For The Love of Travel

 

Left our houseboat at 7am for the long haul road trip, in my case, to Cuiaba; my fellow travellers were off to Eco Lodge, where I had already been. We  farewelled each other on our next adventures.

A couple of gorgeous hyacinth macaws flew into a tree by the road as we were leaving the area, followed by a red macaw! Fabulous last vista of those birds. 

Cuiaba, like the rest of the country, was celebrating a national holiday, Independence Day, (since 1822). Nothing was moving! Relaxed in my hotel catching up on blog postings from the Pantanal (where there had been no internet).

Grey morning but not raining thank goodness. Today was EPIC! We spent 8 hours on the river watching birds (crane hawk, green kingfishers, vermillion flycatcher), otters, iguanas, capybaras and a jaguar.

• The jaguar hunt was spell binding, we tracked her stalking through the grass until she spots her prey, chasing after the capybara into the river, leaping into the air at the last moment to sink her teeth into the back of the capybara’s neck and missing, splashing into the river, then slinking back off into the grasses….another day of living for the poor capybara. Thrilling!
  A gorgeous sunset on our last day…woo hoo! 

6 am brekky. Raining again this morning. The staff had gone fishing already and caught a huge catfish. Guess what’s for lunch/dinner??

Decided I wouldn’t go out on the river and hoped for the weather to improve in the afternoon. Spent some of the morning taking photos of a female and male kingfisher and some capuchin monkeys. 

Weather improved slightly, at least no rain and lesser windchill. Off we went for a couple of hours and saw lots of birds, but new critters for me were the Roadside Hawk, Wattled Jacana, King bird and a Giant Otter.