Pantanal

A few months ago I read a report about a fisherman who left his 19-year-old son sleeping in the Brazilian Pantanal, a marshy wetland, along the Paraguayan and Bolivian borders. The fisherman had left to go get some bait, upon returning he heard thrashing sounds and screaming and in terror he saw two grown jaguars shredding the tent his son was sleeping in. As he only had a knife and there were two grown jaguars he was helpless. I decided in my thrill seeking to go into the Brazilian Pantanal and to bring Thomas and Ari along as a diversion.
We woke up early Monday morning at 5:00 to catch a 6:00 bus. We paid for our tickets and I noticed a group of three white tourists who obviously weren’t from the region. I asked them if they were going to the Pantanal and if they had a place to stay. I gave them some information about the Fazenda (farm) we would be staying at, and if they came with us we could get a better deal. They agreed to think about it and we got on the bus. A majority of the 4-hour ride was spent on rumbling, bumpy, unpaved brick-red roads passing through small towns. I woke up at our final destination, Buraco das Piranhas, Hole of the Piranhas. Whenever you get out at a stop that has Piranhas in the name you know you are getting yourself into trouble. The people we met at the bus station had agreed to stay with us, they happened to be a trio of Dutch, a couple Mireca and her boyfriend Bert, and Bert’s father David. We, the Dutch, and others who were on the bus piled into a small pickup truck with all of our luggage and started out down a long dirt road seemingly towards no man’s land. Thomas, Ari and I volunteered to sit in the back of the pickup. Big Mistake. The pickup truck banged and buckled due to the uneven, unpaved, ahem…rustic road. With ever jostling bump our backs slammed into the bed of the truck. We bounced around on the deplorable road for what seemed like ages until we eventually arrived at the gate of Santa Clara Fazenda. We got out of the truck and I haggled a price with the administrator who looked like she had some gypsy blood, maybe it was just because she was driving a hard bargain. I had gone on some advice from my friend Peter, who had stayed at the fazenda for a week paying but a few dozen reais per day. I negotiated to stay 3 nights for 300 reais. Pete’s advice didn’t seem to play out. We ate lunch and were given our beads that served as currency at the farm. We were given $25 reais worth of currency in bead form, apparently to simplify payment, my theory is that the beads make people feel they aren’t using real money, Ari believes because they don’t trust people handling money so they designate one sole person to deal with the cash. We ate lunch and quickly realized 3 nights might be too much. We checked into our room which we were sharing with the Dutch. We hopped into the pool which had a thick layer of mosquitoes on the top. We took a nap in the hammocks sprawled across the grounds waiting for our afternoon activity. We met some other Dutch girls, who were both of Asian descent. We also started chatting with a cute young German girl, when suddenly mid sentence one of the workers on the farm came up and jammed his tongue down her throat. Conversation ceased to exist. This love affair between the 18-year-old German girl and the 39-year-old house painter became a talking point amongst the guests for the next few days. We got ready for our “Safari” wearing long sleeve shirts, pants, and shoes to deal with the bugs. We climbed into a large flat bed truck equipped with benches and barely enough room to fit all the people from the group. The truck got a flat within minutes of leaving the premises of the fazenda and we had to go back. Our guide Carlos, who looked like a professional wrestler recommended us to change into sandals, and shorts for our walk which was to replace our safari. We hiked into the brush painfully hopping over flesh eating anthills to see howler monkeys and toucans high above in the trees. After wading through muddy waters the hike was finally coming to a close. I was near the back of the group behind a Portuguese guy but in front of an Australian couple. I looked ahead and saw panic in the group as people swatted and ran simultaneously. I told the Portuguese guy to run, but he didn’t listen and the Wasps descended upon us. I batted at them for dear life but one landed on my eyelid and defended his nest, which had recently been built. I screamed in agony as more wasps began to surround me, I managed to swat them off and escape nearly losing my sandal in the process. I blame the Portuguese guy to this day, and I now understand why Brazilians think the Portuguese are stupid. I’ve added them to my shit list of nationalities along with Kiwis, Haitians and Ethiopians. Anyways I got stung on the eyelid, it swelled up and I felt a feeling of drugged euphoria. I got off easy the Australian guy got stung 4 or 5 times and it looked like he was allergic. We gladly returned to the camp, one of the guides saw my face and told me “Welcome to the Pantanal!” We ate dinner and got into our bottle of vodka that we smuggled into the camp. We chatted with the Dutch girls we’d met in the hammock that day, we relaxed in the hammocks for a while and then realized the jaguars might be out there and went to our room. We woke up the next day for a boat trip. We inched along full-grown caimans, a member of the alligator family close enough to peer into their cold and inhuman eyes. Our tour guide pointed out the various types of birds scattered in the trees. We stopped at a little bank where we were handed a bamboo pole with a hook and a piece of beef fat attached. We threw it into the water and within seconds a golden piranha was attached to the end. We spent thirty minutes catching piranhas, which were a little less than a foot long at their largest. Their razor sharp teeth clung to the hook as they gyrated after being taken from the water. We went back to the farm exhausted, lunched and napped in hammocks, (sound familiar?) We got ready for our second stab at the safari. We drove for literally hours down a beat up dirt road in the back of a shoddy pickup with a group of disgruntled Brits, our kind Dutch friends, and our charming Japanese friend with an immature sense of humor that was only surpassed by our infantile sense of humor. The ever-present caiman and bird selection became tiresome after the sun began to set and the group became agitated. We begged the driver to turn around and the Brits threw a hissy fit complaining that trip wasn’t what they expected. Thomas had long ago decided the Pantanal wasn’t his cup of tea; this 6-hour “safari” was the straw that broke the camel’s back. We rode back with the bugs surrounding us, our guide using a spotlight to identify wildlife such as spiders and other eclectic beasts such as cows and capybaras, a large rodent the size of a dog. We got back to camp, ate dinner and looked at the stars while holding each other gently. The stars were beautiful and I’ll probably never see such a pristine collection of southern hemispheric stars again. We woke up the next day, took a horse ride through the forests and plains of the pantanal. Our guide Carlos singing Brazilian country songs about lost love. My horse, Buttercup got along well with Ari’s Molasses, Thomas’ horse was aggressive and was trying to bite everything and one. The highlight was when the horses came to a stop and all in unison they began to urinate, needless to say our Japanese friend Ryo laughed hysterically. We got back to the ranch after hours of singing the few country songs we knew, such as home on the range. We ate, hammocked and packed. We piled once more into the rickety pick up truck. We were halfway down the road when a man ran frantically towards our truck telling us to back up. Abelhas, abelhas! He screamed. Bees. The group gathered all protective gear we could find and suited up for the push through the bee’s territory. No stings. After we finally got to the end of the road we were all a little relieved. We got into a van for a 4-hour ride to Campo Grande traveling along desolate roads, passing through humpbacked mountain ranges and cowfields. We said goodbye to our Dutch friends and got on the bus for our journey back to relative civilization. São Paulo.