The Pantanal.

Captain's log, Day 173: From Manaus, Brazil, Audrey and I headed to Campo Grande: our southern gateway to the wetland region known as the Pantanal. As the Amazon had, the Pantanal's 150,000 plus square kilometers reminded us just how HUGE Brazil is...and how varied the climates are. Though it was the worst month for rain near Manaus, it was a dry period for the Pantanal. Our guides told us that 3/4 or more of the wetlands are submerged in times of flood, and showed us some impressive water lines from especially wet years in the lodge. Despite the dry period, we were treated to an excess of capibaras, caiman, pisote (coati), snakes, giant river otters, and marsh deer...not to mention the birds. 115 life list species; 159 species in four days in total (and 70 life listers/92 species on the first day). 

The Pantanal.

Famed for high density of big cats--Jaguars. The presence of such species as the Maned wolf, Bush dog, Giant otter, and Giant anteater--or my personal favorites, Jabiru and Hyacinth macaws. Another National Geographic Special dream come to life.

Part of the Pantanal has been declared as a national park under the Ramsar convention (for protection of world wetlands and bird habitat): some 1,350 square kilometers of the 150,000 square kilometer area, meaning that ranching, agro-industry, commercial overfishing, poaching, and deforestation are threatening the wetlands in most of the area that remains.

Upon arriving in Campo Grande, we booked a tour through our hostel (Hostel Campo Grande--noticing a pattern?), and headed out for another four days in the jungle the following morning. 

Campo Grande, from a distance. We didn't do much exploring beyond the supermarket to check for non-instant Melitta Coffee (lookin' at you, Pete). 

They have a lot of mate here. 

The Brazilian version of sugar cane liquor: cachaça. So Costa Rica has guaro, Ecuador has zhumir, Peru stands apart with its Pisco...

......and off to the Pantanal! There were a number of red-rock plateaus in the forest leading up to the wetland reminiscent of the Tepuis tabletop mountains in the north...

And ranchland reaching far and wide out from the road. We drove for four hours to get to the pickup that would take us down the dirt roads to our destination within the National Park. 

We met some nice Danish guys on the way there, and pal'ed around with them during our stay. Here our guides have decided that they liked the rooftop seat (there was actually a seat cushion nailed to the roof of the pickup here). 

The minute we turned into the park, the Capibaras were EVERYWHERE. With BABIES. Swimming dangerously close to the Caiman lurking in algae-green pools, at times...

My friend Matt Webb was quick to point out that Capibaras are R.O.U.S.: Rodents of Unusual Size, for those who remember their Princess Bride quotes. 

Lots of Caiman lurking on the edge of every pond. Jacare, if we're speaking the lingo. 

Hey there, Audrey! We called a bank of the Paraguay River home, right next to the old Porto do Manga. They told us that the port used to be a lot bigger, with a bustling international market, before there were roads through the Pantanal, and plane travel for shipping became more common. Wild to imagine that a hundred and fifty years or so back, the area where we were supported five international credit unions and a bustling natural resource exchange...

The sunrises and sunsets were out of this world. This was the winner: sunrise on the second day. 

Our small lodge! Don't be fooled by the size: there were thirteen of us crammed into a fourteen-cot dorm for the time we were there. It was all good...save the one night the fan broke. 

Not that we cared. So much wildlife to see. 

Hyacinth Macaws were one of the first birds that got me stuck on avian life. I remember meeting Max, an older Hyacinth at the National Aviary, when I was ten years old. To see them free-flying in their natural habitat was a remarkable gift. 

Included in our tour was a horseback ride through the dry marshes. 

This turned out to be mildly exhilirating to those of us who had less experience on horseback.
Meaning all of us. Definitely a once-in-a-lifetime thing. 

Scarlet macaws, also free-flying and abundant. 

As were the monk parakeets!

To you bird nerds out there, check out Campo Flickers. Talk about a gorgeously orange bird! 

Some less-than-wild puppies were also in abundance at one of the base camps where we would lunch when between jungle treks. Hey there, cutie. 

It was wild to see the typically-flooded areas of the Pantanal---we'd stumble on Caiman skulls far away from the green ponds where they concentrate themselves in drier times, and there were fields of dried plant stalks that hinted at how lush it must be during times of flood...

Though we were told that the bugs are even worse in that time, so we were mildly grateful to be there in the time we had chosen. 

If you can see from this picture, our guides all went BAREFOOT through the marshes. Total madness, with all the snake-covering dried leaves, ants with something to prove, and spiky vine-bits.  They called this guide "Anaconda". No one seemed to be able to explain to us why. 

The bird diversity was astounding. Trogons hiding beyond every bridge, toucans in the canopies, storks and herons and parrots galore...

....and cheap, cold, Brazilian beers after long, hot days. 

