Brazil’s Pantanal
Located in southwestern Brazil a great flood plain exists attached as a forgotten tail of extension to the better known Amazon. It is a wetland and a dry land. It follows a regular schedule slightly varying in severity yearly with floods for approximately six months and six months of drought. During the dry months it transforms and becomes a network of plains ,slightly elevated residual forests, well defined rivers and streams all dotted with shrunken waterholes. This dry period concentrates wildlife in a similar matter to areas in Africa that have a wet-dry cycle (one good example is Etosha Park area in Namibia)
This year I traveled with Jeff Rich to this area. Jeff is a photographer from California and I was lucky to have him because of his broken Portuguese of which I have no knowledge. He learned this last year on his first trip to Pantanal and his contacts helped us wrangle good shots. The great amount of wildlife helped also.
The area was a bird paradise with the Hyacinth Macaws capping off the trip with raucous vocalizations and group flights around the area at the end of the Transpanteneira Highway. This is a highway of fame or should I say shame. It is a dirt road diving deep into the Pantanal ,and during its course passes over a hundred mostly dilapidated bridges. Other than the bridges the only really tough thing about the road is the mostly red dust that manages to coat everything. One of these bridges created a hitch in our schedule when a heavily laden truck crashed through one completely blocking the road. As luck would have it though it turned into a great situation for us. We had been stuck in a cold front from the Antarctic hampering the photography and river travel. Weather was now beginning to improve as we came upon the wrecked truck. We traveled back to Porto Jeffre and met up with a local fisherman that ran a fishing camp on the Ciuba River. Since we were stuck we arranged to be guided up the river with a visiting Swedish photographer sharing cost to look for the Jaguar. Our first trip was the afternoon just before sunset and I was not very hopeful. Our luck held and a little ways up the river we spotted a large male Jaguar lounging on the bank. His face was screened by root like vines creating a cell like appearance. His eye stare through the vines was thrilling and as our boat drifted by we managed to get a series of photos through the vines. After a while he moved off and crashed into a small tree after a monkey. He did a turning fall but no monkey. We were able to get more shots but it became dark and as it slinked back into the forest. The next morning we traveled to about the same area and again our luck held and was able to photograph him again. He amazed us as he moved out onto a tree overlying the river allowing us to get clear photographs. As we considered how privileged we were to experience this he proceeded to move out on to a second tree over the river for more photos. Eventually he rested behind brush obscured from us although not over twenty feet from the boat. My favorite photos turned out to be the ones where you could only see one eye clearly and his body was hidden or screened. It had an eerie look about it.
We ended up staying about three days in three locations along the road, and all had strengths and weakness. The first location was the Araras Eco Lodge which has gracious host and hostess. It also has great food and a yard that offers a refuge for many species. The next location (Best Western Motel) about half way had a waterway full of piranhas and a great boat guide. The last location on the Cuiaba River was the best place to see Jaguar.
Certainly it is difficult to take two weeks of travel and photography and condense it so I hope you enjoy the selected photos in the gallery. Also look up Jeff Rich’s web page for his sponsored trips around the USA and the world.
