Pantanal 2016

[jeremie]

Karina grabbed some videos too, if she will make one day a short film I don't know. I will post a couple of videos here.

 

 

First a great capture of a red legged siriema we saw on the way to the Paraguay river:

 

Red legged seriema by Karina Abarca, sur Flickr

 

 

A pair of tapir finishing a refreshing bath:

 

Pair of tapirs by Karina Abarca, sur Flickr

 

Mother spoonbill came back to the nest:

Pink spoonbill chicks by Karina Abarca, sur Flickr

Edited April 27, 2017 by jeremie

[jeremie]

To finish with Pouso Alegre, I am posting a couple of videos taken by Karina.

 

The first one is a black-tailed marmoset, which can be found outside the lodge, in a gallery forest where capuchin and owler monkeys can also be seen (CLICK ON THE VIDEOS TO WATCH, same for post #27):

 

VIDEO CLICK TO WATCH Black-tailed marmoset - Mico melanurus by Karina Abarca, sur Flickr

 

The second video is about the giant ant-eater we tracked during 3 days in the Fazenda, after lots of efforts, we eventually found it coming at the water hole to drink:

 

VIDEO CLICK TO WATCH Giant ant-eater by Karina Abarca, sur Flickr

 

 

 

Just forgot to mention we had a sighting of a female mash deer on the Transpantaneira, on the way to the Paraguay river, not so far from Bento Gomez river. I would say about 40-50 meters from the road. This species is much bigger than the small red brocket deer and its larger cousin the grey brocket deer we were sporting by dozens every day at Pouso Alegre.

 

Marsh deers are usually abundant along the road, they particularly appreciate the pools along the road. Unexpectedly, they appeared to be really hard to spot during our trip.

Edited April 28, 2017 by jeremie

[jeremie]

There are currently 3 places to stay on the River Paraguay. Two of them were conceived as fishermen lodges, and Pedrinho new floatel is definitely made to receive tourists interested in jaguar safaris.

 

I will take time to detail these 3 different places and try to compare them, according to what I have read about it and our experience at the floatel.

 

Baizinha Lodge used to be the place to go for jaguar safaris. People reached the lodge directly from Caceres city.

Details about this lodge can be found in the report of @@Atravelynn, @@Treepol and @USAnimalfan in these posts:

http://safaritalk.net/topic/2317-another-non-african-safari-report/

http://safaritalk.net/topic/11322-macaws-monkeys-and-moai-6-weeks-in-the-pantanal-peru-and-polynesia/

http://safaritalk.net/topic/5497-disappointment-in-the-pantanal/

 

USAnimalfan suffered a terrible cold, unfortunately it is much harder to spot jaguars when temperatures get colder. On the other hand Atravelynn and Treepol had remarkable sightings at the Taiama Ecological Reserve and on the river upper stream.

 

In order to reach the Baizinha lodge, you need to get to Caceres and then to go down on the river with a fast boat. I understand it is quicker to get to Baizinha compared to Pedrinho's Floatel, as you avoid the long 2 to 3 hours of scenic dirt road through all the fazendas ending at San Antonio das Lendas. If you do not want to travel to long on the road, Baizinha is good option, but you will miss the wonderfull dirt road offering very interesting sightings and rich in fazendero life.

As Baizinha lodge where designed for fishermen, it is not located in the prime jaguar habitat. Arthur told us it is located about an hour upper stream than Pedrino's floatel, located in a marvelous oxbow lakes environment full of caimans and capybaras, just around the Fazenda San Antonio das Lendas. A problem with Baizinha is that it is located really far from the jaguar habitat, you need to travel a lot on the river to reach jaguar good habitat, compared to the Floatel.

 

The third option is a house boat than can be specially chartered. It is usually used by fishermen. The main asset of a house boat is that you can stay where you want, really close to jaguar prime habitat and even inside the Taiama ecological reserve. Some tours even offer jaguar cruise, going down stream on the Cuiaba reserve after visiting the area around Porto Jofre (Meeting the Water State Park), to then visit the little known Parque National Mato Grossense, reach the confluence with the Paraguay River, to then going upstream crossing Taiama to end at Caceres City. I have actually not considered this option, but I guess it would only be interesting if booked by a large, american or european Tour Agency.