We made some Austrailian friends that really appreciated these. Not that we didn't. 

Surprisecapibara everywhere!

Niko, our other guide, looking at what we ended up calling the "iguana tree". The fourth bridge from home (the road was a completely straight line through to the River Paraguay) had a bush that was always full of iguanas. 

Open skies. 

(And bird feathers because birds.)

We could walk from our lodge into the little port town nearby, and watch the sunset from the deck of a parked flatboat. Audrey and I did this every night we were there. 

If the birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians were so diverse, I can't believe what a treat it would be to be an entomologist in the Pantanal. Cool hawk moth (or similar moth to hawk moths?) outside the lodge. We would have loved to have an expert from each branch of animal life with us at all times on this trip. Or every trip, really. 

We got to see one large fuel barge headed down the Paraguay, on our final day. It was a jarring reminder that ranching isn't the only threat to river life in the pantanal. 

It also rained all the last day, so we didn't take many more pictures of our trip out. 

Some of those maned wolves in a field guide provided by Anaconda. 

Wild fish, too. Where are our Icthyologist friends when we need them...

What you can't see is the caiman we were watching as it laid its eggs in the middle of this pile of  dried eichornia weed. In the same morning, we learned what noises Giant River Otters make when noisily dispatching of large fish. This noise subsequently accounted for about 17% of the sounds Audrey and I made on our final day together in Brazil. 

And with a half-night back in Campo Grande, we were off. Audrey headed to Rio for Carnaval, and I snapped this shot flying out of Campo Grande on my way to Panama City, and on to Guatemala. 

Which is where I sit as I write this up: Peten region, near the town of Flores, and Tikal National Park. The southern border of the Mayan Biosphere Reserve.

More about Peten and ARCAS, the next chapter, soon.

Cheers, all.

Iquitos to Manaus: Meeting of Rivers

Captain's Log, Day 173: Wiriting from Peten, Guatemala, I finally have found some time to look back on the trip I took with one Audrey Wilson down the Amazon (Solimoes) river between Iquitos, Peru and Manaus, Brazil a few weeks ago. The Brazilian Amazon turned out to be more forest than I`d ever believed there could be--despite the fact that its five million plus square kilometers are around eighty percent of what they used to be. We sighted over 250 bird species in the week and a half of the Iquitos and Manaus leg of our Brazilian adventure, 91 of which were life list species for me...I have to thank Audrey for putting up with all the time I made us spend on the boat deck, glued to our binoculars, and the small crowds of confused people who were eventually suckered into joining us. 

Backstory.

In summer of 2012, I worked with a herpetologist and erstwhile Pomona professor named Dr. Peter Zani in Eastern Oregon. Pete told me stories of the boat he took between Iquitos, Peru and Manaus, Brazil, where they strung hammocks up on deck and served the meals from the lower cabin kitchen. When I began scheming this year abroad, I made it a point to include this particular travel oddity in my plans.

The adventure did not disappoint. 

Coming out of Ecuador, I spent a well-lit and bustling night in the Lima airport with a couple of Cusqueñas, some Spanish to practice, and a Tennessee Williams play--the latest incarnation of the Neil Gaiman book I started out with in September, and have traded in hostels and book exchanges as I´ve gone along. 

Then I flew into Iquitos. I thought -this- would be more rainforest than I had ever seen in my life, but I hadn`t yet seen Manaus from the air...

They had a veterinary school for wildlife studies in Iquitos! I was impressed by that. Will have to look into it when I have more time. I met up with Audrey later that morning, and we wandered/motocar'ed around town all day. 

We heard that the market above the shantytown of Belen in Iquitos was a wild place, so we went to check it out. 

In Peru, Chicha is a drink made with purple corn---different than what Ecuador calls chicha. The story is the same with horchata in different countries of Latin America--Horchata as Los Angeles and Mexico know it is different than what the Ecuadorians know. 

Unfortunately, the market proved what I had been told about Peru by various other biologists and conservation projects: people capture a number of Amazon endemics to sell as pets or eat, and are largely unchecked in Peru. There were quite a few street stalls selling what looked like yellow spotted river turtle, and a few tables at the market as well. 

The fish were strange and many. 

Peccary, guatina, guatusa, and brocket deer were also featured. I must have missed the chance to upload the pictures of the crocodile and caiman tails being sold. 

Lots of fresh charcoal everywhere. Things we don`t really see in the states. 

We didn`t end up spending a night in Iquitos, because we found out that the last boat out for the weekend left at six that night. Here`s a view from our second-floor spot on the four-level `slow boat` to Tabatinga, Brazil of the loading port below: The Maria Fernanda. 

