Pantanal - Wildlife abundant

Just got back from our adventure in the Pantanal. We´re stuck in Corumba until the next bus at 11 pm at night. We had to come back to Corumba to get our entry stamp into Brazil. Two of us had to run into town to get money out of the ATM and we had misjudged the line in immigration. We didn´t think there was a line but there sure was and a long one at that. KF and I got to cut into the front of the line because our tour operators were there to help out. We kinda had a stroke of bad luck. We didn´t get our stamps in time, missed our bus and a bird took a shit on my shoulder. KF cleaned it off, hats off to him...

The Pantanal was fun. It was like going to camp. Groups of people were from all over and we all ate at the same time. Every evening we got a run down of the next day´s activities (even though our touts in Corumba laid out a detailed schedule we did whatever the people at camp told us.) And the food was magnificent. Rice and beans. And sometimes spaghetti. Yummy.

The first day we did a car safari and a walking tour. We saw some aligators, king fisher birds, monkeys (spider and howler), wild pigs, a deer and an armadillo to top it off. This was more wildlife than we had seen on our jungle tour so we were all impressed.

The next day we did a horsebike riding tour where we mainly just got to see a big stork. The ride was fun but there was this Swiss guy who figured out how to get his horse to gallop real fast and he proceeded to get the rest of our horses into a gallop as well. He´d always ride up from behind like he was herding our horses and they responded. I didn´t care for the guy too much because he had no idea of what he was doing.

That afternoon we did a boat tour. More aligators but nothing too crazy. They also have an animal that looks like a nutria (big rodent like thing). This tour wasn´t too special having gone to school in Louisiana. We did a night walk at night and KF got to hold an aligator by it´s head. The picture will be coming soon.

This morning we did some piranha fishing. For some reason, I was the only one with any luck and I managed to catch two of them. We fished with beef (which was probably better food than we ate ourselves).

We got a good kick out of the whole adventure because there are two tour operators in Corumba and they send you both to the same place. We booked with Ecological Expeditions and when we arrived at the camp we met people from the other tour company in Corumba, Indiana tours. It made me chuckle. Let this be a lesson for all you travellers... They´re all the same.

Sorry, still no photos. Apparently USB connections are hard to come by here in South America.