This week was adios Bolivia and oi Brasil, my favourite country after Spain. I wasn´t originally thinking about coming to Brazil having been here twice before but the draw of the Pantanal: "a density of exotic wildlife found nowhere in South America" was a must for Rabbitts and her bins. It was a mammouth journey starting in Sucre and ariving in Campo Grande. Sixteen hours on a night bus from Sucre, ninteen on the train from Santa Cruz to the border, two taxis and another seven hour bus journey to Campo Grande meant I was smelling and looking good by the end of two days!
I pottered around Sucre on Monday taking in the beautifully maintained colonial churches and buildings and felt like I wasn´t in Bolivia due to the high standard of living. My battered and dirty bus left at 17:30 and it wasn´t long before we were heading nose first down steep, narrow, dirt roads thinking that there were no barriers if the brakes failed. At around 02:00am we had a puncture and then had to stop again for an hour at 07:00am to properly rectify the tyre. I arrived 16 hours later into Santa Cruz. As we opened up the lower bus compartment I could hear a lamb. The bus next door had Larry bleating away looking rather confused as to what he was doing in the bottom of a bus.
I intended to catch the plusher train which left that evening for the Brazilian border but no there were no seats available and so I had to catch the "Death train". The train was given this name after passangers used to cram on so much contraband and sit on the roof and fall off. Luckily I was in an ample size seat for 19 hours at 11.50GBP. I sat next to a Mennonite gentleman who wore the usual dungarees and home made shirts. We chatted about our respective cultures and I learnt loads apart from his name. It is always very intriguing when you find a pocket of people who left their homelands centuries ago and but who do not integrate with the local population. They still look distinctively European and yet know nothing about their original country as they have been cut off from civilisation due to their beliefs.
I was rudely awoken at 06:00am by the coffee sellers but as I woke up so was the amazing Pantanal birdlife. We rolled into Quijarro tain station dead on time at 07:10am. The Bolivian border didn´t open until 08:00am and the Brazilian border was a moto taxi ride away. There I was once again on the back of a motorbike with my bags wedged in between me and the driver. Brazil felt like civilisation: the bus companies accepted Visa, there were newstands which sold gossip magazines (heaven) and the Brazilians have the ability to exude sex appeal. It was another 7 hours to Campo Grande before I could even get near a shower but once there I organised for all my clothes to be washed and booked my Pantanal tour.
At 10:30am on Thursday we were wizzing back to near the border in a minibus full of cool people. That afternoon we just relaxed upon arrival and had a few beers and played cards. On Friday we went for a long walk and found an armadillo the first I have ever seen and in the afternoon went boating and I got very scared by the larger than life caymans. Saturday we all got up at 04:00am to see dawn. We then went for another walk in search of mammals and saw deer, racoons, howler monkies and an anteater shoot down an armadillo hole and on the way back I also spotted a Capybara having a swim. We then went horse riding, the first this trip, even if we did eat loads of dust it was good fun going through the scrub. That night about 15 of us played a card game called Assasin. I was the only one who got to murder the whole group and so after that the beers flowed and piranah fishing was skipped on Sunday.
It was goodbye to our lovey guide Levy who said that he was proud of me for my wildlife knowledge as we got the bus back to Campo Grande and civilisation. I had an early night ready for the next big trip to Argentina.
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