We were packed shoulder-to-shoulder with a number of Peruvian and Brazilian neighbors---and ended up buying what turned out to be the most unabashedly tacky hammocks available in Iquitos to join the masses. So much color and noise; kids and very small dogs, a wooden box of nesting piegons, luggage covered in mud and belted shut. We had to batten down the hatches to keep the rain out every night. It was fantastic. 

We spent a good two hours backing in and out of the harbor at the start for reasons unknown. We were pretty amused (read: confused) at the presence of about two tons of trash on the boat stationed two spots down from us....but eventually we were underway, starting our journey at night. 

When we woke up, we were delivering goods and passengers to small Amazon River towns. The water here is 'black'---colored by the tannin runoff of white sand forests upriver, or from leaves and sediments sitting in blackwater lagoons and tributaries off of the river. 

With nothing to do but observe and make friends, we set about our business. This spider was one of the first friends we made. It introduced itself to Audrey`s luggage quite early in the morning. 

Boatlife: Audrey, sharpening her pencil with her swiss army knife. Hehe. 

The towns got bigger and smaller as we hit wider parts of the river, or peeled off  for side-trips up smaller tributaries, past ranchland and fishing villages. 

Audrey looking intellectual. 

We brought a lot of industrially processed goods to many of the towns we visited. A handful of passengers would usually leave with their respective loads of wood, bricks, rebar, concrete...usually a family, or a few men who looked as if they could be related. 

The towns had similarities--wooden houses on stilts, lots of dugout canoes with motors added. 

We got slowly closer to the Brazilian border over the three days we spent on the boat. 

The storms and sunsets were truly spectacular. Boat-rattling thunder and driving rain, usually at night. 

A group of high-school-age Peruvians who were from the last border town before Brazil trailed us around with varying levels of cologne application. We eventually consented to pose for Gringa selfies after we`d all had a guitar-and-cultural-differences-conversation night. Heh. 

And of course, we birded. From first light to last, and all the nightjars we could glimpse in the boat-lights beyond. There were a number of people who joined us, including the cutest of six year old girls---Audrey and I will never forget the way she squealed or the way her eyes shone when she first used our binoculars. The best. 

Finally, the boat spit us out on a spit of land at the triple-border of Colombia, Brazil, and Peru. We thought briefly about border-hopping into Colombia to check out a national park said to be fantastic for parrot diversity (Rio Pure and/or Cahuinari), but upon figuring out the dance we had to accomplish to make it across the border, we decided to just head on. 

Welcome to Peru signs! If you want stories about how deserted the customs offices are, or how hard you have to really TRY to declare yourself as entering Brazil legally at the Tabatinga entrypoint, shoot me an email. Hehe. 

At least we were able to exchange the last of our nuevo soles (Peruvian currency) for reais (Brazilian currency). We did a little research in Tabatinga, and found out that a lot of foreigners in recent years (notably non-European foreigners) run into a lot of trouble trying to go further in to Brazil from boats between Tabatinga and Manaus. Also, we were shocked to find that the grand majority of Brazilians, even at the border, spoke no spanish whatsoever, and that Portugese is fairly difficult to understand, even with a Spanish-Italian language background. With this in mind and some cabin-fever for forest-trekking, we took a flight to Manaus instead of a boat, and dipped into our budgets for a four-day Amazon tour near where the Solimoes (what they call the Amazon between Tabatinga and Manaus) and Rio Negro meet. 

So....MANAUS. 

Manaus saw its peak before the 1900s, when the rubber trade made the city the richest and largest along the Amazon. It has since come upon harder times, though the economy in the latter half of this century has been bolstered by a number of foreign industries coming in and taking advantage of the cheaper raw materials. 

We chose the Hostel Manaus as our checkpoint, located just two blocks below the Teatro Amazonas (pictures to come). A lucky choice--turns out a wildlife vet who was just returning from a stint in South Africa was in our dorm room! She had trained at the Mata Ciliar Association near Sao Paolo. Really interesting to get her perspective on conservation and veterinary training in Brazil: sounds like they're doing a good job! It sounds like laws against wildlife trafficking are enforced much more than they are in Peru, at least...

...Brazilian advertising. Really crazy to see the difference between the more conservative places I was in Ecuador, and the sex shop advertisements and busty women on every corner in Manaus...

The food was delicious most places we went. Really salty meats,a wide variety of spices, strong coffee. 

Goiaba, too! There were a number of new fruits. Noteworthy are the frequency of Acai and Guarana in beverages and smoothies. 

We wandered down to the docks and past a lot of the colonial-style buildings. So many colors and choruses of French-sounding, rapid Portugese. 

We tried some of the Acai! Nice and cold in the sweating heat, but a bit...chalky. 

This is a picture of a Pirarucu: one of the largest freshwater fish. It can reach up to 3m long, and many locals grill it up and sell its scales as decorations. 

