Well, with finals this week and being in Pantanal last week, I haven’t had much time to update anyone back home.  I’ll also be heading out of town for the next 2 weeks beginning tomorrow!

Clara, Bea and I head to the Pantanal wetland last week from Monday night to Saturday morning.  The bus ride was about 21 hours in total, most of which I slept, and I think that we could’ve flown for what these damn tickets cost!  It was quite the experience, however.

From Wikipedia:

“The Pantanal is a tropical wetland in South America, mostly within the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul, and also portions in Bolivia and Paraguay. It is an area consisting of a variety of floodplain sub-regions, each with distinct hydrological, geological and ecological characteristics; in fact, up to twelve of these hydrological ecosystems have been defined (RADAMBRASIL 1982 ^[1]). In total the Pantanal covers between 140,000 km² to 195,000 square kilometers (75,000 sq mi) ^[1][2], making it the largest wetland in the world^.”

So yes, I was asking for it when I decided to spend 4 days in a swamp with 2 women.

We arrived in the small town of Bonito in the late afternoon on Tuesday and really didn’t have a lot of time to do anything that day. We stopped at a local Brazijapachinese restaurant for a meal and head back to our hostel for bed.

I was awoken at 5:30am by the shrieking of a rooster.  I immediately tried to get the girls up and asked them if they were up for some “badass extreme shit” that day, but they wanted 30 more minutes of rest.  I tried again 10 minutes later, but that only agitated them more.  I let them have their rest.

The breakfast at the hostel was ok, but far too much meat products.  Clara and Bea are both vegetarians, and I’m not a pork eater so the food choices were extremely limited.  The watermelon was great, though.

After breakfast we head into town and grabbed motorcycle taxis to the Balneiro Múnicipal: a nice park 6km south of the city.  It was a relaxing way to start off the trip, and Bea had far too much fun with the fish.

After a bit there, we head back into town to plan some “badass extreme shit”.  We head into a travel agency and were greeted by a hilarious man who set us up on a river tour.  He said it was pretty calm, other than the fact that we would be descending waterfalls.

After the river tour, we grabbed a quick bite and this parrot wouldn’t quit begging us for our food.

The motorcycle taxis brought us back to the tour planner, and after a few shots of various types of alcohol with him we head to a local exotic meat restaurant.  Not the greatest place for the vegetarians, but the piranha soup and alligator parmesan were amazing.  A great meal to finish off a big day.

The next day, we head to the Gruta Lago do Azul: a badass cave with incredibly blue water.  We had to drive a ways out of town and then hike for quite some time to reach it.

Afterwards, Bea wasn’t feeling too well so she head back to the hostel while Clara and I cruised on innertubes down a river, also descending down waterfalls.  The tourguide told us that anacondas sometimes hung out at the bottom of the river and I proceeded to soil myself every time I saw a log. I didn’t have my camera for this one for obvious reasons.

The final part of our trip was a presentation by some guy about snakes.  He had an extremely thick accent and talked very fast, so I only got the gist of it.  Apparently cobras are really important or something.

The next morning we had to wake up extremely early to head back to São Paulo, 4:00am to be exact.  We hopped on a bus, slept, and woke up in Campo Grande where we had a 4 hour layover.

The girls went to the internet café and I had no cash on me, so I set off to find an ATM machine.  As I was walking, I popped my head into a hotel and asked the guy if he knew where an ATM machine was. He immediately noticed my accent and asked me if I was American, to which I responded yes.  “OOOH A GRINGO”

We talked for quite a bit, because he wanted me to clear up a ton of stereotypes regarding the US.  From women, to personal hygiene, to George Bush, he didn’t leave a question unasked.  I did notice something rather curious about this hotel;  it seemed that weird looking men were walking in and out at random.

Down the stairs came 3 quite attractive women and the guy introduced me as “meu gringo” (I don’t think we had exchanged names at this point).  The girls were very nice, and also had a barrage of questions to ask.  After about 30 minutes, they began getting very personal with the questions.  A ton were regarding sex, masturbation, etc, etc.  This was slightly weird, but I just went with it for the purpose of telling you all the story later on.

I really honestly believe that I was at a brothel and these girls were prostitutes.  They didn’t explicitly try and sell themselves to me, but the guy was really pushing them onto me.

For some reason I exchanged contact information (instant messenger) with these girls and have been talking to them every so often since I’ve returned, but I haven’t had the balls to ask them if they were prostitutes.  Only time will tell.

We got back on the bus and I managed to sleep 17 additional hours, only to be awoken periodically by the girls sticking crackers down my shirt.

I guess this takes the cake as the most explicit blogpost I’ve written, as well as the one with the poorest grammar and structure.

I won’t be posting for the next 2 weeks (most likely) because I head to Rio tomorrow morning, return to São Paulo on Tuesday, to Argentina and Uruguay on Thursday, back to São Paulo the following Friday and then finishing that weekend out in Ubatuba.  Lots of pictures and stories to follow, I hope.

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