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Pantanal
Written by sophie de   
Monday, 16 October 2017

Back to Brazil, we move to Pantanal, which is located between Amazonia, Bolivia and Paraguay. In fact it's approximately the center of South America. It's a huge plain, completely wet the half of the year (fortunately we still are in dry season!), as big as half France or so, very famous for its abundant wildlife. There you also can find gauchos, their fanzendas and many cows.

gaucho gaucho

On our way we stop near Bonito, where we camp next to a crystal-clear river. We go for a very pleasant swim, except for the many fishes trying to eat Sophie's legs already damaged by mosquitoes, and the ticks who attacked Jeremy during dinner. We were anyway very happy finding this little off-the-tracks heaven, otherwise we would have had to pay an incredibly expensive and mandatory guide to do quite the same thing... After this nice stop, we continue to head north passing through the Serra da Bodoquena.

baignade baignade bodoquena bodoquena

We spend the next days exploring Pantanal through several "estrada parque", which are tracks inside the savanna including many scaring bridges.

pantanal 1 pantanal 1 pantanal 2 pantanal 2

There, you can observe many birds: tucans (plenty of them!), prey birds, parrots, cormorants, and many others we don't even know their names...

toucan toucan perroquet perroquet

The most impressive is the jaibiru, Pentanal symbol, a sort of stork as big as a pony.

jaibiru jaibiru

Under each bridge dozens of crocodiles are waiting for the rain. We saw also marsh deers, ostriches, pecaris (kind of wild pig), and families of caipibaras (looks like a hamster the size of a big dog) who love to wallow in the mud.

croco croco cerf cerf

autruche autruche pecari pecari

caipibara 1 caipibara 1 caipibara 2 caipibara 2

Even the ants here are enormous, so big than cows can hid behind anthills! We glimpse a black fox, a shy tapir and two tired armadillos.

fourmilliere fourmilliere

Still no jaguar or puma, even if we think they came to see us by night...
Luckily no anaconda either. We were surprised to see families of local bathing in the river despite its brown color and the many dangerous animals living inside (crocodiles, anacondas and piranhas for example), even for a lot of money we wouldn't try!

pantanal 3 pantanal 3