A Brazilian’s kindness: The Pantanal by night

There are a few things in this world that can compare to a scalding shower first thing in the morning. There is something about staggering in, bleary-eyed, still reeling from your voyage through the bizarre world of your dreamy subconscious, and immersing yourself in the steaming cascade. You emerge a new person, fresh, glowing, 100% prepared for whatever the day is going to throw at you, which for most of my current life as a PE teacher is snotty children and the occasional tantrum. But the morning shower makes me human, it puts a smile on my face and a vigour in my step, so that I can overlook the gripes of children, bat away the stress of the other teachers and talk politely to the fat kid who claims he has broken his leg for the third time to avoid PE, which without having had a morning shower would probably have involved pointing out that he shouldn’t complain because most whales don’t have legs in the first place.

So there are understandably only a smidgen of reasons as to why I may willingly forego my morning shower. And it turns out that camping overnight in the Pantanal is one of them. Now, I’m not overly fond of camping. I will endure a week under canvas with my church each year because of the great fellowship and fun, and the opportunity to spend time with people that are precious to me. But I tend to need a whole year to recuperate before I would willingly submit to those conditions again and I am slightly suspicious of people who enjoy waking up at the crack off dawn surrounded by spiders, swapping good sanitation for poverty and smelling of last week. In fact the thought of driving to a random field, that lots of other people have decided to drive to, so that you can rest is a bit of a peculiar concept to me, as I tend to find that camping, though fun in some circumstances, is more of an exhausting communal attempt to survive rather than a relaxing way to spend your time.

But as we navigated the backwater creeks of the Pantanal, with the sun beginning to set on another blisteringly hot day, the thought of a hot shower was not on my agenda. This time, accompanied by a lovely German couple, and our main guide, Tony, we were back off in pursuit of the Jaguar, this time under the cover of darkness.

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Our campsite of choice, Tony’s choice to be precise, was on the northern bank of the river, atop a small, sandy cliff, but disguised by trees. Not too far away was a sandy beach, an area that animals clearly used to drink. We examined the prints together with Tony. There were some that we expected: the cloven hooves of deer and peccaries made up the majority, the little prints of coati were also evident as well as cattle. But there were a few surprises too. Several large three-toed imprints, widely splayed, betrayed the presence of Tapir. This filled me with excitement: tapir were the only species on Martin’s list that we hadn’t seen yet. There was another set of prints too, a cat, but far too small to be a Jaguar.

“Ocelot, I think,” Tony speculated as he inspected it. “You will have to be very lucky to see it!”

Well, we were apparently in as good a place as any.

I had been pleasantly surprised at how few bites I had suffered during my time in the Pantanal. But as we powered upstream, I was conscious of the number of insects that were meeting their end on my face as we ploughed through them at speed. It must have been the bug equivalent of being hit by a fat, bristly train. The few that survived appeared to take great pleasure in demanding a blood transfusion for me: vampire vengeance for all his fallen friends. So as I slapped and wiped my way down river, I have to admit my attention was somewhat diverted from animal spotting. Nevertheless, it was fair to say that the river had not quite awoken from it’s afternoon siesta and we saw very little.

Tony beached us on a sandy bank, much like Paulo had done a few days before and we disembarked.

“We are in Jaguar territory now,” he said cheerily as we scrambled out of the boat.

This made me smile.

And then frown.

It was only now that I realised that Tony had brought a huge, shiny, double-barrelled shotgun with him.

Wrapped up in the desire to see another Jaguar, I hadn’t really considered what I would do if I stumbled across one on foot. Wet myself probably.

“There’s no need to worry,” said Tony helpfully, “Jaguar’s don’t attack humans!”

As comforting as that was it was not something that I was keen to put to the test.

It did not take us long to find evidence of Jaguars. The river bank, a sandy sort of clay, was covered in large, very clear prints, the shape of a cat, but a little bigger than my hand.

“He comes a lot,” said Tony. “Quite fresh, these ones.”

Who new that gathering wood could be such a hackle-raising activity?

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Dinner was steak, cooked over an open fire. As the darkness descended, Tony got to work. We watched admiringly as he managed to convert the vegetation around him into a worktable and make-shift cooker. With the blissful smell of smoke curling up our nostrils, and simultaneously protecting us from the insect onslaught that had mustered at our camp sight, Tony called us over to where he was preparing a pasta and vegetable dish.

