Pantanal & Caiman Ecological Lodge, Brazil: Number 182 from the 1000 places to see before you die book

I sure was getting my dose of avarians on this trip- from the wetlands of the Okavango Delta ….now to the world’s largest wetlands- the Pantanal in Brazil. Home to species which grow larger here than anywhere in South America- including jaguars, wolves, and armadillos- through to others which have been largely hunted to extinction in other parts of the continent- ajnirus, rheas…and those lovely coatis I pictured at the Iguazu Falls article.

Im a bit of a sucker for looking at either wildlife, plants or the top of a martini glass when Im travelling and this trip was boding well. While the 1000 places to see before you die book had recommended the Caiman Ecological Refuge as the base, it sadly in this season was only rentable as an entire house….and was probably in the book as it was the first eco lodge in Brazil…so better to try some others anyhow. I had been booked instead into the Zagaia Eco Resort in Bonito. 

It was thrilling to watch the landscape change from the huge sprawling metropolis that was Sao Paolo, home to some 11 million people, a concrete high rise jungle drifting kilometre after kilometre before finally giving way to a string of islands and bays and finally the green green grass of the Patanal. The area, aside from being an ecological sanctuary, is also home to Brazilian cowboys known as "pantaneros". I was looking forward to having some churrasco served up by some hairy chested, accented, olive skinned, fit, cowboy hat wearing man who might offer to take me riding later on.  

Unfortunately, stressed and grumpy after a 4am start, I arrived at the resort at 5pm to find it was not what had been featuring in my dreams. More like the place youd book for a team bonding session, a conference, or a middle income bunch of families having holidays together where the boys played golf, the girls had massages, and the kids played in the pool. Eeek. I had one of those T² moments (toy throwing!) with my concierge service (all though bless Quintessentially  - im not sure many of their members have as diverse and bizarre requests as me for so many countries in the world)....and, confident that wheels were turning fast to get me out of a place with piped pool music, I sat back with a caiprinha and read a book.

Next morning was an early start as a driver came to pick me up to transport me 200km further north. Oddly Brazil seemed to have this whole network of people who drove people incredibly long distances. Quintessentially had given me a choice of a $6000 private charter to fly 2 hours to one fazenda (working farm....read...cowboys!!)  in the Pantanal....or about $200 to drive to another fazenda 2 hours up the track. I took the car option as I was intrigued as to what the second ride would be like. On the first trip my driver had spent all three and a half hours looking at his phone or reading a bill while flicking up and down through South American music channels playing music I couldnt understand,all the while driving at 160km/hour. My portugese is non existent- as was his English......so I spent most of the ride gritting my teeth and praying.  My second one was a treat- sticking to what seemed a more reasonable speed of 110 km/hr he cracked his knuckles constantly while listening to 'break your heart type' songs the whole way. Now if Id been in the car with a girlfriend we perhaps could have had a blast singing our hearts out and having competitions as to who sang the songs ( choruses of some of them included "making love out of nothing at all," "2 out of 3 aint bad," "please dont go, Im begging you to stay" ).

As it was, after enjoying a solo breakfast at the resort on a table seated for 5, being in a country where I was struggling to communicate (I had studied spanish once for 6 months but that was 25 years ago and it didnt really make understanding portugese any easier), trying to sort out a couple of tickets to europe and asia as well as some work issues, all it did was made me feel more alone on the road.

That was all to change when I checked into the fabulous Pousada Aguape in the western Pantanal . In Joao’s family for 160 years, the fazenda, or ranch, was a sprawling 3 million hectares which until 50 years ago had no electricity. It was exactly the experience that I needed. After a lovely lunch of chicken and beans (beans were to be on every meal I later discovered) I saddled up my horse. Now johnies and i get on very well, and Johny Walker, my horse, was to prove no different. Outfitted with a pantanero hat kindly provided by Joao I set out with Erasmo for a three hour ride in the pantanal.

Now the pantanal, according to Lonely Planet, has the greatest concentration of fauna in the New World. Some 230,000 square kilometres- thats about half the size of France- which lies largely uninhabited and is a protected ecological area. I was here in the wet season when the waters had reached their high mark of some 3m. As a result of all the water- its a large alluvial basin in essence- farming was limited to cattle of which there are some 200 million in Brazil. Aguape had about 2000 zebu cattle from India (80% of cows in Brazil are this breed), 70 horses, 20 pantaneros and...no guests!! The odds were looking good!!

