Days 20 & 21: the Pantanal

Although we have a 6 o'clock start, the hotel staff kindly lay on breakfast for us. "Go to work on Brazilian coffee" was never more appropriate. And cakes, and pastries, and scrambled eggs. Our driver takes us southwards and the tarmac rapidly fades to a road of characteristic reddish earth. The heat has temporarily left us, with a misty rain and chilly breeze which perhaps is blowing down from the Andes.

The Pantanal is an extraordinary wetland, mostly in Mato Grosso state but some of it spills over into Bolivia and Paraguay. It becomes almost a lake up to the end of March but in early September the swamps have drained and it becomes a dryland. This is the best time of year to see the wildlife, and better than Amazonia as well because there is less vegetation. The National Park covers about 1,350 sq. km. (520 sq. mi.) but is threatened by cattle ranching, commercial fishing, poaching and road kill among other things. We are glad to get there while there is still time.

At the Pousada Rio Claro we pick up a boat for our first taste of river life. And taste there is, for the jacare (a.k.a. caiman or alligator) snapping up a dead piranha which our boatman dangles out from the gunwale. Jacares are believed to number 10 million, which makes them as populous here as humans are in Rio de Janeiro. Other abundant creatures include the jabiru stork whose distinctive red collar makes it the official emblem of the Pantanal, and the capybara, famously the world's largest rodent about the size of pigs. Unlike the jabiru but like pigs, they don't fly.

It's worth noting that I am not the first member of my family to pass this way. My great-uncle Cyril was once in the Mato Grosso, gathering butterflies for a private collector. This practice would be frowned on now but back in 1927 it provided him with a living and much interest. At the time, the great news topic was Colonel Fawcett whose expedition had vanished just 2 years before and people clung to the hope that he would be found.

No trace of Fawcett but we have had a satisfying day.

The following day is a rest day which we use going to the rodoviaria for tickets for our return journey in 2 days time. As we walk there, a couple of women warn us that this is a dodgy area and kindly give us a lift there and back. We celebrate a safe return with a kilo lunch and ice creams at the Italianissima. We also get our photos taken; my Brazil-coloured shirt actually represents the SPBW (Society for Preservation of Beers from the Wood) and a suspicious bulge underneath which is my shoulder pouch (in some quarters called a "bra"). Is that a passport inside or am I just pleased to see them?

In the evening we find that piranha is a diet not just for jacares but for people, apparently with the added bonus that it's an aphrodisiac.

Chaste thoughts however await us back at the hotel, where the manageress encourages us "dorme com Deus" (sleep with God).Read more