 

Pedrinho Flotel is new and is slowly developing. It started operating in 2015. By 2016 it was only working with 2 agencies, including jaguar pantanal safaris. It is a small structure, designed for receiving a maximum of 2 groups, maximum 6 people at the same time. Staff stay in the same rooms than the clients. No wifi facilities of course in this remote area of Pantanal. Generator is used to provide electricity and to pump water during the night. I do not remember if they had air conditioning in the rooms. In any case it proved to be unnecessary during our safari, the river provide freshness during the night, and temperatures drops at 20 ºC (it goes up to 40 ºC during the day).

 

I remember there are 6 different rooms at the floatel, 2 of them are accepted by the lodge staff (4 persons including Pedrinho and his lovely wife Claudia), and one by our guide Arthur.

 

Pedrinho, who was the former Descalvados Fazenda, is the owner of the floatel and is in charge of leading the boat tours on the river. Claudia is working in the kitchen and works with an assistant. There is another assistant who is in charge of the generator (located about 40 meters on the bank of the river), the boats, to buy fish to the local fisherman daily, to assist in leading tours on the river. he often goes tracking to look for jaguars and helps Pedrinho. When Pedrinho is resting, he sometimes contracts local experienced fishermen to lead the boat tours on the river. Food is provided by road between each tour, Claudia or Julinho use to go to Caceres after the departure of the groups. It is a small, family structure.

 

Food was always plentiful, varied and delicious, with fresh vegetables and salads, fish, soups, meat, chicken... I would say that food was better than at Pouso Alegre.

 

An idea of the Floatel, Karina at sunrise:

 

Rio Paraguay, Our Flotael close to the Fazenda das Lendas by Goulevitch Jérémie, sur Flickr

Edited April 28, 2017 by jeremie

[offshorebirder]

Nice videos @@jeremie - thanks for sharing.

[jeremie]

The landscapes around the floatel are very different from the ones we get at Porto Jofre. Fazenda San Antonio das Lendas is located on the Eastern bank of the Paraguay river, at the botom of a hill covered with Cerrado dense savanna. The river Paraguay flows just below the hills, where sometimes jaguars use to travel and rest on huge rocks, one picture very different from what we are used to see. On the Western side of the river are located vast marshlands more typical of the Pantanal everyone knows.

There is a red of oxbow lakes around the fazenda, with very good density of preys (caimans and capybaras) for jaguars. In the middle of the Paraguay river are two small islands. The landscapes is thus far more interesting than at the Cuiaba River at Porto Jofre. The place is huge, the floatel is about 1 hour an a half from the Taiama Reserve.

 

Here is a map showing the marshland and oxbow lakes around Fazenda San Antonio das Lendas. You can appreciate the main oxbow lakes (bahia) and the different jaguar locations. Taiama Ecological Reserve is located far to the South from this area (to the right side of the image).

 

San Antonio das Lendas by Goulevitch Jérémie, sur Flickr

 

When we met Arthur at Cuiaba city, he explained us than finding jaguars at the Paraguay river is far more difficult than at Porto Jofre. These are his explanations:

 

1- The river is huge, tracking jaguars in the two banks is really hard, there is almost 400 meters between the two banks.

2- There are very few boats on the river looking for jaguars, sometimes only one, and never more than 3 boats.

3- The boats are not connected by radio as they do at Porto Jofre.

4- And the most important thing is that, the two last years, no one had seen jaguars at Taiama Ecological Reserve!!!

 

This last point is indeed really worrying. We met later on at Fazenda Barranco Alto the scientists who were in charge in 2014, if I remember well, to collar different jaguars in there. This happened after that a fisherman got killed by a jaguar inside the reserve. It is largely known that this fisherman, his brother and father, used to fish a lot at Taiama, and sometimes threw stones on a jaguar who was attracted by the fishes they caught. This accident led the government to set a monitoring project to understand the jaguar behaviors at Taiama.

