In our motor launch close to Porto Jofre traversing along Rio Cuiaba. Elionil from Cuiaba, our organiser and guide is behind us and our local boat driver from Porto Jofre who was the one who really knew where he was going and where jaguar were most likely to be hanging out. Other than 'Bom Dia' and 'Obrigado', about the only words of Portugese we know, we couldn't speak to him, but he seemed a really nice guy
Day 157 Sunday
A short trip to the airport with a very chatty driver for our last LATAM flights to find we have done so many miles our boarding passes were now gold. This seemed to get us priority boarding, a personal welcome from a member of cabin crew, and apparently no need to pay for luggage or seats on our next, non existent, seats.
The airport in Sao Paulo for our connecting flight was big, but we have realised that our flights to Rio actually go through a smaller airport, about 100km from Sao Paulo, in the same way that Luton is a London airport to Ryanair, so fingers crossed. Once we'd priority boarded and I'd watched our luggage be loaded it was a pleasant flight. The girl who sat next to Brian was lovely travelling home to Cuiaba from her cousin's graduation, had amazing English and also promised we would see jaguar!
Before we'd even set off on the 250km drive south from Cuiaba into the jungle of the Pantanal, Jackie was happy, a good kitten fix!
We arrived in Cuiaba and were collected by Elionil our guide for the next few days. The hotel was very close to the airport, but it was still nice to be collected. He came in with us, fortunately, as the hotel seems to have no English, which wouldn't normally matter except that the Aircon wouldn't turn on, and it was mid 30's which is too much for me. He'd gone by this point so Google translate it was. They sent someone up, who also couldn't make it turn on so moved us next-door. We went to the shopping centre about 5 minutes away to get the last cash we needed for this tour, but could we find the ATM's? Eventually a fireman showed us, but only after I showed him a screenshot of a map I'd taken earlier. We then ate in the shopping centre because it was easy, surrounded by families and screeching kids, but hey, we just needed food.
Welcome to The Pantanal, a national protected park
Day 158 Monday
Collected at 09.00 and on our way. We stopped a couple of times before having lunch just before midday. He'd asked if we liked BBQ so I was quite surprised when we just seemed to stop at a buffet restaurant. It looked ok so we sat down with what we assumed was our meal only to find a man coming round with a skewer with meat on it. He must have come round with at least 5 different cuts, and then chicken hearts, which were all very good. (Except the hearts for Brian) We were stuffed.
There will be lots of birds and animals in this blog! I got photos of only a few, most were too fast for me. This is a Turkey Vulture
Back into the pickup and into the Pantanal where the paved road ended. To start with it was dusty. We don't know if the AC in the truck works or not, but we'd done all the driving so far with the windows open, and this continued. We quickly saw Yacare caiman and so many bird species. Black vulture, Caracara, hawks, blue macaws, parakeets, ibis, herons and Jabiru stork which are huge great things. At one point we stopped to take pictures and found the truck was suddenly full of mosquitos, fortunately I'd got some repellent to hand, though not quite quickly enough. We'll be covered up tomorrow then!
These are Great Curassows, the male is the black one. We saw lots of these everywhere
The birds were followed by agouti and then finally capybara, just sitting on the road. I was surprised Elionil stopped for the capybara as at this point although it didn't seem to have rained much the road had turned into a slippery slidey mud track which was taking all his concentration to drive along. We had already passed a pickup half in the ditch that hoped we were coming to rescue them. We didn't, but we did shortly catch up with their work colleagues who were wondering where they were. It obviously didn't take them too long to be rescued as they arrived not that long after we did. Just long enough to find us sitting outside our room, waiting for another one as the Aircon wasn't working! Another room in this instance took longer than yesterday, the kids had to be turfed out of their 'lounge', the beds joined together and the room cleaned and made up. And all I wanted was a shower.... (Pousada Dona Onca Jaguar Lodge)
The rain came in on the way and the mud road became treacherous. Elionil drove slowly and carefully (mainly as he told us he too ended up in a river with a client in the past with his car upside down), unlike this one we saw on the way that had run off the road, hovering over a bog with one rear wheel off the road due to the lean. He was lucky, but it would take some pulling clear!
