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You are here: Home / Archives for pantanal

Photo:A Photo Worth Sharing

October 21, 2011 By Danny

I took this photo in the middle of Brazil’s Pantanal.  The Pantanal is one of the world’s largest wetlands and stretches for about 65,000 square miles.  The ecosystem is thought to be home to over 1000 bird species as well as countless fish, mammals and reptiles.

This guy seemed not to much mind our boat passing by and let me get a rare closeup, most of my bird shots are of this fellas’ cousins as they are taking flight AWAY from our boat.

To see more of our favorite photos from around the world check out our travel photo page. Let us know your favorites and we’ll include them in our photo of the day series.

IF YOU GO:  The Pantanal is huge but overall we saw many of the same wildlife we saw while we were in Bolivia’s Amazon on our Pampas Tour.  If you do want to visit the Pantanal, we’d recommend going to the town of Bonito at the southern end of the Pantanal (we were in the northern end) where you can float down crystal clear water with nothing between you and the fish other than a wet-suit!

Filed Under: photos Tagged With: Animal, Bird, Brasil, brazil, pantanal, Swamp

Good Animal, Bad Animal & Ugly Animal

February 25, 2011 By Danny

There are a lot of animals in the world and we aimed to see all of them.  Of course we didn’t but, we seem to have had a lot of animal experiences over our travels. Here are just a few:

The Good

IMGP0444
Our first week on the road was an amazing one. Waking up the first morning in Guerro Negro, Mexico, jumping on a boat, and having what is probably the most amazing experience possible with a wild animal was fantastic. The boat tour that we took brought us out into the harbor where the gray whales literally just swam right up to our boat to play with us and allow us to pet them. The newborn calf led his mother and when a second boat stole his attention his mom swam right up so we could continue rubbing her skin. These were wild animals and we never gave them any food. The next few days, further south in La Paz, we took a boat ride around Espiritu Santo where we were visited by (not so nice) pilot whales, a humpback whale, jumping rays and for a finale we snorkeled with some very friendly and playful sea lions.

The Bad

IMGP4525Our trip to the Pantanal saw some practices that we find particularly upsetting. We went fishing for piranhas in the river, a perfectly OK activity and one we’d done just weeks earlier in the Bolivian Amazon, and then returned to the lodge with our catch. Upon our arrival we found the beach littered with caiman (the South American version of the alligator) who were just waiting to eat those fresh piranha…and they were fed, right there on that sandy beach. We consider it a bad practice whenever animals are given the opportunity to link humans with food, the reason we did not go diving with the great white sharks in South Africa. We were also annoyed when bait was tossed into the river for a hawk to come and catch…creating a nice, fake photo opportunity each time that hawk came down to eat.

The Ugly

IMGP1287The whales of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula were wonderful, many of the mammals we encountered in Africa were not quite so accommodating. After spending gobs of money to see the rare mountain gorillas of Uganda, we were more than a bit surprised when our welcoming by these animals was one of dominance by one of the group’s males. The gorilla charged us, actually knocking one of the guides to the ground; it was an authentic experience but more than a touch scary. Runner Up: Also in Africa, one elephant in Kruger National Park just didn’t want us get past him. This elephant just stood in the road, blocking our passing, and when we finally were able to make a run for it, he turned and reared his head….VERY unhappy at our having passed by. Jill wasn’t able to enjoy elephants again, which was problematic because we saw lots more.

This column of ishouldlogoff.com aims to answer those questions that we always get asked. What was your favorite this, or your worst that. Every week we aim to highlight a new topic and will do so until we run out of ideas. If you have an idea for a Good-Bad-Ugly post, feel free to tell us in the comment section below or send us an email. To read all of them, click here.

Filed Under: Good, Bad & Ugly, Headline, Travel Reflections Tagged With: africa, animals, baja, brazil, good-bad-ugly, gorillas, Mexico, pantanal, travel, whale

Pantanal

October 2, 2009 By Jillian

I don’t know about you but when I go to any sort of expo or fair I always put my name in for the raffles, there’s always the chance I might actually win. Just before we left on this little adventure (also known as our trip around the world) we won a trip to Brazil’s Pantanal, the world’s largest freshwater wetlands. So from the very beginning of this trip without a travel plan, we planned to go to Brazil and the Pantanal come hell or high water. After that Bolvian/Brazillian border crossing
and three long bus trips on unpaved roads, phew it felt like both had come. We were definitely looking forward to staying at a nice lodge with good food and have a few days off our budget, but getting there was a stressful rush and we ended up having to skip some places along the way that we would have liked to visit. Just gives us another reason to return to Brazil!

Some guidebooks say dry season is the best time to go to the Pantanal because the animals are all clustered around what water there is, while others say the wet season is the best time because the animals are all clustered on what dry land there is. Go figure. At almost 10 times the size of the Florida Everglades, we were hoping to see more than just a few animals. Fortunately, we saw tons of animals (and for the record its dry season!) from capybara’s and caimans to birds of every species you can imagine. It was undoubtedly great wildlife viewing, but unfortunately we’d seen many of the same species on our pampas tour in Bolivia.Frankly its hard to get excited about the 1000th caiman sighting, even if they are really cool, really scary creatures. Our guide, a retired heavily accented Italian, peppered his bird and animal sightings (which were always very, very exciting to him even if we couldn’t see the creature) with mamma mia!!, leaving us wondering what the actual animal names were- is that a little blue heron or a little mamma mia blue heron? Depends who you ask I guess.

And then of course there was the piranha fishing. Unlike our attempt in Bolivia , we were wildly successful at piranha fishing in the Pantanal. Dropping his line into the water, Danny caught one in what seemed like seconds while my line sat quiet. Disappointed in my fishing prowess (after all I’ve definitely done way more camping and fishing than Danny) I resolved to shaking my pole in the water as violently as possible to imitate an animal in distress. Of course this prompted a “mamma mia” from the guide who scolded me for “over doing it.” Right, like I ever do anything in excess. 🙂 Two seconds later I got my first piranha of the day. Score!

Unfortunately it was my last to make it successfully into the bucket. I caught two more, but neither actually stayed on the line long enough for a picture, so you’ll have to just trust me on this one. 🙂 My second catch, thrashed around in the water a good bit as I fought to pull him in. Back and forth we went until it broke my line. This of course, prompted a “mamma mia!” and when my line was restrung and baited I quickly attempted again. Waiting for what seemed like forever, I tried my now patented shaking technique, which yielded no results. Again and again, with no results. With everyone else pulling in piranha’s by the bucket load (or so it seemed on my quiet end), I prayed for the another one. And it came, and again broke my line. Must have been the biggest piranha in the lake 🙂

What happened to our catch you might ask? Well, the first evening at the lodge we watched sunset from the dock and couldn’t believe the dozens of caimans lurking nearby in the water. Completely unafraid of us, they almost seemed interested in us. After piranha fishing we found out way. To guarantee animal viewings a lot of lodges feed the wild animals, ensuring that their clients get good pictures. As you can imagine this has a significant impact on the animals behavior towards humans and within the local eco-system. I was floored when the pirnha’s we caught were fed to the caiman’s from the sandy beach in front of the lodge with about a dozen people standing around. Talk about an unhealthy practice for the ecosystem and an unsafe practice for the guests! Just what I want, a dozen caimans who associate humans with food, anyone up for a night hike along the river? 🙂

Filed Under: Brazil, South America Tagged With: animals, pantanal, tours

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