The first afternoon's ride was great- a lot of birds including jabirus,the world's largest storks and familiar to me from north Australia and a family of capybaras, the world's largest rodent weighing up to 70kg,  eating on the banks. Coming back some 8 large bright blue hyacinth macaws, over a metre in length and the....you guessed it....largest macaw in the world, were having a squabble match in the horse supplements trough while underneath my feet an armidillo blindly wandered.

   Dawn hadn't yet broken the next morning when I jumped eagerly on Johny at 5am. Of course, that was in my dream- the reality was a sleep deprived me- caffeine laden, gingerly walking like I had a butternut squash up my doo daa, groaned my way a couple of metres in the air to the top of Indiana Jones -my nag for the day- while bitterly swearing to a bunch of cowboys who couldnt understand a word but got the gist!  At least this time they had outfitted me on an amazing pantanero saddle (think English saddle with half a merino sheep put over it to help with butt soreness).

One of the beautiful things about staying on a fazenda, as opposed to joining a tour, is that they put on all the "normal" activities of a tour (horseriding, piranha fishing, boat trip, night safari, day safari)..................but allow you to do a few different things- spending a day with the pantaneros mustering the cattle, driving a horse driven carriage into town to buy groceries and lying around in a hammock by the pool. Bliss- and in that vein I cant recommend where I stayed enough.

It was a nice slow 3 hour amble to go out to where the cattle were that needed moving. The pantaneros were every girl's dream- faded denims, leather chaps and white rolled up shirts showing off their olive skins, jaunty straw hats on their heads sporting a fancy feather, the older generation an advert for the Marlboro Man smoking away under their moustaches which grew largely untamed on their leathered faces, every now and again one reaching behind their back where, tucked tightly in place by a brightly coloured sash, lay a razor sharp knife which they hacked overhanging palms with.

  

    

Cattle rounded up and briefly penned we dismounted for brunch. Chopping off a leaf they gestured I was to shovel up the cassava flour and put a bitesize chunk of cooked beef in my mouth. Hmmm. I stuck with the beef. Then a communal cow horn mug filled with tea leaves, splashed with cold water was produced along with a silver straw. Chi on the range!! It wasnt anything like iced tea but the straw did a good job of straining it. Several refills later, food and hunger satiated, we remounted the horses to drive the cattle home. I was getting the hang of mustering, along with, in parts, galloping ankle deep- thats my ankle- the horse was up to its chest in water, to stop errant cattle.  There was something deeply relaxing, walking behind these bulls, creamy sacks of skin falling down their throats to their knees like an old woman's turkey jowls, a large hump of muscle on their necks resembling a walrus’s nose and foot long pendulous balls banging mercilessly on their haunches as they meandered through the grass.

It was even more exhilarating when diving into one patch to move a bull back into the herd I flushed out an anteater. Now I always thought these things were small...but the pantanal has giant anteaters (of course!) and it was a good 2 metres long, beautiful long snout with this huge bushy black tail feathering parallel behind it.

 

Arriving back at camp at midday I scoffed down some food (fell  in love with their bean casserole) before drifting into an afternoon nap while the sun continued to scorch the earth.  The afternoon agenda was to catch some piranha for sashimi and piranha soup. Id been looking forward to trying my luck at this since I came so we scrapped the boat trip up river for another day and headed out in a dinghy to kill the suckers. Caymans drifted closer to observe us, their snouts barely rising above the surface of the water as they lazily circled us and then...tug tug tug. Teal tipped damsel flies were rudely thrown off my rod as I hurled in my first of what was to be 9 piranhas later. Piranhas my host gleefully told me "are the Viagra for the pantaneros".  Hmmm!!!

The next few days followed a similar vein- I swapped bush walking safari and horse carriage for a few more days out with the pantaneros mustering, great food and chat every night and a very relaxed me that left 4 days later to head to Salvador to tick a few more of the 1000 places to see before you die book.

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