In the end I think we became delirious and found ourselves crying with laughter at the smallest things. At last we boarded our plane to civilization. Carnival and the Pantanal had been intense and exhausting and we were looking forward to a return to normal life, where we could recover and get some much needed sleep.
Service station in the Pantanal where we waited in the sweltering heat
Goodbye to the friendly creatures of the Pantanal
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