Friday Postcard: The Pantanal

Posted in Activities, Brazil Facts, My Trips, Travel Recommendations on 12. Mar, 2010

Tudo bom, gente?

When you picture Brazil in your mind, what do you see? Likely a beach crowded with beautiful bronzed bodies, or perhaps an isolated village of hatched huts deep in the Amazon rainforest.

But there is another part of Brazil you’ve probably never even heard of, though it sprawls across well over 50,000 square miles of southern Brazil, comparable in area to, for example, all of North Carolina or New York or Iowa.

Welcome to the Pantanal, Brazil’s southern wetlands.

The Pantanal is similar to Florida’s Everglades, but it is more diverse. This a a wonderful place for nature lovers. And though the Amazon rainforest also harbors a wonderfully diverse array of flora and fauna, you are likely to see more in the Pantanal, which is more open.

I visited the Pantanal 4 years ago with a buddy from back home. We stayed in a ranch-style lodge. During the day we went on nature hikes or rode horses or canoed to fishing holes to catch piranha (probably the easiest fish in the world to catch, since they will chomp onto anything). At night, we piled into the back of trucks to creep down rutted dirt roads in search of creatures of the night. After returning to the lodge we would sit around a campfire and listen to the guides play guitar and sing traditional songs.

A few days to unwind and imagine what life used to be like.

So here are a couple of pictures from the trip. I’ll post more on my Facebook page.

(And, yes, that is a goatee I am sporting in the pictures. I just hate to shave.)