The Pantanal

So I´ll say that Brazil is like a freakin paradise compared to the rest of SOuth America. Its hot! And pretty. The Pantanal was really nice, once we arrived. After travelling all night and all morniing we crashed on our hammocks until around 230 in the afternoon. We were supposed to go for a nature walk, but since we were all so dead our guide took us piranah fishing instead. So we hopped back onto the pickup truck that has two benches facing eachother. They warn you not to lean on the outside railing because its not very sturdy. So we bump along the dirt road and see lots of birds (my favourite were the toucans) and some alligators. Then we go traipsing through this muddy water up to our knees (barefoot) and finally arrive at a little pond. We had to walk waist deep into the water with our bamboo fishing poles, and no one was leaving until we had each caught a piranah. I feel at this point I should mention that David has a prosthetic leg, so he cant do some of the things we can, like go traipsing in the mud, and he had to stay on the main road with the truck. But Sarah came along, of course she refused to go in the water and tried to catch a fish from the shore, which you cant do! While walking to the pond I had cut my foot on something and had a bloody toe. Everyone joked that I would be the bait, but the guide said going into piranah infested waters with blood all over you was FINE, so I did! They cut up this giant cow heart for bait and our guide put a piece of meat on all our hooks amd we went and fished for a bit. But those piranahs are fast little suckers and they would eat off the bait before you even knew that they were pulling on the line. So like, every two minutes I would be asking for ´Mas carne, por favour´which my guide found really hilarious. So finally I just reached my hand into the bag and held my own bait, which grossed out all the other girls completely. But they didnt complain when i baited their hooks! Anyways, wed been there a while and I kept going deeper and deeper because Jade and I were the only two that hadent caught one. So the guide switched poles with me, I said óh is this the lucky pole?´cuz he had already caught 4 and even his daughter who was like 5 years old had caught one. So instantly after using that pole I catch one. It was about 3 inches long. I KNOW, it was a MONSTER!! haha, oh well, at least I caught one, and jade did too, so we headed back to the campsight all wet. Along the way there was this GIANT stork (like almost as tall as me, okay so not giant) on the raod. It was really neat to be so close up to one. Dinner was pretty good. They had lots of vegetables and rice of course. They also cooked up our piranahs to eat. The meat was nice, but hard to find cuz those little fish are very bony. We went to bed at the ungodly hour of 830!

Had to wake up at 5 to be ready for a 530 walk. Walked for a few hours and saw monkeys and mccaws and capibaris (the worlds largest rodent) and an anorexic cow that was dying, and a dead cow that had been killed by a puma. Lots of stuff. In the afternoon we went horse back walking. Which was really exciting for most of the group because theyd never been on horses. We nicknamed Jades horse Greedy, and mine, Mr. No Trot, because I could not get him to go faster than a fast walk! Bed again at 9 this time!

This morning we woke up at 6 to be ready for a 730 boat ride on the river. We saw an otter and lots of alligators and birds. Then we got out of the boat and it was time to go swimming, with the alligators! The water did not look very clean but I went in anyways because now I can say this: Ive been swimming with alligators! Once we got back to camp we packed up and headed out. Arrived in Bonito late this afternoon. Ill miss the pantanal, it would have been nice to have one more day just to hang out. Im in love with sleeping in a hammock! IN LOVE! And apparently we saw a lot more wildlife than you would in the jungle because its much more open. Everyone kept pointing out all these birds and things with their correct names and I was like ´how the hell does everyone know so much about wildlife´ but apparently they do. Anyways, Bonito is like a beach bum town. We´re going snorkling tommorow and lounging on beaches for the next 2 days, cant wait!