We had a decent sleep last night all things considered. I personally probably netted about 9.5 hours. The breakfast buffet wasn’t too bad either with a decent selection of baked goods and fruit. I had an espresso to prepare for a long day of driving. What? Brian drinks coffee?! Alright, let’s all calm down, everyone. This is a new thing I’m experimenting with. No need to get so excited. While breakfast was happening at 8am, there was a large crowd of political people blasting music at the nearby traffic circle to hype those on their morning commute. Brazilians are a passionate people.
Though now hyped to vote for Virginia Mendes in the Mato Grosso elections, we had work to do. While Nicole finished up, I walked a couple blocks to the Localiza rental car office near the airport. The two ladies helping me were very apologetic for not knowing English, to which I responded, “Mas meu português é ruim.” (But my Portuguese is shite). This was met with adorable laughter. But in all seriousness, I’m in Brazil after all. The least I can do is try. We all got through it with a lot of code-switching between the two languages. After a circuitous route back to the hotel to pick up Nicole (due to some inconveniently placed roundabouts), we were off.
A drive deep into the Pantanal isn’t often done by regular travelers. They are usually driven in vans as part of small group tours. The vast majority of lodging inside the Pantanal requires one to book through a tour company that includes the transfer all the way from Cuiabá. Well that seems convenient you might be thinking, but that little service would cost about $2000 extra. We rented a car for roughly $110 for four days which includes the mandatory insurance and Nicole’s scrupulous research found some lodging right next to the river — the launching point for boat excursions to look for animals, particularly jaguars.
And yet, the five hour trek to Porto Jofre from Cuiabá is a bit of a safari in and of itself. If we were constricted to being in a van with a group of others, we wouldn’t be as free to decide when to stop as we pleased. Shortly after gassing up in the town of Poconé, we entered the unpaved road to Porto Jofre. The Transpantaneira highway has (and used to have more) wooden bridges that traverse the wetlands. They creak when you cross them like a ride at Disneyland. But around these bridges, you tend to find a lot of wildlife like the few caimans you see above.
During our self driven safari, we saw many of the animals that the Pantanal is known for. The jabiru stork in the big nest above is like the Pantanal’s mascot. Along with that, there were countless other birds flying across our path and trotting in the road seemingly hoping to get hit by a small Kia SUV. Later in the drive, we saw capybaras. They are the largest rodent in the world! They seemed rather simple, but are evidently smarter than they appear. They did not react at all to our presence, mostly just standing still and indifferent. Apparently in the wild, this acts as their defense mechanism. They appear so nonthreatening and chill, that predators don’t even bother attacking them. Maybe there’s just no thrill in it.
I actually have video of one walking on top of a caiman on its way to a small island to make out with a fellow capybara. It turned around to face the caiman that hissed at it as if to say, “Whatcha gonna do about it?” Nature is wild. Nicole saw a caiman later snag a bird.
The pantanal is teeming with wildlife. We thought it was neat to see ONE little Caiman in Nicaragua while we were kayaking a few months back, and today we probably saw hundreds. Nicole was spotting wildlife left, right, and center. While crossing another bridge, Nicole thought she saw a snake swimming in the water. I parked and we went back to the bridge and she was right. But for a better view, we also saw a snake in the middle of the road — a yellow anaconda to be precise. The yellow anaconda tends to grow smaller than some of its cousins, but we didn’t want to linger too long because we were time-constricted. Sssssssssssss! I’ll be here all week folks!
In actuality, another driver stopped to look at it, but was agitating it repeatedly to a point where it then got angry and started slithering at an impressive speed in my direction. I quickly stood up from my picture taking and began walking backward and thought, do I have to start running? It stopped its pursuit. After all, I’m a friend and it must have eventually recognized me. They don’t have as good of eyesight as Nicole.
We eventually reached the Santa Rosa hotel. As we entered, there was a squeal from the lady doing the check-in desk as she motioned for us to come around. She showed us a “live” video of a jaguar at a distant part of the property that had tripped a game cam. Nicole and I were both pretty convinced she just opened an older file from her hard drive. Hard to impress Bricole. We were then shown our rather dated and dark room at the edge of the property. You pay for the location I suppose, not the room. Hard to impress Bricole. We asked if they had a different room with maybe a bigger window or something, and they said they’d just upgrade us for free tomorrow when there was availability. Being that most people book months in advance and we’re pretty far from civilization, I guess they figured they weren’t going to sell those rooms last minute on Hotel Tonight. We walked around the property a little bit and saw more capybaras just hanging out on the lawn. They are best at hanging out. It is by far the most chill animal I have witnessed in the wild.
Dinner at the Santa Rosa was a buffet-style affair with the elder folk from the tours jockeying for position (artist’s rendering above). The theme was churrasco (or barbecue). I found the meat inedible. Also, no margherita pizza available. We were simultaneously overwhelmed by people and underwhelmed by food. Hard to impress Bricole. After dinner, we watched bats fly around the pool to collect bugs, and then we played a competitive game of table tennis in the hotel’s game room. I think we’ve improved drastically since our international tournament in Brunei and Argentina. We had a rally of 75+ at one point. Oh, ok. Hard to impress the readers, I guess. Tomorrow is supposed to be relatively cool (72 as a high). Thusly, we will see if the jaguars like that kind of weather or not as we take to the river on our quest to see this elusive feline in the wild.
passports & pepto bismol 