Pantanal Birds and Critters
The very first wild and wonderful animal I saw in the Pantanal was a Yellow Armadillo (Tatu-peba) which the unilingual driver was as excited about as I was. I remember his big delighted grin as much as the furiously burrowing and completely oblivious critter that couldn’t care less about a giant truck roaring up for a look. Being the farm girl I am, i didn’t get out of the truck. Being the person I am, I didn’t take a photo. I just remember 🙂 Also in the truck, a bit further on – it was a helluva of trip to the ranch from the airport across field after field of cattle land – there suddenly was a Brazilian Tapir (Anta). Alessandra and the driver were surprised again, as it is a nocturnal animal but there it was in all it’s glory, side on view, right next to the road showing…
Rio Rio rah rah rah!
Is there a prettier city on Earth? Blessed be Rio, crazy shaped volcanic mountains, white sand beaches, great food, music, drink and everyone is beautiful even if they aren’t. I’ve always liked that Brazilian young women are super active. Maybe it’s me but I rarely see the gals in Chile or Argentina skateboarding, surfing, biking, playing sports super competitively with the lads and, you know, sweating in public without makeup. mind you, they do have this great fuck-off-I’m-fabulous-in-slippers-and-a-robe style so they can carry off the micro flo-dental bikini even if they’re older or saggy or chubby or not toned. Love it., I Drove by the future Olympic rowing lagoon, famously filled with dead fish whenever the city fails to dredge the canal between the ocean and said lagoon. The fish, stranded, asphyxiate with occasional bad timing (like the IOC inspectors visiting). and whoa, the bay intended for rowing event –…
São Paulo Respite
The fun thing about having family in São Paulo is being able to swan in and act like a spoiled teenager. Show up at weird hours. Do laundry, raid the fridge, bounce babies on your knee, sleep a lot, neck a lot of red wine, then bounce. Flying over São Paulo is mind boggling. The biggest city in South America, with the biggest airport hub on the continent, it goes on and on and on. And on. As a Londoner it’s not as if I ain’t seen a big city before, but this one sprawls…towers upon towers interspersed with jumbled favelas and noticeably not much green. Stalled construction everywhere, but really amazing graffiti. Boys barefoot selling okra to Rolexes in their Mercedes, the poor central river so polluted it’s dead, dog walkers being dragged around by pampered breeds on leads, and the street explodes when the football is on, firecrackers…
Ola Big Water Brazil
Catching the early early bus out of Argentina, I’m in the queue behind a seven foot drag queen who sees me, shrieks ‘Hermana!’ and gives me a stubbly hug. Her compatriot joins us and they blow kisses as I roll out of town to Foz du Iguazu for the Brazilian waterfall experience. ‘Sniff’ Literally on the other side of the river but a world away! this side of the iguazu Falls are a world away in style and experience. Here it’s all slick and sleek with helicopter rides, tons of eateries, buses that shuttle you to preordained lookouts, and hordes of people who are not prepared (or willing) to walk much. There’s no wacky little rough trails here. Rather it’s all about shuffling from one selfie station to the next. And rammed! Sunday, sunny, Brazilian long weekend, it was like being on the rush hour Tube with lovely scenery. On…
Big Water Time
Yup, these are some damn big waterfalls. I am even not going to try to give you a sense of scale, I can’t. They make Niagara look like a cute cuddly dribble of water. If water could be macho, well, that’s Iguazu (here is the wiki on it). i was lucky enough to spend two days wandering the rough and wild trails on the Argentine side, when it was cloudy and cool. This side of the falls lets you get right up into them, clambering over rather worrying rickety walkways to stare right into the heart of the beast – or more specifically la Garganta do Diablo (Devils Throat). The sound and the fury of the water dropping hundreds of feet below you, soaking you to the skin and right out of Jurassic Park. I even got on the boat (as seen here) that takes you right under a waterfall –…
Paraguay, one day
In the past I have travelled this massive circle around Paraguay. Not that I was intentionally avoiding it. On the contrary it’s being the last Commie(ish) stronghold below the South American equator was a draw. And it being the earliest and biggest South American base for Jesuit missions, many of which are still standing. elsewhere in South Anerica, missions were disassembled by locals to make churches or houses – depending on the success of said mission – as they were built of stone and wood, not adobe and rush. Gotta love the Church, they build good. Paraguay is immensely wealthy (mining, oil, the once biggest dam in the world supplying 20% of Brazil’s power). And it is shockingly poor, with the lowest literacy rates on the continent. It reminded me a lot of Poland in the 1980s, with a big does of DPRK propaganda glossing it all over. It doesn’t…
Argey Bargey
