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We were able to book a Pantanal tour from Corumba, a small town on the Brazilian/Bolivian border, almost as soon as we arrived at our hostel. Fortunately we had been speaking to an aussie couple in Santa Cruz who had just done the Pantanal and they recommended a company to book through...it just so happened as we got to our hostel a guy from that company was there booking the tour for three other girls, so we booked 4 days/3nights to start from the next day.
We caught a bus from Corumba at midday on Saturday 11th to a place called Buraco das Piranhas, where we transferred to an open top truck and made our way along the bumpy road into the middle of the Pantanal, to a place called Fazenda Santa Clara.
The Pantanal is the world´s largest contigious wetland (it is 20 times the size of the Everglades in Florida) and has few people living there and no towns (straight from the travellers bible...lonely planet!! haha), so we were really looking forward to seeing lots of wildlife and enjoying some lovely hot weather!
We were pleasantly surprised when we arrived at Santa Clara (we hadn´t paid as much as we had thought we´d have to for the trip so we wern´t expecting nice accomodation). It was a farm with cows, chickens, sheep and horses running riot, as well as lots of exotic birds and 3 pigs!!! The rooms were nice (pretty basic but all we needed), there was a small pool and patio area, several hammock areas, a mini footy pitch, volleyball court and badminton net, and then a big room which had a couple of sofa areas and tvs, board games, and where the buffet food was served. The food was really good with lots on offer, so once again we ate more than we planned to!!
The first day we arrived it was nearly dark...we had a trip planned for 6pm, which was a night boat ride along the river near the farm. We were only on the boat for about 45mins, and only had a flashlight for looking for wildlife, but managed to see lots of caiman, some birds, capybura and almost an osolot (but it ran away before we could reverse the boat back and see it!) After the boat ride we headed back to the farm for dinner, and then attempted to watch a film...but most of them were either in portugese or were so scratched that they jumped every 2 seconds, so we eventually headed to bed for an early night.
We were up early the next morning for breakfast, and then headed off on another boat trip down the river (this time in the hope we might see some more wildlife in the daylight). We saw lots of birds, a couple of lizards, plenty more caiman, capybura and monkeys. Our boat trip ended about 11ish, so we had a few hours before our next trip to have some lunch and at last squeeze in a bit of sunbathing!!
Our afternoon trip was a 2 hour horse ride. It was really fun and the horses were very gentle, although slightly placid!! You had to really give them a kick to get them going!! However, after a couple of hours our bums started to get very sore and it was a welcome relief to finally arrive back at the fazenda. That evening we had dinner, then more or less went straight to bed as we had to be up at 4am the next day for our early morning truck safari. It was a pretty chilly and very bumpy ride at 4.30 in the morning (Lee wasn´t too happy) and we didn´t really see much wildlife. However, we stopped at a lake for breakfast and watched the sun rise, which was stunning, and then headed off on a walk with our guide Carlos.
After our safari and lunch, we went for another walk from the fazenda. Lee wasn´t feeling too great at this point (he had bad stomach cramps) but braved it anyway and off we went. Two sweaty hours later, Lee was wishing he had stayed behind as his stomach had got worse and we seemed like we were nowhere near the end of the walk! We managed to see some monkeys and lots of birds but a lot of the walk was through very long grass and there were mossies everywhere! Everyone got bitten except for Jess who remarkably managed to escape bite free.....this was not, however, to last for long. The next day we woke up and both of us had been bitten in the night and Jess´ back was completely covered in big red bites...not pleasant!!
On the last day we were up early again for breakfast and then off down the river for a spot of Piranha fishing. There were 6 of us in our group and Carlos and we spent the morning at the edge of the river attempting to catch our lunch!! Lee did very well and caught three big piranhas...Jess was less fortunate, only catching one small one!
We then went back to the fazenda where we had our normal lunch along with our catches from the morning! Although the piranha looked a little scary they were actually quite tasty! After lunch we packed our bags and caught the 1pm truck back to Buraco das Piranhas and then a minivan onto our next stop....Bonito.
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