Bridges on the Transpantanera

145 kilometres of dirt road crossed by almost 120 wooden bridges, that’s the Transpantanera. Here’s Blac crossing one of the wooden bridges. The bridge looks ‘healthier’ in the picture than it was. This one was wonky, others had holes in them. I p…

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Photo"s: At Porto Jofre, end of the Transpantaneira

At the end of the Transpantaneira,  as well as doing the boat trip and seeing the beautiful Jaguars (pics are already up in a previous post), we discovered some other really nice things.
1. Hyacinth Macaws. These are the largest of the Macaws are they are really big. The main colour is a spectacular cobalt blue.
2. Hyacinth Macaws are generally found in pairs. H upset this one and it was giving him a stern warning,  and he was backing away from that beak. What he did was climb in behind the fence to look into the nesting hole that the partner Macaw had gone into. Bad Hendrik.
3. These Cabybaras had 5 baby capybaras! Unfortunately,  on the morning we left there seemed to be only 2 babies left. Would be predators: Jaguars, Caimán,  Anacondas, humans (always a threat).
4. That’s me (Ali) walking across a lake of Victoria lily. I read years ago that the biggest of these lillies will support the weight of a newborn baby. These lillies are spectacular.






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Photo"s: boat trip to find Jaguar

We saw our first Jaguar, actually a pair,  within 30 minutes of having set out on the boat! That’s them in the first photo. They actually did a bit of mating while we were there too.The Jabiru in flight gives another perspective of the fantastic b…

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Photo"s: wildlife on the Transpantaneira

1. Apparently they call this bird a Jabiru. It’s not the same as the Australian Jabiru,  as you might see. This bird is really tall, possibly about 1.5 metres. And the one on the left has puffed out its collar and was doing a bit of a dance to get the others attention.
2. Water buffalo were being farmed.
3. Kingfishers were fishing off every bridge we passed.
4. Another spectacular bird.
5. A capybara (world’s largest rodent)






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Photo"s: Travelling the Transpantaneira

The Transpantaneira is 145 kilometres of dirt road, built up to cross the Pantanal wetlands, with almost 120 wooden bridges, which I found quite scary to drive across. H, when he was driving,  stopped on almost every bridge to take a look around.&…

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Photo"s: Animals on the way to the Pantanal

Here’s just a few of the animals we saw.
1. The first Giant Anteater we saw (as mentioned in my post, we were lucky enough to see two!)2. Caimán3. Unfortunately,  I didn’t have the skill or patience to get a photo the these grasshoppers in flight.  There were thousands of them,  and as they flew their wings showed blues,  reds,  yellows,  and greens.  They were spectacular,  and if you want to see them you might have to visit yourself. 4. Parrots nesting in an old palm tree stump.
We saw lots more,  but if you want to see everything…





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Into the Pantanal Wetlands

I just looked up from the map book to see a caiman staring at me from the river. Caimans are small crocodiles, they eat fish and, I think, birds. Not humans, but I’m not going swimming. There’s piraña too!

We have made it to Porto Jofre. It’s the end of the popular route called the Transpantanera. In the 1970’s the Brazilian government decided to build a road across the Pantanal, but after building 145 kilometres of road they gave up. 

The Pantanal is a massive wetland area and it’s flooded for a good part of every year. So, building a road here, and maintaining it, is costly. 

Getting here has been slow. Between the rough dirt road and all the wildlife sporting I think it took us about 10 hours to drive the 145kms. 

What have we seen on the Transpantanera? 
Mostly water birds. 
Capybara (world largest Rodent), 
Coati, 
Caimans, 
and the farmed animals: Cattle (mostly Brahmin), Water Buffalo, and horses. 

To get here, we skirted around the Southern and Eastern sides of the Pantanal, taking a dirt road (BR419) recommended by our Couchsurfing host in Campo Grande. So far, we’re actually more excited about what we saw doing that than doing this Transpantanera. 

Getting to the Transpantanera we saw:
Giant Anteaters (twice)!
Caiman
Capybaras
Macaws
Lots of birds (okay, there’s more on the Transpantanera)

Giant Anteaters
I was very excited to see a Giant Anteater. Mostly people visiting the Pantanal want to see a Jaguar. But, as I said to Hendrik, I most wanted to see a Giant Anteater: they are such interesting looking animals! Then, about 2 hours after I said that to H we spotted one ambling in a cow paddock. 

As the guide book, Lonely Planet Brazil (9th ed.), says Giant Anteaters are a threatened species (prized meat apparently) and difficult to spot, this was very exciting. Imagine our excitement when, about 36 hours later, we spotted a second one ambling through another cow paddock. 

Next on my list of what I really want to sight is the Giant Otter. Then an Anaconda. And the Jaguar? I saw one once from a boat in Bolivia. The locals flagged us over to proudly show us what they’d killed, ie, a Jaguar. It was beautiful, but dead. 

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No interior do Pantanal

Saímos dessa encrenca, pois precisávamos vir escrever o terceiro diário de bordo. Muitas imagens e histórias desse trecho estão por vir… Aguardem!

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