After a brief touchdown in São Paulo to bounce great nephew Maddox on my knee I turned far, far South to Foz de Iguazu, the cemented-over hotel wonderland at the Tres Fonteras of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. The mighty Rio Iguazu runs right through all three countries but the poor cousin Paraguay doesn’t get to share in the glory – and money making – of the tremendous Iguazu Falls. I pelted straight to Puerto iguazu in Argentina as it’s much cheaper so also funner. And it was all immediately more familiar, and visibly poorer, than its big cousin to the north. Ah…fish empanadas! Bon a Bon chocolate bars! Dulce de leche! sipping hot Yerba mate through silver bombas (straws)! Accordion gaucho music! Malbec wine for pennies a glass! Glorious bife de chorizo! Shithole hotels! Byzantine bureaucracy! And every time I order a Quilmes beer I still snicker (tell me it…
Bonito is bonito
There’s this ongoing gag about Dilma (president of Brazil) where if something goes wrong people say it’s Dilma’s fault and then laugh. The roads around the town are a comical patchwork of pristine highway then horrific dirt roads then gravel then Tarmac again. Faded construction signs, rusted culverts that didn’t get put in. Locals just shrug and say the taxes pay for the politicians’ cows. Or that Dilma did it (then they laugh). I wonder at their patience…. Demos are happening across the country, I especially like the banging of pots as a protest tool, but the Brazilians I spoke to were shy discussing the situation. Guilherme said it best, I guess, when he explained that he was embarrassed to admit things were such a mess, and only they could clean it up…. My last day in Bonito I toiled down, and then mother flipping UP, all 400 carved stone…
The weirdos of Bonito
Some people do realise that farming is a mug’s game. Unless you’re wealthy, have lots of land, or both, it’s hard to make a go of it anywhere. Even in Bonito where the beef is so good that the Pope broke argentine hearts by choosing the meat produced at the local Fazenda Prata to be the exclusive supplier to the Vatican. So when a smallholder sold all his stock to fund the cleanup of a massive 125 metre deep garbage filled sinkhole and the planting of indigenous Savannah bush and trees on his land, the locals put it down to a mild case of crazy. Turns out he was intrigued by his grandad’s stories of macaws living in the hole, before good ole boys used them for target practice, and thought it’d be nice to bring them back. Twenty years on and it’s a gorgeous green park with dozens of red…
Pantanal fantastical
Rural people have a certain commonality, methinks. I am instantly comfortable with the Barra Mansa farm. Quiet polite witty hard working farm folk, big skies, beautiful sunsets, homemade food, the smell of cow shit in the morning….I’m getting homesick. my host is a locally famous musician, my translator is a lovely gal who is as excited by seeing birds and animals as I am. my guide (guard?) is patient, calm, carries three knives at all times and is charmed when I clean my own fish and share my Werthers butterscotch candies. It’s so great being here without other tourists, everyone is casual and relaxed….I have the feeling most other guests expect to be served hand and foot… It’s one glorious adventure after another. A magical canoe tripthrough massive lily pad fields, horsey rides, hikes (yes, I’ve been hiking – it’s very flat here!), walking and safaris, boat and fishing trips,…
One can, Toucan
I hated Brazil when I was here last in 2012: sheer misery for the entire four weeks. Maybe it was arriving from cheap, cheerful Uruguay. Or coming there after fabulous Montevideo, staying in a riotous drag queen-owned hotel where I instantly got the best room in the place. Or it was the undiagnosed tear in my heart valve and feeling tired all the time. Maybe it was the obvious looming breakdown of my marriage. Perhaps we were wrung out after six months on the road. Rain; constant arguing; expensive; no Portuguese; scarce pre-Carnival hotels; feeling crappy….all just plain misery. I was rarely so disappointed in a country as I love the music, the food, the vibe and every Brazilian I’ve ever met (bar the wax type). What a difference three years and a divorce makes. Not easy to admit now but I did get used to travelling for so many…
Waterworld
It’s hard to express how big, obscure and out there the Pantanal is. The size of California, the biggest wetland on Earth, it’s the purifying kidney to the Amazons ‘lungs of the world’. Water levels raise two to five metres in the wet season covering a shocking 80% of the 60,000-75,000 square kilometres of land that then drain away to an arid, fire-prone desert in the dry. That makes for some hard, and weird, flora, fauna and people. It’s also hard – and expensive – to get to. Usually it’s one or the other but this time, nope, it’s both. A two hour flight from São Paulo to the nearest airport in dusty Campo Grande where my burly driver and cutie interpreter gal Alessandra bundle me into a Big Ass 4×4 in the pouring rainnnnnnnnn. I mean, RAIN. And more rain. And this is the beginning of the dry season?…