“Try this,” he said handing us a juicy slab of steak each. “Wash it first in the river.”

I have never washed a steak in a river before and I’m going to be honest, I’m not sure that I’d make a regular habit of it. Every morsel of understanding about food preparation and basic hygiene, as well as disturbing memories from Laos, told me that river water is not renowned for it’s cleanliness. I halfheartedly dipped my steak in the river, giving it a feeble wipe with my hands before taking it out and rigorously analysing it for any creature that may have decided that my steak might make a nice retirement home for it and it’s maggoty family. Satisfied that it was resident-free, and determined to cook the living daylights out of anything that may be too small for me to see, I returned to the fire armed with a spiky stick that I had decided would be my skewer. By now it was dark, which was a problem, because it was incredibly difficult to see what on earth I was doing. Dazzled by staring at the fire’s extrovert flames, working out when my steak was cooked was a bit of a mission that involved squinting at it for ages and touching it with various sensitive parts of my body, whilst simultaneously waging war with the mosquitos. Such was my flapping and whirling, I was semi-surprised that I didn’t take off like a slightly stressed helicopter. By the time I plucked up the courage to eat my by now charred steak, my eyes were opened as to why Tony had advised we wash the steaks in the river. In order to preserve the meat, it had been stored in salt. Biting into it now was like attempting to eat the ocean. My tongue felt like it had shrivelled up and my mouth produced saliva at such an alarming rate that I was concerned Tony might assume I had rabies. Thankfully it was too dark to see the grimace on my face. I looked over at Ethan to see if he was enjoying his portion of salt. The poor guy had endured worse luck than me: he was looking forlornly at the huge pile of ash that had once been his dinner. We went back to the river slightly hungry.

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The river under the cover of darkness seemed a completely different place. As often happens in the tropics, the temperature had dropped drastically in the sun’s absence, and what had felt like a lethargic creek just hours earlier now felt like an ominous canyon. Above us, the stars created a mystic tapestry, sadly partially obscured by cloud. It was bright enough that we could just about distinguish objects without the use of a light, and the moon cast disorientating shadows off the trees. The only sound came from the dull throb of our boat as we slowly meandered further up stream. As the stream narrowed, there was a very obvious change in terrain. We were no longer in scrubland savannah, we were now in quite thick forest, adding to the sense of being drawn into an ever narrowing chasm.

Tony was armed with a searchlight, and managed to drive while simultaneously scanning both banks for signs of life. But as the forest grew denser around us, the more difficult it was to catch a glimpse of life.

“We are looking for eyes,” Tony explained after a short while.

He needn’t have said more, we had already noticed that the light seemed to reflect off animals eyes in the dark, in the same way as a domestic cat’s. With the number of caiman lining the river bank, it often appeared as if we were travelling along a riverine runway, with nature itself luring us into it’s oppressive belly. I had been amazed at the quantity of caiman on my previous days in the Pantanal, but under the cover of darkness, you really began to appreciate their almost invasive presence. All of the individuals who would have previously remained hidden, wedged in the reeds or submerged under vegetation, were cruelly given away by the faint red glow of their two eyes, tracking our journey through their waterways.

There were a remarkable number of birds as well. As the light illumined a number of roosting herons and kingfishers, there were also a number of birds still awake. Night herons, minuscule in comparison to their larger relatives, perched elegantly on overhanging fronds and boat-billed herons sat patiently at the water’s edge.

We soon discovered why. Tony cut the engine and we slowed.

“Baby caiman,” he pointed. “Everything wants to eat them!”

Under the partial cover of a mangrove, there appeared to be a highly condensed galaxy of stars, hundreds of tiny eyes glinting in the light. Hundreds of baby caiman, no bigger then a duckling but much less kissable, were resting on the water’s edge. They were so small that they must have hatched very recently and seeing their size made it even more remarkable that so many caiman actually made it to adulthood. I wondered how many of these would last the next few weeks let alone years.

Despite the high volume of wildlife, we had seen very little in the way of mammals. Other than a quick glimpse of a possum jumping about in the tree tops, we had seen very little else. I was of course, keen to see anything. But having seen a Jaguar, I was most interested in seeing tapir.

