The night train is a fun way to travel in Bolivia. It’s so horrendously bumpy that sleep isn’t much of an option, so a fully-charged mp3 player is a necessity. Not in the evening, though, because there’s a TV at the end of the carriage, and the crew thoughtfully put on a film for us (dubbed into Spanish, with English subtitles), it’s quite an old one but I’d never seen it before. “Alive”. A film about public transport which crashes in South America, and the survivors end up eating the dead.
The border crossing took a while, although it’s apparently the most corrupt border in Brazil and while all the tourists were queueing up to get passports stamped, lots of vehicles were happily being waved across. Quite what was being transported from Bolivia, who knows? Probably bags of salt. Then there was a bus journey to the heart of the Pantanal, the world’s largest wetland. There were various hawks, toucans, armadillos, capybara, and caiman. Lots of caiman, swimming around or sitting next to the water.
Apparently caiman just eat fish, which was probably just as well. The accommodation was a giant wooden shed full of hammocks, at the end of a small peninsula away from the dining area of the ranch/hotel. Lovely setting, even though the quickest route for the caiman to get from one pond to the other was to saunter across our pathway. We were advised in no uncertain terms to keep the door shut. Also to give the hammock a shake before getting into it, in case any spiders decided to have a nap first.
For the afternoon’s nature walk, we were advised to wear shorts and flip-flops. Upon reaching the first small lake we had to walk through, our local guide took his off and waded in barefoot. He had trod upon a caiman a day or two previously, but obviously it was more scared of him than he was of it. Apparently one of the horses at the ranch had been given a couple of nips on its legs, and now refused to go in the water. We all survived, and got to see a couple of howler monkeys before the approaching rain meant we had to go back and have some food and drink.
It was birthday season, with Shaun, Jodie and Roy the Dutchman all celebrating advancing years over the space of a few days, so we paid to buy a lamb to be barbecued for us the following evening. This was slightly less exotic than lunch, which we had to catch ourselves. Armed with bamboo rods with a big hook on the end of a wire, we stood on a bridge and put chunks of slightly rancid-looking chicken on the end. The piranhas must love it when people go fishing, because the sudden tugging on the rod usually means that they’ve eaten the chicken and swum away. After going through about seven or eight chunks, I finally pulled the rod out to find a toothy little fish on the hook. To put it out of its misery, you have to stick your fingers in its gills and drive a knife into its brain. Easier said than done, they’re tough little bastards.
Between us all, we only caught about six piranhas, but they were gutted, cleaned and deep-fried and then served to us whole, teeth and all. I tried to pick some meat off the ribs, but there isn’t much to them. Then most of the crowd went off to do a bit of horse riding, which I passed on since I was feeling ever so slightly delicate that day. Nothing to do with the vodka the previous night, of course. So James, Shaun and I started on the beer and watched the lamb cook over a fire, while playing with Bradock the insane dog.
Bus trip to Bonito the next day, to stay in a shabby little hotel run by an extremely sour-faced caucasian man. The rumour going around for the next day or two was that he was the son of German Nazis who had fled at the end of World War II, but apparently he was Argentinian. Bonito is a small city with a thriving tourist industry, so naturally the prices for activities are incredibly high. Most of us went on a trip to a cave to see a blue lake, followed by an all-you-can-eat buffet lunch and then snorkelling down a river. The cave itself is open enough to allow sunlight to hit the water, which is astonishingly blue. Swimming used to be allowed, but not any more. There are skeletons of things like sabre-toothed tigers in there somewhere.
Snorkelling down the river was an unusual experience. After getting crammed into wetsuits, we were driven to the starting point. We went in two by two, and then just floated downstream in the current, looking at all the fish looking back at us. Very clear water, and we’d hired an underwater camera between us so were able to take lots of pictures. It seemed to take a long time to get to the finishing point, and by the time we’d got out of the wetsuits it was beer o’clock again.
On the journey back to town I saw what looked like a horse lying down and sticking its legs in the air at weird angles. It took a second to realise that it was actually an anteater. I honestly had no idea the damn things were so massive, it looked like it was bigger than the minibus. Apparently they can grow to over two metres in length, they must eat a lot of ants.
The night bus the following evening took us to Foz do Iguacu, and then we had time to sleep and/or eat breakfast before heading out to Iguassu Falls. I’ve seen a few waterfalls in my time, but these are something else. The sheer scale of them is breathtaking, as you walk along the path you keep realising that there are even more around the corner. There are a couple of walkways out over the falls, it would be interesting to find out how many people were killed trying to make them. Marianne advised us not to commit suicide by jumping into the falls, since we hadn’t been to Rio yet. There was a suicide quite recently, apparently. It would certainly be a spectacular way to go, although you would have to think that it would probably ruin your holiday.
The best views of the waterfalls are from the Brazilian side, but most of the waterfalls are in Argentina, so we’re doing a short hop across the border tomorrow. The advice for the speedboat ride is to wear clothes that you don’t mind getting slightly damp.
