Flying Back To The Jungle

Saturday 3 March

It seemed no time at all before the alarm was ringing and we were struggling out of bed. In these circumstances I am always pleased that Colin makes me get everything ready the night before – everything packed and clothes laid out. When we arrived in the lobby our driver was already there, so our luggage was quickly stowed by the extremely efficient hotel staff and in no time we were off on the half hour journey to the airport. When booking in, we didn’t realize that the hostess wasn’t booking our cases all the way through to Campo Grande – only as far as our first stopover at Sao Paulo - until after Colin’s case had sailed away on the conveyor belt. This caused a bit of confusion and we spent some time at the desk - while the queue behind us grew ever longer – as the poor girl tried to make the necessary amendments on the computer, issue new boarding passes and luggage tags while her friend spoke desperately on her walkie-talkie to the loaders. Eventually we were told not to worry, both cases would arrive in safely Campo Grande – we would see.

Our next diversion was at the security check, where I was asked to unpack my hand luggage – oops I had forgotten to remove my tweezers from my wash bag. I had successfully passed through the gate by now, so while they were sending other items from my bag back through the scanner, I sneaked them out into my computer bag. When they checked my wash bag again, everything was ok, and I was passed through.

The flight to Sao Paulo was uneventful – with crispbread toast and cheese spread for breakfast. At transit we had to pass through security once again, but I was so busy asking if I had to unpack my computer (I have had to at most other South American airports) that my back pack went through without the man looking at the scanner picture! Whew – bit of luck. We then had a couple of hours to while away, so I blogged. Even though we had a WIFI connection in the airport, the site came up as “very unsafe”, so we were not able to catch up on pictures of Timothy at this time. Juz sent us a text to say that the Saturday Telegraph Travel Section headlines at home were about grey wrinklies who may not want to hang glide (oh yes they do), but want to go on exciting long haul holidays – showing a picture of the Christ the Redeemer statue which we had visited only a couple of days ago! – so we may have to write a letter, after we have caught up with the article. Luckily Colin checked the gate number regularly, as half way through our wait they changed the gate from 6 to 1 – which of course, was on the other side of the airport – with no announcement – but that’s what we’ve come to expect at South American airports.

We arrived safely in Campo Grande where a young met us and was amazed at our luggage – he seemed to be saying we were only allowed 20 kgs between us – not the 50 or so we were carrying with cases and hand luggage! But he managed to squeeze us and the bags into his small Kango van and we set off to find the Pantanal. I was in the back and admit to having a snooze on the way, but the young lad kept chatting to Colin and kept him awake. I think there was a short shower on the way – I seem to remember the windscreen wipers going for a few minutes, but it came to nothing, and the sun was shining again by the time I was properly awake. We drove first through flat green fields with lots of the white Brahmin cattle we had seen in the Australian outback, which later changed to areas of orchards and then scattered trees and bushes as we neared a broken line of mountains, marking the edge of the Pantanal – described as a “soup bowl” or “sink” in the plain. It is the largest wetland area in the world, where all the rivers of the vast plain, south of the Amazon basin, drain into. Our surroundings became very wet, with flooded rivers, huge oxbow lakes and large areas of grassland under water. The wet season here is between December and March, and just last night, there had apparently been torrential rain.

The road was another “roman” style construction – straight for as far as the eye could see. Our destination was Aquidauana, 145 kms from Campo Grande, a small sleepy town, acting as a market centre for all the farms and habitation around the southern Pantanal. We were very near the border of Brazil with both Paraguay and Bolivia – so we had come almost a full circle on our tour of South America. We exited the highway into the town and after a short while turned on to a red dirt track (the dark red soil reminded me of our trip through the centre of Australia) past a few dwellings (which seemed more like rough brick-built shacks to me) to find a small airstrip with about four small Cesna planes looking like giant butterflies with wheels – each with a propeller, and seeming no larger than a meccano model! We now agreed with our driver – how was all our luggage going to fit in the plane, with us, the guide and the pilot, and still take off?! To make matters worse a young lad and another man came along armed with sackfuls of goodies – we were not sure what they were, but they looked like bags of flour or other dry products, and maybe large coconuts – but there were about four of these large sacks being shouldered towards our plane, together with our new guide’s rucksack and computer bag.

The pilot introduced himself, and so did Ariane, our new guide, a young lady in her late twenty’s who lives with her parents in Campo Grande and works for a company selling wood to Europe, but does guiding in the Panatanal as a relaxation when her Belgian boss is not in the country – a special arrangement as he and his family were on her first ever tour as a guide. All the luggage and goodies were eventually fitted into the tail end of the plane – would they ever be able to get them out again? I was told to get aboard first, as I would be sitting next to the pilot in the front – I even had a steering column and loads of dials in front of me – would I be helping to fly the plane too?! Then the pilot got in, pushed my computer bag further under my legs, and moved our seats forward till I was almost touching the controls. Colin and Ariane scrambled into the two back seats and we were all told to put on our seatbelts – I wondered why!! – not good if we needed to bail out quickly! The pilot wound up a wheel down by his feet, and pushed three knobs in the centre of the control panel and the engine spluttered to life – it was very noisy, and the pilot put in ear plugs! He had his window open, so that he could signal to others on the ground. This wasn’t exactly Concorde – more like Dennis in “Out of Africa”! We started creeping forward slowly, bumping down a mown strip of grass to the end of the field, where we did a full 180 degree turn and stopped. The pilot spoke to someone on the radio – good to know someone was keeping an eye on us from somewhere – and then he put his foot on the accelerator and we hurtled forward – eventually pulling the steering column towards him to take us up into the air! The control panel in front of me was so tall I couldn’t see over it without craning my neck a further few inches – Colin said later that he didn’t think the pilot could see over the top either – perhaps he just flew on the compass reading, and by looking left and right for landmarks.