 

They discovered that the jaguars used to be resident at Taiama, contrary to that local people thought. But they never really understood what happened in this accident.

It is well known that the father of the dead fisherman started hunting jaguars at Taiama. Locals say he stopped after killing a dozen of cats, and that months later jaguars start leaving the reserve because of the collars...

I have serious doubts about this last explanation, I think, as do the scientist now in charge of the Rio Negro Onça Project, that jaguars had all been shot to death in and around Taiama island.

If they got all killed by the farther, or by other poachers I do not know. I am wondering if the jaguar poaching wave coming from Bolivia is spreading to the Brazilian Pantanal, at least far from the touristic areas of Porto Jofre. Nick Macphee from NickAdventures in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, who is the main jaguar safari leader in the Kaa Iya National Park in the Bolivian Chaco, in fact told me that Chinese are paying a large amount of money for jaguars bones and teeth... And jaguar are little by little getting killed in the Chaco, the Chiquitania region, as well as the large marshlands of the Beni region...

 

Well, we had no idea about it before coming to the Paraguay river. I am today still reading that the large european agencies still continue to promote the Taiama Reserve, when the Baizinha reserve clearly focus its safaris on the area around San Antonio das Lendas and Pedrinho's Floatel.

 

When Pedrinho told us the the group before us only saw a single jaguar, on the last safari, we got really worried if visiting the Paraguay river was a good choice. Let's say that Karina was much more worried than myself. I in fact have very little interest in sharing a jaguar sighting with 20 other boats (80 other tourists), just following the crowd to see jaguars. I love tracking pumas or wild animals, it is sometimes difficult, more frustrating, but you get huge merits when you find one and stay with for hours alone!

 

After a nice night on the Floatel, we got up very early before sunrise and started our first safari on the river. After two hours checking all the xbox lakes (well these are rather dead harms of the river than real lakes)., we got really close the the Fazenda, let's say about 300 meters, and found our first jaguar!!!!!!

 

It was a large female resting under a tree. We thought we had been really lucky compared to the previous visitors, particularly because weather was not really good this morning. The sky was covered and the temperature was very cold for the season. At least we can say that we had sean a jaguar!!!! The reached the aim of our jaguar mission!

 

Jaguar - Panthera onca by Karina Abarca, sur Flickr

Edited April 28, 2017 by jeremie

[xyz99]

Wow, what a beauty!!!

[jeremie]

Just want to go back to Pouso Alegre. This is a video of a collared peccary, it was part of a clan of 20 peccaries:

 

CLICK TO WATCH:

 

Collared peccary by Goulevitch Jérémie, sur Flickr

Edited April 28, 2017 by jeremie

[Atravelynn]

Your page 1 has so many great sightings and photos. Everything was right out in the open with brilliant colors, or spots in the case of the ocelot!

 

Page 2 has more great sightings and photos, but contains devastating news. No jaguars in Taima! The explanation of revenge poaching makes sense. If poachers can get money for teeth and bones, that also makes sense. Together, it wiped them out. How awful. Thank you for telling us.

Edited April 29, 2017 by Atravelynn

[jeremie]

We stayed with the first female jaguar for about 15 minutes and it then left inside the forest. We decided to leave and come back later. It proved to be a good choice, the jaguar was at the same place. There was a jabiru fishing just below the bank. At one moment the jaguar got up very fast and stopped it's attack when it discovered that it was a poor jabiru!!! It left and did not appeared again.

 

Here is a pics of the jabiru minutes after the attack:

 

Jabiru - Jabiru mycteria by Goulevitch Jérémie, sur Flickr

 

And here is the jaguar seconds after it tried to kill the jabiru:

 

Jaguar - Panthera onca by Karina Abarca, sur Flickr

 

 

A typical safari day at the Floatel:

We wake up before sunrise, we take a good breakfast, and we leave during sunrise.

We come back around 11:30-12:00 am. We have lunch, rest for one hour. And go back for another safari from 3:00 pm until dusk.

The idea is to stay the maximum as posible on the river, because it is much more difficult to find a jaguar compared to Porto Jofre (where there are many boats on the river, all connected by radio, with higher jaguar densities).

