Beyond the Jaguar – A trip to the Pantanal in Brazil
September 26, 2019
Why the Pantanal?
Our trip to the Pantanal in Brazil came about for one reason. A love of the big cats and wanting to see and photograph Jaguar.
Our interest in cats started when we went to India to see tigers. I think we were both surprised at how emotional we felt when we saw our first wild tiger. It’s a feeling we remember vividly and reminisce about often. This feeling and the joy and excitement of ‘hunting’ cats prompted our subsequent trip to Africa in 2011, where we saw, amongst many other things, lion, cheetah and leopard. This feeling is why we wanted to continue our cat collection. The next step, jaguar. After jaguar? There are still puma, snow leopards, cloud leopards, jaguarundi….the list goes on.
Back to the task at hand. To find jaguar we decided to go to the Pantanal in Brazil, one of the best places to see them in the wild.
The Pantanal - A quick education.
For those not in know (and pre this trip I was one of them), the Pantanal is the largest wetland in the world. It’s slightly larger than England and Wales combined, and rivals Africa in its diversity of wildlife. The majority of the Pantanal is situated in the central western part of Brazil, with its western-most edges dipping into Bolivia and Paraguay. If the Amazon is the lungs of the world, the Pantanal is its kidneys, absorbing the heavy rains and burst river banks in the summer months and slowly filtering and releasing the water during the winter (dry) months.
Even though it is very large, the majority of the Pantanal is not accessible, due to some being privately owned for cattle ranching and some being physically inaccessible because of the very nature of the wetland. In Brazil it is possible to visit two areas; The Mato Grosso region of the Pantanal in the northern part of the park, which has the Transpantaneira highway running from Pacone at its northern most point to Porto Jofre on the Cuiabá river, some 91 miles later. This only takes you about a quarter of the way into the wetlands, to give an idea of the vastness of it.
The Mato Grosso do Sul state region of the Pantanal has access from the south. There isn’t a highway, so access and moving around is more challenging and makes a multi-stop visit difficult. We wanted to see more than just jaguar and wanted to stay in a couple of different areas, so for us the Mato Grosso area in the north was the better choice.
The reality
A wetland doesn’t sound like a very pleasant place to visit. We envisaged bogs, water, a life in wellies (rubber boots to the Americans) and an abundance of mosquito. The reality is that the Pantanal, although one area, is not one giant wetland. It has a few large rivers and their deltas, thousands of lakes, and it’s all interspersed with areas of grassland and forest. This means not every wildlife spotting trip had to be in a boat (or wellies). This is why we chose two stops, the first at Araras Eco-Lodge, where the terrain was more forest, grassland and lakes. We were able to stroll around the forests and grasslands, along the tracks and on boardwalks, meaning we went at our own pace and could stop for as long as we wanted to view animals. We spent ages watching a tamandua (like an anteater) ripping apart a tasty termite nest, and who can walk away when there is a group of hooded capuchin monkeys jumping from branch to branch and hanging upside down in the trees, whilst occasionally dropping bits of branches on our heads. At our second stop we were on the Cuiabá river staying at Hotel Pantanal Norte. All our trips here were on the river, but when we spotted something, we stopped, sometimes for a long time, just floating and observing. A jaguar prowling, a family of otters fishing and feasting on their catch or a group of howler monkeys chilling out in the tree tops.
It was very chilled and made the experience very relaxing and enjoyable. Other than walking and the boats we were also able to wildlife watch on horseback, in open air jeeps and in canoes. Fantastic variety and we saw so much wildlife on every trip.
As we opted to visit the more accessible Mato Grosso, we had the fantastic Transpantaneira Highway. The “highway” is not an asphalt high speed multi lane road as the English word would suggest, but rather a 91 mile dusty, red dirt road mostly wide enough for two vehicles, but single track over the very rustic wooden bridges (rustic is my polite way of saying old, holey and somewhat warped). This is not a fast road, but actually, this is a good thing as there is so much wildlife happening on the road or in the fields and rivers on either side, that the slow journey lends itself to lots of spotting and stopping for viewing and photographs. No journey on this road will be a dull one.
