Day 1 of the Pantanal of Brazil
After a long and grueling flight from the US, I arrived at the Slim Hotel in Cuiaba at around 2:30 am. The San Paulo airport is one of the worst I’ve been in, and Latam airline was equally bad. But there seems to be few options to get to the Pantanal from northeastern US. I was very much looking forward to this trip.
I had a very short night’s sleep, awakening at 5 am. Cuiaba time was the same as Hanover so there was no need to adjust the time on my cameras. I headed down for an elaborate buffet breakfast in the hotel – my first of many on this trip. Except for one meal at a small pizza place in a mall this first night, all the meals were buffets. We ate a great variety of delicious and largely-unknown foods at our three meals each day. Over-eating is probably more accurate.
I rested for most of the day, not wandering far from my hotel, preparing for the adventure ahead. Here’s a view of the hotel. You might be able to spot me in a window in the middle of the picture. I had a great room on the fourth floor (they don’t count the ground floor) in the front corner.
Here is a close-up of me, looking out the window.
The rest of our group arrived midmorning. After an early evening introductory meeting in the hotel dining room that was closed because it was Sunday night, four of us walked to a nearby mall. The multi-story, indoor mall was an exciting place filled with youngsters and teenagers enjoying being out at night and the warm weather. We ordered and shared four different small pizzas.
The next morning was Day 1 of our adventure in the Pantanal wetlands. The name “Pantanal” comes from the Portuguese word pântano and the Spanish word pantano that mean “swamp”, “wetland”, “bog”, “quagmire”, or “marsh”. But this was the dry season. The huge flat fields that are often flooded were very dry.
I photographed the sunrise over Cuiaba from my hotel room.
Minutes later the sky was filled with some amazing Kevin-Helmholtz clouds.
After another varied and enjoyable breakfast, we met our local guide and fantastic naturalist, Fisher, and boarded a comfortable air-conditioned van with plenty of room for our group of two leaders, a bus driver, and six participants.
We drove for several hours and passed through the small dusty town of Pocone.
After Pocone, we began our two-week adventure along a straight, very bumpy, and dusty Transpantaneira. This part of the country is very flat.
As it did on all our days, the temperature reached the mid to upper 90s. But it was extremely dry so it was much more tolerable than it would’ve been in New England.
Our leader, photographer Petr Baumgardner, had chosen our first lodge because of the possibility of finding giant anteaters on the grounds. Before reaching it for lunch, we stopped along the road to take some photos. We saw flying wood storks, two vulture species, and savannah hawks.
We also photographed several perched birds along the road.
On the road into the lodge, we saw cattle and horses.
We also stopped to photograph several species I had certainly never seen before this trip.
We arrived at our first lodge, Pousada Piuval, around 11 am, checked in, and immediately started taking photos on the grounds of the lodge.
The lodge was very beautiful with flower gardens, stone walkways, an impressive dining room, swimming pool, and a large wildlife pool just beyond its main grounds.
From near the swimming pool above the wildlife pond, I photographed many new species both before and after lunch. We would not venture out as a group until 3:30 pm, allowing some of us to stay in our air-conditioned rooms during the high heat. But that was not for me. I was out on the grounds taking many photos.
Soaring high overhead were nighthawks.
Caimans slowly crossed the dry field to bath in the pool below me.
Surprisingly, the pool was shared with Capybaras, the world largest rodent weighting around 175 pounds.
Here they are in the pool. You might be able to spot the head and eyes of several small caimans with them
Finally, a bit before 4 pm we headed out for a long walk. That is our leader, Petr-Bambousek from the Czech Republic, on the left.
Below are Kamila and Juraj, a couple also from the Czech Republic.
We were heading for an area with Hyacinth Macaws and beyond them a tall wooden tower to view the sunset. Along the way we stopped for many minutes to photograph Monk Parakeets.
Nearby we found a Lesser Kiskadee and a Bare-faced Ibis.
The sun was sinking; sunset was a bit over an hour away.
We entered a small area of trees — hard to call it a forest — and found a number if interesting species: wren, woodcreeper, and woodpecker.
We finally came to the Hyacinth Macaw high in the trees.
We headed to the tower for sunset and saw some Greater Rhea.
Along the way we had a flyover of Roseate Spoonbills. It was getting close to sunset.
We entered a small wooded area as darkness fell, and climbed a slightly scary tower.
Sunset was colorful but far from spectacular. The area was very dry. I do not recall ever seeing really great puffy clouds, though there were clouds from time-to-time.
Our bus driver, who actually was a great wildlife spotter, found a porcupine high in a tree in the small forest, well after sunset. The photo below was shot handheld at 1/13 sec, 6400 ISO. and an equivalent focal length of 1100 mm.
After dinner, Petr took us out to teach the group how he shoots the Milky Way. I listened and considered his method, but concluded I liked my simpler method better. It isn’t that hard to get the exposure of the Milky Way right, or at least close enough. I use around f/2, 10 sec, 24 mm eq., and ISO 3200.
But this night the moon came up too soon, so we did not get any decent Milky Way photos. The tree and foreground in the photos below are lit by the lights from the lodge and you can see my shadow heading into the tree.
But I returned the next night alone and managed to get an acceptable Milky way photo with the wildlife pool in the foreground. Coming in Day 2 …