Our route followed a meandering brown river, where we could see remnants of ancient ox-bow lakes as much as a kilometre from the river course today. The whole area seemed very wet with lots of flooded fields and cattle like miniature white specks on the slightly higher ground – there is only a difference of about 30 – 40 metres in height of the ground over the entire Pantanal. The journey was to take about half an hour, and about halfway through, the pilot signaled for me to take the controls!!!! - I had forgotten to ask where he stored the parachutes. I immediately pulled the steering column towards me and we suddenly lurched up higher into the sky – oops – I pushed back and we went back down to normal height again – I found it quite difficult to keep the plane steady – winds buffeted from the sides, and the slightest correction on the column, and the plane seemed to go into overdrive. After a few minutes I thought it safer to give the controls back to the professional – but another first for my year! We were flying at just under 3,000 feet at a speed between 135 and 160 miles and hour.

The pilot pointed out our destination – a series of red tiled buildings beside the Rio Negro, now a wide expanse of black water, meandering through the flat plain. Ariane said she had never seen the area so flooded – even though the water is always high at this time of year. We landed safely on another grass airstrip, where we bumped and bobbled as the wheels hit the ground - it was almost like “Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines! - except we weren’t wearing flying helmets. We all bailed out and left the men of the farm to extricate our luggage. We were taken up to the main building (we passed some other rooms on the way, but they are too close to the flooded river to use at the moment), and given fresh watermelon and lemon juice – mixed – it was delicious.

The property was built around the 1920’s – and the house still has the feel of those colonial days – of course they have added mosquito screens at the windows, electric lights and bathrooms and a modern kitchen, but much of the furniture and many of the fittings seem to have originated from those early days. There was a more modern television lounge with a DVD player, and orange sectional seating, but the dining tables on the verandah and in the dining room were made from thick long slabs of old wood and could probably relate many fascinating stories from the past. There was a small church next to the farmhouse, which was built by the original owner when his daughter died young. – the doors were open and I would not have been surprised to see a priest emerge from the shadows. Fazenda Rio Negro was originally built as a cattle ranch (fazenda in Portuguese) but some years ago was acquired by Conservation International with money donated from the head of Intel. The company still allows cattle farming on the lands, although no products, such as meat or milk, or cheese, can be sold outside of the farm. Some of the workers who have lived and worked here all their lives were allowed to stay on and the last owner has a small house in the grounds so that he can return to visit the farm. Researchers from all over the world come to stay every few weeks, to investigate the ecological systems operating around this area – animals, rivers, plant life and people – how they interact and survive. We would see many marker poles that are used for measuring data in their projects on our tours around the farmland.

We paid a quick visit to our room, before visiting the old chicken range – now a dilapidated wooden structure but still with wired sides, even though they no long raise chickens – where a giant anteater was curled up in a shady corner, amongst what looked like paper cement sacks. It was dark grey and cream, with a massive bushy tail acting like a blanket folded back over him. We could see his very long narrow snout – dark grey, with tiny eye sockets set well back on his head. He seemed very fast asleep, and totally unaware we were taking photos of him. We were then called for lunch. Everything here` is home cooked, and lunch was a typical Brazilian meal – braised beef, with rice, beans (like the Mexican ones but not spicy), salads including avocado which grow as large as a small honeydew melons on the farm, and lettuce and tomatoes. There was also a dish containing a flour of manioc – which is mixed with different ingredients – and today it was banana. Desserts were all very sweet, but I tried the deep red guava mould – which was solid and very hard to cut, even with a knife, but very sickly - with some mild cheese. I followed this by what I thought was going to be green tea, but ended up tasting a bit like coal tar – I will have stick to the chamomile in future. Feeling absolutely sated, we had an hour to rest before meeting up with Ariane again, for a trip on the Rio Negro.

The river was about 100 metres from the house at present – during the dry season it is 250 metres or more to the water – and often larger groups visitors cannot use the boat at all, as there is insufficient depth for the boat to float – or sometimes they have to get out and drag the boat along the dry course till they find sufficient water for it to float again! We definitely won’t be having that problem. Straightaway we saw two caiman, lying in the shade of a tree in the water, with just their noses and yellow eyes out of the water – they were about three metres long and keeping watch on what we were up to. Sitting on the bank was a striated heron, staring unblinkingly out over the water – perhaps looking for tell-tale ripples of fish close by - he seemed completely unconcerned by us arriving at the water’s edge. There were other water birds and ducks swimming around which we watched, and we hadn’t even set sail yet.

