Pantanaaaaal!!!! So, yesterday we made it just in time to enjoy carnaval on Corumba! And it was much better than I expected! Wasn't expecting this from a border city! Lots of samba schools had their colorful and decorated cars and happy dancers! Color, samba, happiness, good food (had piranha soup!) and strong caipirinhas!! Great carnaval Brasilian style :)

We went to bed the earliest we could around 1h to be ready at 7.30 to be picked up by s truck(!) to go to the heart of the pantanal. Of course our driver had also been at carnaval so he only arrived at 9h!!

And off we go to the kingdom of around 40 million caimans (jacares) and a couple trillion mosquitoes!!!
The road there was great, a red color earth and nature all around. On the way, just like in the movies, we ran into a group of a thousand and something cows with their peao by horse! No network on the phone and in the middle of water and animals, sweet :)
We got there just before lunch. As it's over 30degrees and we can't do anything until our boat ride at 15h, for me it was siesta time! :)

Went for the small bot ride with more 3 people and we saw loads of caimans just beside the boat and happy piranhas just jumping around! Birds of different sizes and colors, ducks and chicken of the pantanal, fishes and the biggest rodent of the world which I can't recall the name but you will see in my photos! :)
We also went walking through the shore of the river with the caution of bot stepping any snaked or scorpions! On our walk I look just on my side and ... Caiman!!! Stopped and said to everyone just step back people! Oh and our guide for any reason was on the other side of the river!! We just went around and let it be :)

Back at the pousada, time for dinner and then a night boat ride with the group. incredibly dark with an amazing bright star sky and some lightning far in the distance. With the torches we could see brilliant eyes slightly out of the war - caimans hunting for food, and lots of bats also looking for something to bite. Impressive how we were just passing by the caimans and we actually run over one! Back at the shore, huge toads and frogs and them talking about tarantulas (though I'm happy we didn't see one!!). We did a small fire and enjoyed a beer with Brasilian music given by a very nice Argentinian couple. And even with repellent I was eaten by mosquitoes... Those b******s!!!