Another look at Brazil’s amazing wetlands—the Pantanal

Trying to get a lizard’s eye view of the Olympics? Look hard, it’s 2600 kilometres to the east

Hey, Mr Caiman, you’re looking the wrong direction

All eyes are on Rio de Janeiro for the coming weeks, and rightly so with the Olympics 2016 currently underway.

One of our daughters is there for work, on the periphery of the Games. I’m pretty sure she’ll be run ragged over the next little while, and have little chance to see many events or Rio itself. She didn’t get to see the opening ceremony.

Two hawks watching over their domain

Jabirus or ibises (I think) racing to the Olympics. You’re going the wrong way

Fortunately she has a few extra days in Brazil after the Games end. To help her decide how to spend them, I’m going to add a few blog posts from our two recent trips to that vast and amazing country.

I’m going to start with the Pantanal, the world largest tropical wetland, which sprawls across two Brazilian states, as well as parts of Bolivia and Paraguay. It covers an area estimated to be up to 195,000 square kilometres (or 75,000 square miles).

During the rainy season (mostly November to March), water levels in parts of the Pantanal basin rise two to five metres, leaving about 80 per cent of the floodplains submerged.

Spoonbill wading

Egret

Heron

Ducks

Vulture?

Jabiru or ibis?

Ibis?

Macaw

This wonderful inundation of water helps the Pantanal to support the largest concentration of wildlife in the Americas. The numbers are astounding. It is believed to have 1000 bird species, 400 fish species, 300 mammal species, 480 reptile species and more than 9000 different subspecies of invertebrates. The number of plant life is phenomenal too, with the ecosystem having about 3500 known plant species.

Poor John and I have been lucky enough to visit two parts of the Brazilian Pantanal—first in the south and then seven months later in the north. We reached the Pantanal by road, so had the chance to see many square kilometres of these wetlands. The two areas we visited are 14 hours and 1000+ kilometres (by road) apart.

Both times, the water levels didn’t interrupt our travels. In fact, on the first visit (for Christmas) the rains hadn’t yet arrived.

Having a look on horseback

That didn’t keep us from going piranha fishing and doing wildlife expeditions (including jabirus making whoopee) on foot and horseback, and by road and river.

On one stretch of road, we even rescued a tick-infested anaconda that was languishing in a mud puddle under a bridge. Our guide said the snake would have died had we not moved it to a pool that still held water. The rains were coming soon, so the guide was confident it would survive.

An anaconda in need of help. This snake usually lives under water

On our second visit, in July, the rivers were running a bit higher and we had more fabulous excursions on foot, on horseback and by boat.

Here is a link to another post on a boating expedition, and I’m adding even more new photos here simply because I think this magnificent wetland should be better known.

I’m sorry that I no longer remember the names of all the birds. Please fill me in, if you know any of them.

And if you need a drink after seeing the close-ups of the lizard, caimans and anaconda, check out my recipe for the amazing Brazilian drink caipirinha.

A ‘congregation’ of caimans?

Close-up of a caiman. They are slow moving and we even managed to touch a few of them—at arm’s length and just the end of their tails

A red-footed tortoise