[jeremie]

Well, after these marvelous sightings of the same jaguar, we had a great sighting of neotropical otter fishing and eating its prey on a stone emerging in the river. No more jaguars today...

 

Day 2:

We had a very short sighting of a young female jaguar that was walking on the bank of the river Paraguay, it escaped very quickly, we do not have any picture of it.

We saw a group of giant otters, a male marsh deer, owler monkeys.

 

Day 3:

We decided to try to go to Taiama Ecological Reserve as things were quite calm around the lodge. Pedrinho said it was worthless, he was insisting there was no more jaguars in this area. On the way in, we had a look at the Baia de la Rusa, a place where Arthur had a great sighting years ago with a... Russian client. No jaguar but he lovely neotropical otter.

It took us a couple of hour to get to Taiama, which is a long island on the Paraguay river. There were many capybaras and caimans. We checked all the sand beaches around the island. No jaguar plug marks... It should be true... We saw many giant otters today, I would say 3 different groups on the way to Taiama if my memories are OK, and another one close to the camp. In the afternoon we stayed upstream, in an area where a fisherman said there was a jaguar inside the forest... Of course it did not get out. We were really wondering if there was any jaguar here... It proved on day 5 that the fisherman was correct, the jaguar was there. We were literally checking al the best areas around the floatel.

 

At least we knew that the boat of Baizinha Lodge scored on Day 2 and Day 3... But we need to be at the right place at the right time. Contrary to Taiama Island, plug marks were everywhere around the Floatel.

 

Karina was started to get really frustrated by this situation...

 

Capybara - Capybara - Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris by Goulevitch Jérémie, sur Flickr

 

Waiting for the jaguar to go out...

Rio Paraguay, Fazenda das Lendas by Goulevitch Jérémie, sur Flickr

 

Amazonian kingfisher (male) - Chloroceryle amazona by Goulevitch Jérémie, sur Flickr

Edited April 30, 2017 by jeremie

[jeremie]

At dinner on Day 4, a local fisherman came to the floatel to tell us there was an anaconda in the water hyacinth front of his house, located on the bank of the Paraguay river.

 

There were in fact... two anacondas!!! A large female and a smaller male!

 

Yellow anaconda - Eunectes notaeus by Goulevitch Jérémie, sur Flickr

 

Yellow anaconda - Eunectes notaeus by Goulevitch Jérémie, sur Flickr

 

WATCH AND CLICK

Anaconda by Karina Abarca, sur Flickr

Edited April 30, 2017 by jeremie

[Atravelynn]

Very cool anacondas and we know Day 5 will be exciting!

[michael-ibk]

A terrific report with great pictures Jeremy, thank you for sharing. Awful news about Taiama. I was there in 2013 and remember being told about the Jaguar killing a boy. Back then sightings of Jaguars were quite good in the reserve. I had bad weather and only saw one but another guest who had arrived a bit earlier saw about five or six a day.

[Atdahl]

More great pictures Jeremie! It is certainly sad to hear about the poaching. I am not one to paint a broad brush about most things, but it certainly seems like the Chinese are responsible for a whole lot of wildlife killing. We certainly heard this in Borneo recently. I hope things change before it's too late for a lot of species.

[jeremie]

A terrific report with great pictures Jeremy, thank you for sharing. Awful news about Taiama. I was there in 2013 and remember being told about the Jaguar killing a boy. Back then sightings of Jaguars were quite good in the reserve. I had bad weather and only saw one but another guest who had arrived a bit earlier saw about five or six a day.

 

 

I have just seen your report and I now remember it well!

 

Arthur and Pedrinho indeed told me there were many pampa deer on land on the western side of the river. But by the time we visited Pantanal, there were still a lot of water on land and it was impossible to try any safari (we where initially considering short night safaris to look for deers).

 

I have no idea if Fazenda Sao Sebastao still operate today with tourists. But it look like you had great sightings during your visit.