The Jaguar
Our jaguar sightings all happened on boat trips on the Cuiabá river, at our second stop in the Pantanal.
Mornings started early as jaguar are more active at dawn and dusk when it is not too hot. Getting up before the sun is not the perfect holiday scenario, but absolutely necessary for good wildlife spotting. We were very much wide awake once on the boat as the initial journey is at super fast speed to get to the best places (very exciting, if a tad cold at that time of the morning). The day heats up quickly, and the pace slows to a nice amble between sightings, with lots of floating around when something was spotted.
On our first morning safari, we came across our first jaguar within 30 minutes, scratching and scenting a branch on the river bank and enjoying the warmth of the morning’s first rays of sunshine. He was an impressive male with beautiful clear markings. (Apparently the darker the markings the younger the cat. The markings get paler as the cat ages). The feeling was still the same as the first time we saw a wild cat, one of complete amazement and privilege, mixed with an unexplainable emotion. I think we were basically in awe. Jaguar are not always this easy to find. We found some on our own on smaller tributaries, some we saw because the drivers all keep in contact, letting each other know when and where they have seen something. Sometimes not ideal, as you end up sharing the river with a few other boats, but other people are quickly forgotten when there is a good sighting.
Each day followed the same format; morning safari, back to the lodge for a delicious local lunch and then back out at the end of the afternoon for another safari, inevitably returning at high speed in the pitch dark (and cold).
All in all we were very fortunate and had a total of ten separate sightings. I’ll let Clark tell the story of the jaguar below (I wasn’t there. There was a pool and sunshine and I needed to take a time out for chilling…it is a holiday after all).
After a few days of zooming about the Pantanal photographing Jaguars the girls decided they wanted an afternoon by the pool, which left the boys to go out on the boat safari alone. Full of optimism, our initial search was unsuccessful, eventually leading us to look for otter and luckily, we had a fantastic hour photographing a mother and her young eating catfish. As the sun was starting to set, we moved on for one final look for Jaguar. We were lucky enough to find a two-year-old male jaguar laying deep in the bushes. Gary (my wildlife photographer buddy) had prime spot and was clicking away, but was struggling for light. I could not see clearly, so I had to reposition, ending up stretching out across Gary’s lap to get the perfect angle, although I hadn’t realised until afterwards that I had squashed the driver’s seat and hence the driver into his steering wheel, oops. This young male was only 8-10 feet away and so I did not have to zoom, saving precious light. I managed to get the shot above (For those photographers out there, ISO at it’s max, managing shutter speed and aperture to avoid shake and get the right depth of field), one of my favourite memories of our trip (followed by a high speed boat trip back to base for a beer!)
Beyond the jaguar
Our reason for choosing the Pantanal…the jaguar. However, we knew that going there was not all about finding the world’s third largest cat. The Pantanal has a few world records of its own; the world’s largest rodent, the capybara; the world’s largest parrot, the hyacinth macaw; the world’s largest anteater; the world’s largest otter and the world’s largest concentration of caiman. And one of the biggest owls in the world. How’s that for impressive? Move over “The big 5” in Africa, The Pantanal has their own big 5.
Every day we saw new wildlife. It’s impossible not to and it’s impossible to get bored. Honestly, we could have happily stayed for another two weeks, there was still more to see. If you love wildlife, this is definitely a place to put high on the list.
To finish - the story of Blue
I said Clark and I love cats, but anyone who knows me will know that my first love is birds…especially parrots. So to be in the land of the world’s largest was very exciting for me. Imagine my delight at meeting Blue. He is not a pet. He was rescued and adopted by Araras Eco-lodge, where we stayed. He has been brought up to go back into the wild and as such comes and goes as he pleases. He is still young, but apparently when he reaches sexual maturity he will find a mate and they will fly off into the sunset together. The first thing we were told; “Don’t get too close, he bites”. Did you know the Hyacinth Macaw has the strongest jaw muscles of any other parrot? So strong in fact, they could probably bite your finger off. I can’t resist a parrot and did not follow this advice (not advised BTW), but instead went straight over to create a bond using my bird handling skills. From that moment, whenever he saw me he would come and say hello (and offer his head for a scratch).