We got some advice from the hostel on the day we had to kill before our tour, and headed to INPA on the public buses. INPA is a research property funded by the government and a number of industries in Brazil (Petrobrazil was (cringe internally) one of them). 

We went to check it out. 

They had a manatee rescue, breeding, and release program, which was awesome. 

Saw a sloth climbing down a palm in the first five minutes of our walk. Nice. 

Obligatory silly science-museum visit picture. 

Like Yarina, they had a river turtle breeding pond. 

It was crawling with garbage-can-lid-sized river turtles of a handful of species. Hey there, buddy. 

A lot of good information and even better science! Check out my facebook album for more of the museum pictures (it takes less time to upload photos to facebook, for whatever reason).  Since they`re only open to the public a few hours in the morning and a few in the afternoon, and we came on a Friday, we didn't really get the chance to talk to any of the biologists working there. Maybe next time. 

This is the famous Teatro Amazonas, an operahouse built in the time of the rubber boom in Manaus. The tiled dome, painted in Brazilian flag colors, is quite the spectacle....only able to be eclipsed by spending the night in the square below the theater with the Brazilians as they pre-game carnaval with samba, bubbles, impromptu violin concerts, street markets, and plenty of Skol and Brahma (the two most common beers). 

The next morning, we headed by boat across the meeting of the rivers, and on to the Amazon. It was raining and hard to get photos of the river meeting, but here`s a Wattled Jacana walking across a pond covered in Queen Victoria lillies: a Nat Geo classic! 

It took us about four hours by flatboat, car, and motorboat to get to Lago Juma. This was my first real immersion in the ecosystem called Vareza forest (or 'floating' forest---characterized by large periods of flooding). Audrey, too. 

It was a very different kind of Amazon in a way that may be hard to explain to non tropical-biologists. It was still humid, still rainy, still mindblowingly rich in biodiversity, and as ever, lots of people had cleared areas for grassy ranchland leading up to the lake. The Vareza itself had a thick canopy, and was almost reminiscent of mangrove forests, except the trunks of trees were sticking out of the water instead of root systems reacing in. We had the fortune to arrive in the highest rain level month, meaning we got the full Vareza package. 

A ranchhouse off Lago Juma. It was disorienting to discover that they had electric and communications cables reaching into the communities around the lake; in the same breath that you announced the presence of a roosting hawk-eagle, you could hear the soap operas from an open-air house around the bend. 

We called Pousada Caramuri our home for the next three nights. 

...and made friends with 8 year old Gadriela despite language barriers. 

Since it was raining a lot of the time, we only got a few pictures. Here`s one of our Argentinian friend, Nestor, partaking in the neverending birdwatching. 

More pirhana fishing.
When in the Amazon....

We also spent Valentine's Day in the forest, and had to improvise on cards. I used a cover page from my bird book. Oops. Heh. 

Our guide, Paolo, is showing some of our European friends (Estonians and a World Regatta Champ from Finland---quite the characters) local delicacies. 

Firefly larva that grow in coconuts and TASTE like coconuts. Yum yum yum. The Estonians weren't too keen until I played guinea pig. They're a lot like the beetle larvae from the Napo...but eating them ungrilled was...different. 

The type of coconut where these particular larvae can be found. 

It was impressive how our guide could seemingly navigate the hundreds of small coves and backwater passages with familiarity. On Lake Juma alone, we boated around for hours. One night, we took an hour trip out to camp in a deeper part of the forest. 

...luxury camp, pretty close to the water. Nonetheless, the bird, primate, and amphibian diversity was markedly larger when we went even thirty some minutes by boat away from the ranchland. Harpy Eagle dreams were had (sadly, to no avail). 

We did spend a crazy night telling fireside stories with the Estonians and our regatta champ from Finland. We gathered wood and cooked ourselves a fine chicken barbecue; the Estonians produced a large quantity of Russian Vodka they had brought with them (they are never without). At the end of the night, we were treated to cautionary tales of the 'Amazon bear', which was news to me and Audrey. Our guide said he'd seen them, and not to throw our chicken bones in the fire lest we attract one. We later looked up the name he gave us--Mapinguari--to find that the creature is as-of-yet unknown to science. So, Amazon bigfoot.

We really got rained out on our last day, so sorry for the lack of further pictures! We headed out of Manaus and headed south to the Pantanal, which you can read about in the following post. 

If you ever get the chance to fly over the Brazilian Amazon, do it.

I think it's safe to say that when I finish with this year of peregrinating, if there's a single image that gives me the most hope for the future of our planet and its conservation, it's how much forest is still LEFT in Brazil and Peru. If we work fast, and work smart, and keep saving it...there really is hope, even though the ranchland encroaching seems to go just as far as the green when you hit the south-central part of the country...

There's still so much to save, and that's important to see and know.

More posts to come soon.
Cheers, all.