Tony tried to be positive when I asked him about our chances of seeing one.

“There are lots of tapir, but they are very shy.” He smiled. “If we see one, it will be because we take it by surprise.”

Tapir are not particularly endangered, but they are elusive. Though fairly common in zoos around the world, in the wild they are nocturnal, and their dark, bland colouring makes them incredibly difficult to see in the thick foliage under the cover of darkness. I had seen photographs of them back at the lodge, and every time I looked, the more I noticed what strange creatures they were. They are almost a jigsaw puzzle of an animal, as if a child has tried to put different parts of different animals together in frustration, concocting some sort of bizarre hybrid. Their bodies alone resemble a large pig, quite round and plump, but covered in thick fuzzy hair like a teddy bear. Their legs, however, are thick like a hippopotamus, with three fat toes, almost like a camels. These allow them to walk in boggy conditions without sinking. Running down their nape, very strangely, is something that resembles a horses mane. However, embracing their strange looks, they do not grow their mane out but keep it short, like a crew cut, making them the animal equivalent to a football fan. The strangeness, does not end there. Their face looks a like that of a mouse, with huge, satellite ears, but not content with the number of animals it has stolen body parts from, it’s nose is elongated into a half-trunk. The result is one of the strangest animals you will ever see, a Frankenstein’s monster sort of creature that would probably have been bullied at school, but is in fact remarkably adapted to it’s environment. So adapted in fact, that we could have sped past several without seeing them.

The intense staring was exhausting, and the constant scanning from side to side was slightly dizzying. Tony was clearly feeling the effects too. Despite being out for hours, he was frustrated at how little we had seen. As we approached a large sandy beach sticking out in the water, he cut the engine.

“It just get’s thicker, I think we will stop here.” He spoke as if he was handing us bad news. Such was his dedication to his job, and despite seeing so many wonderful things so many times, it was evident that he felt the trip had been a let down. We stopped for a moment to allow Tony to rest his eyes for a bit and we chatted.

“Hey look!” Tony was leaning over the boat, shining his searchlight into the clear shallow water.

We all peered in, not sure what to expect. I was surprised at what we saw. The water was alive. Though we couldn’t see further than about ten metres, the water was absolutely teeming with fish. Fish of all sizes, little piranhas, the sort we had eaten back at the lodge were joined with much larger, rounder fish called Pacu, gracefully hanging in the water. Between them, gigantic catfish eased themselves along the floor. Watching this moving artwork, slightly blurred by the disturbed silt and only revealed when the spotlight dictated, was incredible. The Pantanal is simply full of life, in the tress, the grass, on the river and in it’s depths. Mesmerised and hypnotised, it was only the gathering of mosquitos that motivated us to begin our return.

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As we sat around the camp fire, our faces glowing with the prickly heat, it was a pleasure to get to know our German friends better as well as Tony. We did as people should do. We talked. We shared experiences and ideas. We listened to one another and inspired one another. And we simply enjoyed being there.

But Tony was visibly dejected at having seen so little on our night safari. We tried to encourage him with with how much we had enjoyed it and appreciated our time in the Pantanal. But there was something bugging him.

“No, I was sure we would see something, that’s why I’m here.” He said cryptically.

“That seemed like a strange statement from somebody whose job it was to take tourists on safari.

“No, I finished work yesterday, I am on holiday now,” he said. “I was supposed to be visiting my girlfriend. But I wanted to take you guys into the bush.”

That hit me. Here was a man who did this job almost every day of the year. He is probably as familiar with the wildlife of the Pantanal as I am with the foxes and badgers of leafy Surrey. Here is also a love struck young man, about seven hours from his girlfriend, and seeing her only a few times a year. And yet, for us, he had chosen to delay his holiday. In fact, he had chosen to work unpaid so that we could experience the Pantanal in a way few guests are permitted to. Why? Because he loves this place, and he wants us to love it as well.

After a fairly sleepless night under canvas, awakened by every roar, grunt and squeal throughout the night, we were due to leave the Pantanal the next day. And although we had not seen anything of note that night, Tony had accomplished his mission. I had fallen in love with this place, and I left with a sadness in my stomach and a determination to return soon.

We travel for the wildlife, but it is the people who really make it special. Thank you Tony!