Pantanal

To describe this past weekend in a blog post is impossible, but I am going to try my best (with the help of some pictures).

My friend, Irua, was raised in Pantanal and spoke wonders of it from the first day we met. So, when we were given a few days off, Rachel and I decided to travel with Irua back to his hometown to see if it was really all he cracked it up to be.

...and it was.




Pantanal is the world's largest wetlands. No, it is not the Amazon, and in fact, it is scarcely known throughout the world, and even unknown by some Brazilians. Imagine a place with over 600 species of birds (parrots, toucans, owls...), over 200 species of fish, an uncountable number of butterflies, crocodiles (or caiman), capybaras (the largest rodent in the world), monkeys, giant anteaters, armadillos and tons of other animals.





The rainy season goes from December to March. During it, the rain is intense, and the temperature is high, and Pantanal gets flooded. Fortunately, we arrived in Pantanal at the end of dry season (and aside from the severe thunderstorm in the middle of our boating safari), we managed to stay pretty dry.
During our four days in Pantanal I was introduced to more fruits than I have been in my entire life. It was almost surreal to be able to walk around the town and just reach up for some fruit whenever I had the slight urge to eat something.

I ate acerola, (which contains 100 times the vitamin C of oranges), jabuticabas, Indian bubble gum, tomatinhos, and more mangoes than I have eaten in my entire life.

To be honest, I wouldn't even mind being a vegetarian if I lived in Pantanal. Despite the fact that the meat is also delicious there!



Our last two days were spent at a family farm where we were surrounded by horses, cows, roosters, peacocks, monkeys, calves, Angolan chickens, and parakeets.

We spent the first day zip-lining from the top of the mountain into the river below and the night chatting in broken Portu-glish with the other people on the farm.

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I fell asleep on one of the many hammocks just a few feet away from one of the horses and was awoken in the morning to the sunrise and a parakeet sitting on my head.

In the morning, we milked the cow and then filled our hands with corn pellets to feed the monkeys. After feeding the animals, we fed ourselves and marched 866 steps up to the top of one of the most beautiful waterfalls I have ever seen.

Returning home this morning after an overnight bus ride felt like waking up from a dream...