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Getting back to nature.....

The last few days has been wicked. In stark contrast to Rio, we've travelled west to the Pantanal. We spent a night in Corumba (pretty much on the Brazil-Bolivia border), where we organised a tour from - 4 days on a farm 8 hours in the middle of the Pantanal, everything included. We were lucky cos the guys we met who organised it all were legends - Diego and raphael - they crammed us in a car and gave us a quality tour of Corumba, taking us onto a manned bridge over the Rio Paraguay, from which we could see the whole of Corumba (which is big - 100,000!!!), and Bolivia in the distance. They then took us up this hill, passing the stations of the cross every 50m until we reached the top where a statue of christ stood, lit up. Again another amazing view, felt quite priveldged as clearly not a touristy spot.

We set off to the farm the following morning in the jeep - the journey was so much fun, off road stuff over savanah, jungle, swampy bits, Walter our driver is the next Colin McCrae!!! Saw loads of wildlife on the way, storks, vultures, iguanas, capivaras, deers, toucan, fox the list is endless. The farm was quality. Completely self sufficient, they grew loads of fruit trees 8everything seems to edible!!!), had loads of cows, hens, pigs (one of which was lying on a bench being skinned when we arrived!!) , they used solar power for leccy and a deep water aquifer for freshwater, it was ace.

Paulo, our guide organised a range of activities for us. He was a bit of a legend actually, spoke really good englisha nd had such an amazing knowledge of the bush - could tell the time precise to 5 mins by just looking at the Sun and its shadows! he also had amzing eyesight, casually spotting a load of animals all the time. We did a few treks where we tracked howler monkeys, followed tapier footprints, unfortunatly missed out on seeing one though. Saw an anteater and armadillo too, anteaters are so weird looking!!! We also did pirahna fishing, which involved boating down a river and fishing whilst being accompanied by a few crocs alongside (fish for tea that night too!!!), Paulo found it funny  to tease them with Pirahnas, we wern't quite as amused!!! The highlight for me was the horse riding in the savannah and jungle. It was ace, even though none of us had ever been on a horse in our lives, yet we all managed to canter and even gallop!!! It was ace, me and Doug had a bit of cowboy action, chasing a few herds around!!!

Although we did loads we still had a lot of chill out time in the hammocks, and on the last night moved them to under the stars, the sky was quality. The last morning we got up at 3.00 am to do a night expedition in the jeep (headlights none existent so flashlight held by some dude in the back!!), this was cool, saw a load of animals - anteaters, fox, boars - and then we watched the sunise. Quality trip which I would fully recommend  if you're ever in the area!

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