Fishing for piranhas and caimans

We left Potosi in high spirits and headed for Sucre, the constitutional capital city of Bolivia. We visited a brand new dinosaur exhibit, built on a site where hundreds of dinasaur footprints were uncovered. We also visited a museum where indigenous weavings are exhibited - the weavings were beautifully intricate. From there, we took our 11th night bus so far this trip, to a little village called Samaipata. We stayed 2 nights there, relaxing and going for a long walk to some local ruins. Santa Cruz was our next destination, a modern, wealthy city smack in the middle of Bolivia´s natural gas reserves. From here, we took our 22-hour ride to the Brazillian border on the "Death Train", so called by the locals due to its habit of detaching itself from the rails. As we arrived at the border, we met with Daniel, from Brazillian-based Indiana Tours, and after some discussion, we agreed to cross the border with him and take a look at either hotels or a tour of the Pantanal with his company. We had been looking forward to seeing what promised to be fantastic wildlife viewing in this region of Brazil since we began our trip.

Before we knew it, the agency had helped us tremendously - a trip to the bank machine, to a place where we could buy onward bus tickets, to immigration for our precious stamps into Brazil, and of course, our receipt for $200 USD which paid for both of us to take a 3-day tour of the Pantanal (a very good deal when we compared notes with fellow travellers). We even managed to negotiate a third night´s accommodation and dinner at the lodge for free. When we arrived, we were pleasantly surprised by the view of the River Miranda, the many birds and hawks that made the lodge their home, and the great buffet dinner (we knew we were back in Brazil when we saw the rice and beans). Accommodation was basic, but as long as we ignored the critter running around in the ceiling, everything was OK.

Our first day we boarded the Jeep Safari, and were driven down the main road of the Parque Estrada. From the truck, we could see many animals - caimans, capybaras, mule deer, giant and river otters, coatis, storks, toucans, and countless other birds. When our guide Luis took us for a walk in the jungle, we encountered blue macaws, howler monkeys, and about a zillion mosquitos.

On our second day, there were only 3 of us who boarded the boat for our river cruise (Edwin and I, plus Ann from Germany). Our first caiman encounter took only a few minutes after we departed, and a big family of capybaras was just around the corner from him. Luis took us to shore to show us how to fish for piranhas. It was a pretty simple lesson: 1. put meat on hook at the end of about 3 metres of line, strung from a bamboo pole; 2. put hook in water; 3. wait four seconds; 4. catch piranha. We released a few, and Luis kept a few, but we weren´t sure why until we met up with another caiman who was sunbathing on the shore. With the piranha still on the end of the line, Luis went fishing for caiman, less than a metre from our boat! The caiman would wait for the piranha to wiggle a bit, and then would come in for the kill - jaws open wide, and a big crunch when he bit down. Over the course of the day, we saw hundreds of caiman, many families of capybaras up close, more monkeys and hundreds of birds.

On our third day in the Pantanal, we went for a horse ride before packing up and catching our bus for Campo Grande and onward to Cascaval, a city near to our next destination, Foz do Iguazu. Our visit to the Pantanal had been great with many memories and lots of photos to sort through. Brazillian buses were a pleasure after the dusty, bumpy, narrow seated buses of Bolivia. And there were paved roads that were more than one lane wide - deluxe!

Location: Salta, Argentina