The boat was a long rectangle with rows of two comfy seats that swiveled to enable you to watch the wildlife on the banks as we passed. Colin and I sat up front, with Ariane behind and Lico, one of the field guides from the fazenda, manning the tiller. Lico is Pantanalian, about mid-thirties and married to the cook. We followed the meandering course along the inlet to the main river – the Rio Negro – about a kilometre away. The sun was beating down relentlessly and we were grateful for the slight breeze created by the speed of the boat. Everywhere the trees were reflected in the still dark brackish water – for nine months of the year aquatic vegetation grows in the still inlets and along the river banks, but for three months many of these areas are dry, and bushes and shrubs spring up as the aquatic plants die. Consequently when the rains come and the river water rises, the tops of many small trees and shrubs are exposed above the water. There are even candelabra cactuses, like we saw in the Atacama Desert, growing along the river sides, springing up from the water – they have adapted to the conditions here and don’t grow in the wet season.

We found ourselves skirting islands of bushes and shrubs growing up in the middle of the waterway. The river itself was a wide band of dark water, meandering gently up and downstream from the fazenda and the trees of the forest reached right down to the river – there is usually a sandy beach between water and vegetation. Immediately we saw several Amazon kingfishers skimming at great speed across the width of the river and usually back again to perch on a branch just above the water level – just checking on what was about. They are lovely looking birds – dark green with black and white markings on their face and wings and a rusty chest – but kingfishers make a raucous, almost grating call as they fly – I felt that they should have had a lilting song. We saw hawks and vultures soaring above and lots of different birds native to this region, that Colin probably had heard of before, but not me. We did see two different kinds of woodpeckers tapping high up on tree trunks, similar to our black and white birds, but with red crests. And I got to use my binoculars a lot – I almost qualified for a certificate in bird watching! We didn’t see many mammals as when the water is high they tend to move away to drier plains, but there was a never-ending myriad of birds in the trees or flying above us. We sailed up-river for more than an hour, before making our way back downstream, taking a different route along the inlet to the farmstead.

By now it was after 18.00 and the sun was setting in a huge orange ball, bathing all the surrounding sky and landscape in bright fiery tones. When we arrived back at the house, we went to see the spiny anteater which had just woken up. He was pacing the “cage” – his huge tail sweeping from side to side behind him – it was more than a metre long, with stripy hairs about a quarter of a metre (9 ins?) long. He “nosed” around looking for the open door – but when he found it he semed undecided on whether to leave. We left him to settle as he seemed to be becoming a bit agitated. On the way back to the house we looked for the full moon – we had seen somewhere there was to be a full moon tonight, but when we looked skywards, all we could see was a very thin yellow crescent – very strange – especially as we had been watching the moon for the last new nights in Rio, and it was definitely a huge white ball there, and even this morning on the way to the airport we had seen it in its fully glory. There was just time for a quick shower and hairwash before dinner – I had skipped my shower this morning so I was probably in great need!

We had been told that dinner would be in the formal dining room – a large square room, next to the kitchen, with a real family wooden table that could easily seat twelve in the centre of the room and a couple of smaller tables in the window alcoves – one of which was laid up for the three of us. On the sideboard were dishes of chicken in an olive and red pepper sauce, mashed potato (they must have known Colin was coming), salads of aubergine and chives, and tomato and lettuce, with beans (I think they serve these at every meal), rice and boiled manioc (a bit like a drier, less sweet version of our parsnips). Desserts were once again very sweet – sickly rich sweet – there was a very smooth silky caramel cream, and a small sponge cake with chocolate swirled on the top and evaporated milk – whipped thick and creamy and … sweet. I had just a small spoon of the caramel and some tea, but Colin tried everything, loving the fact that he can have several helpings of desserts. During the whole meal we were attacked by flocks of midges, which I hated – around one of the ceiling lights were millions of these little flies, all trying to get close to the bulb. They were a real nuisance and I just kept batting any that came near me away, but it was an impossible task.

After dinner we went out to look at the stars, particularly the Southern Cross, which is almost overhead here. We found it immediately, but looking for the moon again, we saw a larger segment now – about three quarters of the full circle - still very creamy and slightly hazy, the final part covered by a black “cloud”. It looked like an eclipse, but we hadn’t heard anything about one occurring at this time of the year, here.

Feeling extremely exhausted by this time – we had been up since 04.00 – we made our way to bed. Even with the fan and the air conditioning going the room was still warm. There were several bugs flying around, which Colin dealt with admirably (!), while I just climbed into bed and slid under the sheet to escape anything that might still be zooming around! Living in the jungle, or back with nature, is fine till all those flying things come out to play!

PS The next morning the news was full of the total eclipse that had taken place the night before and was visible all over Brazil!! If we hadn’t been so tired, perhaps we would have understood what was happening from the beginning. Fancy being in the right place at the right time to see a total eclipse of the moon and missing most of it. It must have taken about four hours for the sun to pass right across the face, so we probably wouldn’t have been able to watch it all.