Pantanal 2

Well carrying on from where i left off, I left Bonito bright and early on Tuesday morning on a bus heading north up to a little town called Miranda. The bus trip was a bit slow because it was mainly gravel road. When I got there I wandered to the Hotel next door which I had been planning to stay at and which supposedly wasn't too expensive. The people at the desk didn't speak any English so I bumbled over the Portuguese words that I knew to make myself understood, I found out that actually the hotel was a bit above my budget so off I went to use a pay phone to ring my bro Patrik. I always have trouble with the pay phones here, cos you always seem to have to first put in numbers that aren't written anywhere on the phonecard and only the locals seem to know what these numbers are. Anyway, with Patrik's help I was able to find a Pousada (inn) that was a bit cheaper and I wondered off to look for it after getting some directions from a local who surprisingly spoke English. I had just about got there when a guy walks across the street towards me, and in quite good English (obviously I am quite an obvious tourist) says "Hi, you ok, can I help you". I explained that I was just going to the Pousada Aguas do Pantanal. When he heard my accent he immediately asked where I was from, and when he heard that I was from New Zealand he was most pleased. He had lived in New Zealand for a year and had learnt his English there. Me and Marcus (that was his name) aka "croc" went to the Pousada together seeing he was going to talk to someone there anyway. The people at the Pousada didn't really speak English so it was good that I had a translator. After about an hour (they took ages working out the different prices for everything) I was sorted for the next 48 hours with lots of tourist activities. So after a walk round the town and some icecream off I went on a mototaxi to a Fazenda (farm/ranch) called Cacimba de Pedra (www.cacimbadepedra.com.br), a jacare (cayman) farm. When I got there I was greeted by a man that spoke English and I found out that I was the only visitor there at the moment. The guy who spoke English wandered off somewhere after he had had introduced me to the owner of the fazenda and my guide for the afternoon. My guide didn't speak a word of English so now I was really going to have to use every bit of portugese that I knew and of course my pocket dictionary came out quite frequently. So we went and checked out the thousands of baby jacare that they have and took some pictures (one of them did a pee on me). Then we went off to see the big ones and also feed them a bit of meat (check out video). After that we went back to the farmhouse and had some Terere which is made by putting some sort of crushed tea leaves into a cow horn and then adding cold water and then suck this up with a silver straw type of thing. So I had a good time chatting (very slowly, but hey) to my guide, and the owner and his daughter(I presume, didn't actually ask), while passing round the tea horn and everyone having a suck. I was then shown the farm buildings and then it was time for dinner. This was very good and of course jacare was on the menu. After that it was back to the Pousada by mototaxi for a nights sleep.
The next day I spent the morning sleeping and swimming in the pool. After lunch I was wisked off by mototaxi to another Fazenda called Fazenda San Francisco. I was just beginning to think i was again the only tourist and having trouble speaking to the lady at reception when who should show up but the couple from Bonito where the guy translated for me and his wife at the snake place. Yip, I've certainly been blessed quite a few times on this trip with English speakers at just the right time. So after finding my nice flash room (with air conditioning, it was very, very hot)I had lunch then went for a swim and then we went on a boat trip. We saw quite a few birds and my first capivara, which is the biggest rodent in the world, but has no tail and mainly eats plants. We then went piranha fishing which I somehow wasn't that good at but still caught a few fish. While we were fishing we were watched by a one-eyed jacare which we later fed some of the fish we caught. Going back we fed some more jacares (see video) and then our guide called some birds, two falcons, or some bird like that, and a king fisher, who he feed by chucking the fish into the water and then the birds would grab them (check out video). Then we came back for an afternoon tea of piranha soup, terere, popcorn, and cake while an emu wandered around trying to get a bite to eat and we fed a parrot some of the popcorn. Then later I had another marvelous dinner after which we then went on a night safari. Unfortunatly we didn't see a jaguar, just lots of of jacare and capivaras, however we did see an ocelot and a fox. The ocelot was trying to eat a baby jacare.
The next day i had a good breakfast and then went on another safari. We saw an anteater with a baby on it's back! We also saw lots of birds; shags, hawks, storks, and lots of other birds. Then it was back to Miranda by mototaxi. After discussing for a while what I could do with the rest of my time here with the people back at the pousada, it was decided to ring Marcus and see what he was up to. So later on that day i found myself in the back of a ute with Marcus and his mates to go to a "swimming hole". Well it was an irrigation channel but hey good enough. It was right next to the road and the irrigation channel passed underneath the road by two big pipes. It was decided that we should go through them. It took quite a while for the guys to get the courage to go through it because they were a bit scared that there might be an anaconda or some other nasty in there but eventually they got going (I would have gone first but thought if there really was something there I'd probably be the one with the least experience of dealing with such things). It was sort of like a water slide except with a bit more water, so that you had to hold your breath for the first few seconds. Later on that day I then had a good feed with Marcus and his mates at a nice little restaurant (the meat is so good here). One of his mates is an English guy called Stewart who Marcus met in New Zealand and now has been living with Marcus in Miranda for the last 5 months teaching English. After our feed Marcus and Stewart said that they had to go and teach English now, so I said I'd come along. The funny thing was that they were teaching some of the staff at the hotel that I had first visited when i first got to Miranda. It was quite good fun and the guy that i worked with was making some good progress. Then after we finished teaching we headed off to the gym which is not really the best place to be when its that hot, even though it was 10:30 at night. Quite a bit of time was spent at the drinking fountain. After this we went and bought some fresh orange juice and then called it a night. The next day the tour that I was going to go on was canceled, and after looking at my other options I realised that most of them were far too expensive, so I spent the day swimming in the pool, going for a walk, and then I met Marcus in the supermarket just as I was about to buy some lunch. So off we went to his house where his Mum had prepared a good feed. After that Marcus had to help out some tourists that had come to his family's fazenda which was closed for repairs that week. So we led them to another fazenda and I went along for the ride. After this Marcus had to work so I ended up having a lazy afternoon. The next day it was back to Campo Grande on the bus and then a flight back to Curitiba (which was delayed by an hour) where Patrik picked me up.
(Note: the small photos were not taken by me but just thought I'd stick them in so you get the idea, the batteries for my camera weren't working very well so I wasn't able to get all the photos I would have liked to have have got.)