Fingers crossed tomorrow for jaguar
This is a Jabiru, a really large bird. Its the tallest flying bird in South America, often the same height as a Rhea and has the second largest wingspan after the Andean Condor (excluding the great albatross). They can stand 1.2 to 1.4m high and have a wingspan of 2.3 to 2.8m! Pretty common round here, we saw quite a lot every day
Day159 Tuesday
Our day out started at 07.00. bit of a rickety boat but sure it'll be fine. We started off and I made the driver go right instead of left because there were giant otters just down there. Chomping away noisily, and with very pointy teeth on some fish. I know we saw them at Sacha Lodge but it's a good start. My next spot (and it was mine) was a tapir. I have a soft spot for tapir so was delighted, particularly as they are meant to be nocturnal and hard to spot, but there it was just swimming along till it had had enough of us and went up the bank and vanished. Next swimming things were capybara, they didn't hang around for long, but we are getting some good ticks in. There's something else in the water, absolutely delighted that it wasn't anything else we've seen but was, in fact, a jaguar, just swimming across the river. We followed him across as he swam surprisingly fast, turning his head to check on us every now and then, until he took reached the other side and got out. Hurrah.
A Capybara (the largest of the guinea pig family) sits in the road and expects us to move round him!
Lots of birds, big kingfisher, herons of various sorts, storks, darters and I don't know what. We came up on the only other tourist boat we saw all day with a smug looking guide in. There were 2 jaguar down there but, who knows.... We went to have a look and were amazed to find one just lolling about in a tree. It's tail dangling in the water as it played with a stick, pushing it under so it would bounce back up again. There was a second one a bit obscured in the undergrowth which Elionil said was hunting. I wasn't convinced when it appeared to lie down except shortly after this it made its way past the tree the youngster was in dragging a caiman. Her daughter saw this and quickly followed. They both went into the undergrowth where there was a bit of a kerfuffle, so I assume it wasn't quite dead. We waited a bit, eating our lunch which had appeared at some point in a boat with the 4 electric company workers from yesterday. Fried chicken rice and veggies, very nice. Finally they both reappeared and went to lie on the beach and have a good wash. They didn't seem to have eaten for long, but were obviously both up for a clean and sleep, just like moggies.
More further on, and these with little babies!
We watched for a while before going to look for other things. More otters, capybaras, and three groups of howler monkey, just as I'd been thinking we hadn't seen any monkeys. We went back to check up on Patricia (yes all the jaguar are identifiable and have names, though sadly Mick Jaguar has passed on!) and her daughter Madrosa to find them still sleeping. We were joined not long ago by the electric workers who obvious thought funny that they were being paid to be there while we were paying to be there, but that's fine. We could spend longer, and so we did. They returned to the place where the caiman was, we could hear the crunching of bones! We eventually gave up waiting for them to finish only to find one of them had snuck past us back to the beach.
Here's the first of two YouTube videos we've done. This one lasts about 6 minutes but has some great footage of Jaguar with their kill, plus swimming Capybara, a swimming Jaguar, a swimming Tapir and some otters. It's worth a watch, just excuse my crappy editing!
Only live caiman and anacondas to see really. We headed back and ticked off a caiman. Shower, dinner, and apparently a night safari, so who knows what we'll see later! Actually nothing, he's decided on the night safari tomorrow as the road will be dryer, which is probably true, but he wants to leave to drive back at 07.00 on Thursday, but that's up to him!
Look at this swimming Tapir. They are big animals, the size of Shetland pony but with a nose like a short elephants trunk
We then got to look in the jaguar identification book, and we had identified the correct animals, but the wrong way round, it was mother, Patricia, idly lounging in the tree and her fully grown up daughter, Madrosa, who made the kill
Day 160 Wednesday
The day started very slowly on the spotting front, though not on the boat racing over the water front. It was meant to be sunny all day but we actually drove through some mizzle and dare I confess, I was only just warm enough. The weather obviously suited all the animals too as they'd vanished to do better things than be spotted. We eventually stopped for lunch where we had shared it with the girls, yesterday, along with another boat, but no jaguars. We stopped for a wee break which is on a beach behind a tree. I'd picked the wrong time to ask as suddenly there no trees and no beaches. He drove up the first one we saw and Brian and I hopped out, almost onto the remains of a very smelly caiman. Jaguar obviously have used this beach then, but it didn't seem a problem just throwing us out!
A Jaguar swimming across the Cuiaba river
A bit more whizzing about, spotting one capybara and we met the electric guys who let us know they had seen a jaguar. Off we went, having syphoned some fuel from them. It was obviously a long way!
He got to the other side, climbed out and disappeared into the jungle
We eventually arrived, it takes a lot longer to go upstream than down, though the river doesn't look that fast. We passed a caiman, but no chance of stopping, we were on a mission. Finally, there under a tree was a beautiful jaguar, with her kill, a caiman attracting the flies behind her. We were very close, about 5m I reckon, the recommended distance is 25m, but she didn't seem to mind, and after all that, we weren't there long, as it was over an hour, at top speed, going with the flow of the river, back to base.
