Estamos em Pantanal Jungle Lodge
Pantanal Jungle Lodge – our home for 2 nights and 3 days of awesomeness 🙂 We had finally made it to the Pantanal and we were excited… We had 5 actvities to look forward to, and hopefully animals and birds to spot!
Pantanal Jungle Lodge is on the Miranda River and after check-in there was no time wasted as we dived into the activity schedule…
Our first activity was Piranha fishing… pole and line in hand and bait on hook we dangled our lines into the mighty Miranada River… we waited and we waited… others yelled and screamed with excitement as they caught their first piranhas… we quietly added more bait to the hooks as the fish had managed to eat it without us catching them!!!
At the end of the fishing we – PB and I – had caught a grand total of 0 fish… beginners luck did not exist in this instance, but luckily for us though the others in our group were more proficient than us – so we still got to taste the famous piranha fish of the Pantanal for dinner (and that was in addition to the awesome buffet 🙂 )
Our second day – our only full day at the Pantanal Jungle Lodge – was an action packed day… we rose about 5:15am to go for a stroll before breakfast – birds and animals like to get up early so we thought we should too! We actually chose to do this each morning we were in the Pantanal (yes, we have changed since travelling – there is little chance that we would have been up this eary voluntarily in Sydney!!!) but it was all in the name of wildlife 🙂
After breakfast it was time for our jeep safari… 8 of us sat on the back of the vehicle beady eyes open looking for animals, while the guide sat with us pointing everything out that he saw… It was a bumpy ride on the back of the vehicle… but none of us were complaining as we were too excited as we were in the Pantanal!!!
The vehicle came to a stop and we all got out – it was time to go walking and hopefully get up close to nature 🙂 it was 10:30am, little did we know that we wouldn’t be back to the vehicle until about 3pm – so we were all at this stage in very high spirits!!!
The walk was cool – it went through farmers’ fields (approximately 95% of the Pantanal is actually privately owned farm land) and other parts of the land which are like small jungle islands in the middle of the fields. In the wet season the fields are under water, but being here in the dry season when a lot of the land had dried out means you can explore more on foot 🙂 We saw quite a lot of birds on the walk but no mammals… and the guide was really informative…
And the piece de resistance… the guide makes us all say ‘wow…’ in unison… check out how he did it…
By the end of the walk we were all very much ready for lunch… yay to the driver having it ready for us when we got back to the safari jeep 🙂
After lunch it was time to return to the lodge where we had half an hour to relax before our boat safari… the sun was setting, so it wasn’t long before the spot lights were out and we were looking for nocturnal animals and birds… our best spot was a capped heron, but our pictures are too blurred to bother sharing with you 🙁
Our final activity was on the morning of our third and final day at the Lodge…another boat safari… awesome! The boat took us down the mighty Miranda River which had many twists and turns to the mouth of the Red River (not it’s official name, but the name the locals use as there is a colour change) we only went a little way down the Red River – it was too shallow to go any further, but it was far enough… we saw the best mammal we’d seen so far – not only in the Pantanal – but on the trip so far! 🙂 no it was not a jaguar… hopefully the suspense won’t kill you, as you’ll have to wait till our ‘Animals of the Pantanal’ post is ready to find out!!! Yes, I know I’m mean!
After lunch it was time to check out and take our transfer to The Pantanal Xaraes Lodge for the second leg of our Pantanal adventure 🙂
Don’t worry, we have plenty of bird and animal pictures to delight you (or bore you!) which we’ll put up in a separate post… 🙂