Pantanal Safari - Day 1- An amazing start
Caiman by the docks
We fly to Cuiaba today, the gateway to Northern Pantanal. It’s an area of the world which is said to have an impressive biodiversity. It’s also UNESCO listed. My expectations are high, it’s one of the places I was eager to see, but also because it costed us 3 times more than our budget.
Again, in my budget I didn’t research this properly. The north Pantanal is usually more upscale, whereas the South has the backpackers and affordable tours option. I budgeted a tour option, but booked the flight tickets for the luxury destination… when we looked at changing them, or flying to the South – the tickets were insanely expensive for a 45min flight! So, we booked a private tour for 5 days.
We wake up at the break of dawn, and everything goes right until we sit in the plan. We are about 15min late to leave the gate, when the crew informs us that the plane has an issue and that we will be offboarded. Luckily, GOL had planned a replacement, and we walked through the airport to another gate and boarded our new plane to Cuiaba. We arrived with 2 hours delay to our destination.
Our guide, Jean, was waiting for us and we started with getting a delicious churrasco lunch in Cuiaba before hitting the road to the Pantanal. It’s about 2h30 to our destination, but depending on what we see, it can last longer. We took 4 hours to reach Pousada Rio Claro.
For this first day, I am impressed. We start with a very straight road to the edge of the Pantanal, then from the gate onwards it’s a good dirt track. It’s the moment that you hit that path that wild animals start to appear.
There were so many types of birds, and we saw mammals or lizard crossing the road as well ! The amount of new wildlife we saw was incredible. Of course, with our phones and our x3 zoom old compact, the pictures aren’t that great. I am going to list at the end of each day the animals that we saw. I think that’s the best way to show you the diversity of species we could find.
Jean is an amazing guide, half of what he finds, we wouldn’t never have seen ourselves. We are fairly silent in the car and we are hyper focused – searching through the bushes and along the water holes.
One thing gets clear very early in the ride – DO NOT ever set a foot in any water you see in the Pantanal. It’s absolutely full of Caiman !
What impressed me was the size of the Jabiru. This tall bird can measure up to 1,20m and has a wing span of 2m. We saw a few very tall ones by the road – they are impressive. They are the mascot of the Pantanal.
We arrive in the Pousada around 5pm, and we have a few hours to rest before diner. We can explore the grounds. There are a lot of birds and capuchin monkeys. We make our way to the edge of the river to see some of the Pousada’s staff fishing. ( with the caiman closely watching ).
After a simple and very good diner, we have a night safari. Jean has a torchlight with a long range and we drive back along the road and the smaller path that lead to the Pousada. Unfortunately, we are not that lucky – we only saw a couple of foxes and a sleeping boat billed Heron.
