We arrived at the Bolivian/Brazilian border by overnight train (compfy seats but so bumpy it felt like the train thought it was on the parallel bars Pink Panther Stlyeeee!) After playing at getting food into our mouths but actually hitting our noses more often, we failed to get much sleep.
A few negotiations later with some chaps from the Green Track agency outside the Bolivian immigration office, we were soon sitting in a funky little VW campervan heading to the Brazilian town of Corumba - you have to drive into Brazil for about 20 mins and get to the bus station to go through immigration so for quite a while we were in no-mans land - or did we not actually exist anywhere!? Not sure!
Anyway, we soon arrived at our crumby hostel and set about sorting our trip into the Pantanal - the huge wetlands area, where wildlife spotting is supposed to be the best in S. America.
The town was eerie with dark pinky brown smokey skies dropping chunks of charred undergrowth on our weary swedes as the local farms were burning lots while we were there...and also fairly dank! Not what we were expecting from our first stop in vibrant Brazil but we had a good pizza to keep us occupied!
Early next morning we scurried round ready for our pick up - only to find we had set our watch wrong and the time hadn't changed from Bolivian time - duh - could have had an hour loafing in bed!
A few hours later we were bouncing down the track into the Panatanal on our way to our farm stay for 3 days. We saw masses of beautiful huge birds, lots of caimans and capybaras as well as a fateful wallowing hairy old porker as we drove through the landscape but were rudely interrupted by a family in their jeep who ploughed into the back of us! Poor buggers had more of a shock than we did - we were up in the back of our truck and I could see them coming, with Dad watching the said gert wild pig wallowing next to the road and not watching us - where his posh new Chevrolet jeep was heading! Crunch! Luckily no one was hurt as they were still going pretty slowly...but wifey didn't look too chuffed!
After a couple of hours we arrived at our farm for the next few days and met the few others whose group we joined, made ourselves comfortable in the hammock shack before a hearty lunch of beans and rice! Phhhhrrrttt!
Bosco, our cowboy Dukes of Hazard Styleee guide then took us on a 3 hr walk to spot what we could spot! It was roasting hot and we saw more of the ususual suspects - mainly beautiful birds including the Rosetta Spoonbill, which we decided sounds rather like a nice goody-twoshoes girl from Harry Potter.
That night we had a few beers, with extremely dodgy lairy Brazilian music being blared out from an old car, round a good old campfire, before snuggling into our sweaty bat-infested hammock shack!
Within minutes (actually 5hrs later) Bosco was waking us up in the pitch black to set off Piranha fishing - disturbing the bats as we went. We caught more than enough for lunch and then had a good snooze till they had been cooked for us lazy tourists! The weather had turned strangely chilly so we all snuggled into our hammocks with what turned out to be flea ridden blankets - nice!
(No joke - we have since discovered some sort of livestock as new travelling companions!! ugh!!)
Later we had a good old cowboy horseride where we galloped and giggled our way through the Pantanol - not seeing any big cats but it was still spectacular.
After a swift Caipirinia by the fire before a freezing night with the bats and livestock for company, we were soon leaving to race onto the Iguazu Falls - just 24hours on several chilly buses to deal with first!!
So - now we're on the Argentinian side of the falls, full of sizzling meat and red wine after a good long hot shower ready to trek round the falls tomorrow - after a good nights conventional sleep (I hope!)