We understand these things are wild animals, but the more we do the more bizarre it becomes that you can have such a good day followed by such a poor day.
A Lizard warms himself on a tree
We had cake, before Elionil wanted to take us out in the car, it was just before sunset so we watched that, while visiting the closed hotel, with its own airstrip, capybara on the lawn and blue macaws flying around. After dark he got out the big torch, so I sat in the front with it as chief spotter. No photos, but we did see some nightjars, a couple of foxes, and then something that did look remarkably cat like as it jumped off the road. A jaguar this close to home? I think it probably was. That was quite enough of that though, holding a heavy torch out of the window, attracting mosquitos and dust. A shower, dinner and bed once we'd identified today's jaguar as Constantine.
This is a Wattled Jacara. Saw lots of these too
Day 161 Thursday
We left just after 7.00, fortunately on dry roads. I sat in the front again, as spotter, a couple of foxes, capybara, agouti, lizards, Jabiru and a huge herd of musk ox, but no anacondas or anteaters, a good caiman to which Elionil's response was "you'll see more" I think he forgot we were going out, not going in!
Look at this Capybara family with baby at the back
We were pleasantly surprised when Elionil collected us, and he is a very sweet guy, his English however is not as good as he thinks it is which has got really quiet frustrating. Asking if it's usual to see tapir? "Yes" I felt quite deflated, till he said later how lucky we were to see a tapir as it was really unusual!
In general the Pantanal has been much better than the Amazon, though in some ways we are not comparing like for like. Firstly it was a lot cheaper, but we knew Sacha Lodge was expensive and the little backpacks and water bottles have been very useful. It was also a different scale of operation, there was someone at the airport in Quito to check us in, and print out our baggage labels, before the slick operation of the big boat, walk, small boat, whereas here, Elionil collected us from the local airport in his nice car to take us to the hotel, and then in the 4x4 for the 6-7 hour drive, with the windows open, because no, the Aircon or fan don't work. Sacha Lodge was dry season, apparently though it was still hot and humid with lots of mosquitos. This was end of wet season, so full river, not much rain, hot and lots of mosquitos, for which I'd learnt and dressed better, though my thick travel shirt was more mosquito proof than Brian's thinner travel shirt. It is however now quite disgusting as the mixture of sweat, sunblock and mosquito repellent has engrained itself into the collar and cuffs despite rinsing through every evening! The boats we were out in here had movable seats (though one of them was broken so poor Elionil got that one) and engines. Sacha Lodge they were paddled by the guide, so obviously more eco, but also slower. The bird life here was amazing, never seen such a variety, ranging in size, colour and interest. The mammals here were amazing too, at Sacha Lodge we only saw monkeys and marmosets. We were definitely here in low season, the big hotels are shut and although we were very happy with 4 jaguar, apparently in July, August and September you can see 80(?) BUT you have to share them with many people. The jaguar ID book has a picture of upward of 20 boats crowded around 1 jaguar, we only had to share with the electric guys for about 5 minutes. My biggest problem here though was that we have no Portuguese, and there appears to be very little English, anywhere we have been so far.
Munching away at the plants
We've stopped for another BBQ lunch, at 11.00, at a petrol station, all most unlikely, but very good and apparently about £6.50! On our way to the airport before the hotel as although our flight isn't until tomorrow we tried to reserve seats a few days ago, the card wouldn't go through, and now we can't do anything, including check in, until the payment is sorted out! Well that was remarkably easy (we hope) despite no one at the help desk the poor lone guy at check-in appears to have sorted us out very quickly
And finally the stars of The Pantanal make an appearance. This is Medrosa, a female Jaguar. Medrosa means 'to be afraid' in Portugese. Jaguars are the third largest cat in the world and the only one found in South America. It used to be abundant throughout the continent but now only found in certain areas. The Pantanal hold the largest population and there are believed to be between 4000 and 7000 individuals. It's larger than the Leopard, it's African cousin and slightly broader than the Amazon Jaguar, owing to the slightly more open forest of The Pantanal
The simply majestic Medrosa! It looks like she's posing for the camera, but there's wild animal and instinct behind those eyes and we are only some 5m away. The name Jaguar comes from an indigenous word that means 'to kill with one leap'. When I asked Jackie how far away she thought we were she said 'about two leaps'
I've got my eyes on you!
