Up Around The Bend

After a night bus from Iguacu to Campo Grande we were driven to the Lontra lodge in the southern Pantanal for a three night stay.

A little more remote than usual, but still catering for the air-conditioned, eco-tourist market (ie us!), we had an excellent tour, being piloted along lush waterways by our expert guide Pipinho, seeing capybara, caiman, birds and loads of lovely howler monkeys in the trees.

In the morning, after another look upstream, we jumped ship with our noodles and floated a mile back to the lodge on a river of cool amber velvet.

In the evenings we took romantic sunset trips along the riverbanks, seeing heron, storks, falcons, giant kingfishers and swallows at dusk.

As darkness fell, Pipinho gave us a torchlight tour of the banks, where caiman laid in wait and capybara just laid, until we headed back to base with a squadron of bats as our escort.