We had been closer, but this shows how close at that time. Jackie is thinking she'd like to stroke her!
I think she's realised we're just an irritant to her and actually she's really tired after such a big Caiman meal
This is Patricia, mother of Medrosa. We identified them from their face spots. Each Jaguar has a unique pattern and by checking the pattern in the book at the lodge there was no doubt. Did you watch the YouTube above of her flicking the twig in the water and splashing her paw on the surface? Quite cute
On to other things, and here's a Caiman hiding in the rushes
Otters have very sharp teeth as you can see in this photo. They can rip through a fish in no time at all. Don't get too close!
End of the first day, back at the lodge and the owners have a parrot that was very happy on Jackie's shoulder. When she came to take it off it was having nothing of it, threatening to bite the owners finger everytime she went near to it. It took quite a bit of coaxing. We could hear her talking to it quite often when we were there and it talking back to her. It liked saying 'Ola' (which is actually Spanish for hello, not Oi as is the Portugese equivalent. Perhaps the parrot is bilingual!
Onto the next day and here's a Macaw sitting in a tree
And in the next tree, a Toucan
This is probably a Common Black Hawk, lots of these about, they looked fabulous flying overhead but trying to get a good photo was not easy
We stopped for a pee on a bit of dry land (we were all bursting) and, obviously this has been frequented by Jaguar as here's the remains of one of their meals, the skeleton of a Caiman
Really pleased to get this excellent photo of an Amazon Kinngfisher. There are 9 different Kingfishers in these parts, I got two of them (but saw a lot more). Trying to photograph them is not easy, they are so quick
Here's another one, this is the Ringed Kingfisher (because of the white ring round its neck?)
Now I know this looks unreal, but I can assure you its as I took it. The book Elionil had tells me its a Crimson Crested Woodpecker.
I took this one fractionally before but didn't like the lighting so much so took another. But when I looked at this one again I realised that the white flecks you can see are the bits of wood falling after he'd just stopped pecking
Lots of views like this of the swollen rivers flooding the land around, surrounding trees and giving a nice reflection. Apparently in the dry season (July to October) the river recedes to the extent that large beaches are evident in front of the trees. July to October is also high tourist season when lots of people visit, crowding of the Jaguar sightings. Much sooner be here at this time of year when almost no-one else was about
There were lots a sightings like this and it took me a long time to get an acceptable one. These are Large Billed Terns just taking flight as we went past. You can see how they launch themselves into flight
A boat came past telling us they'd seen a Jaguar way upstream and, as we'd been milling about looking for Jaguars everywhere we didn't have enough fuel to get there and back so our man begged some fuel from him so we could make it
The high speed dash paid off as here is 'Constantina' another female Jaguar relaxing after half eating the Caiman she had caught and left behind her to finish later. We identified her later by comparing this photo of her spots with the book back at the lodge. I got lots of photos of her
After getting a bit bored with our presence she flopped over, but still with eyes on us. There's a bit of video of her in the YouTube below
Coming back there were lots of these flying overhead in a very impressive manner. Google Lens tells us it a Black Eagle
Here's the second YouTube we made. This one shows images of travelling through the Pantanal with a little of Constantina Jaguar
Evening walk before sunset (while we can still see any approaching Jaguar!) and this Capybara doesn't seem to mind the little yellow bird hitching a lift
Jackie approaches, she'd like to stroke it obviously, but its got eyes on her
A step too close and its off 'don't touch me!'
A buff-necked Ibis
We walked into the local hotel that only open July to September (high season) as the sun was setting and saw these three Macaws on a wire
Photo with the sun behind so you can see a bit of the colour
Elionil took this photo of us earlier which is quite nice (you will no doubt spot the life jackets there that we're not wearing). See those vents in the back of my shirt? Little did I know but its a great entry for mosquitos as the rash on my back now shows!
Todays photos on the way back to Cuiaba and this was at the lodge in Porto Jofre showing how dirty the car was after the rain on the way in. He did stop on the way back and got it washed
This was a Caiman we saw at the roadside just scuttling back into the bushes
Saw quite a few Rhea too, plus lots of other repeats that I won't put on
There were many quite ropey bridges that we had to pass over very carefully
Plus a roadblock of cowboys herding cattle, which took sometime to pass
This is a final photo of lots of nest built by this bird that we think is a Rufous Hornero. He's got some mud in his beak to build another nest above the others. That's it from the Pantanel, see you in our last land stop before boarding our ship home, Rio de Janeiro