Edited May 2, 2017 by jeremie

[jeremie]

Before going on with Day 4, I would like to make a small correction. The day we saw the anaconda was Day 3 instead of Day 4 in post 37.

 

Day 4:

 

We had a last morning to spend on the river before coming back to Cuiaba after lunch. The initial plan was to get to Chapada dos Guimaraes for a single night, before flying to Campo Grande.

 

In the morning, Karina was still very sad, we had short discussion and started considering staying one more night at the Floatel, depending on the results of this last morning safari.

 

We left at sunrise and came back at 12:00. No jaguar... But we had a spectacular sighting of a tapir crossing the river:

 

CLICK AND WATCH

 

Tapir crossing the river by Karina Abarca, sur Flickr

 

Well, at this point of the trip at Paraguay, if we had amazing sightings of giant otters (I am sorry I still have no edited picture to present of the otters to post here), tapir, we had only two jaguars observations, which was less than expected.

 

At lunch, I explained to Arthur that Karina felt really disappointed and was really angry against me for choosing Paraguay River instead of Porto Jofré. She was really fine with the Floatel, the landscapes and all the animals we had seen on the river. But her main target for this trip was the jaguar and it was clear that she did not have enough before leaving. We asked Pedrinho and Claudia if they were alright if we asked the agency to stay one more night on the river for their logistics. We first thought that Claudia were not really happy about it... She left in the kitchen for some minutes and then went in her bedroom. After a few minutes, Claudia told us that a jaguar was just being the floatel, we couldn't believe our eyes. We jumped in the boat without finishing our dishes... The jaguar was just there! Claudia told us later that she saw a capybara jumping in the river and crossing on the other side. We were really grateful to her!

 

It was a young female, walking along the bank of the river. She was clearly hunting. We let as much space as posible to not stress her, in fact we felt she was a bit annoyed by our presence. We stopped the engine and decided to use the paddles of the boat, always staying on the other bank of the oxbow lake.

 

It was around 1:00 pm and there was no wind at all. We were literally earing the jaguar walking in the forest and the birds alarms. At one moment, we did not have any direct contact with the cat, it seemed it stopped walking. It then jumped in the water... And missed a caiman!!! We were delighted to assist to a fantastic jaguar kill attempt!

 

Jaguar - Panthera onca by Goulevitch Jérémie, sur Flickr

 

Jaguar - Panthera onca by Goulevitch Jérémie, sur Flickr

 

Pictures are not particularly nice because of the distance (about 60 meters from the jaguar) and the hard light from midday. But who cares? It was a fantastic time!!!

 

The young female looked at us and got bank on the bank. And decided to continue to hunt...

 

She stopped twice to rest on a bank looking at the river. And jumped two more times in the river. Still missing the caimans...

We stayed a total of 1 hour with this fantastic female before she left. According to Arthur, it might be a young, inexperienced female, because of her low success rate. She was much smaller than the first jaguar we spot on day 1.

Edited May 2, 2017 by jeremie

[Treepol]

@@jeremie I'm really enjoying your report, the photos and videos. You were very fortunate with tapir sightings.

 

So sorry to hear about the situation in Taiama.

[jeremie]

We went back to the lodge after this marvelous time we spent with this jaguar. We couldn't believe we had seen a jaguar hunting!

We finished our desert and called the agency to let them know we decided to stay an extra night at the floatel and check the small extra we would be charged.

Mission were accomplished but we believed it could be a nice idea to stay an extra night. Who knows, it seems luck was turning in our favor!

 

In the afternoon we checked the Bahia das Eguas and saw fresh footprints on a small sand beach, we decided to go back early the following day.

 

Great dinner, perfect nice, we got up with the idea to go back to the small bahia. It appeared to be an excellent decision!

 

We had a great shot of a caiman calling in the first light of the day:

 

Yacare - Caiman yacare - Caiman yacare by Goulevitch Jérémie, sur Flickr

 

We then followed a ringed-kingfisher with its prey.

 

Martin pêcheur - Ringed kingfisher - Megaceryle torquata (femelle) by Goulevitch Jérémie, sur Flickr

 

We got a couple of meter from it, it then appeared scared by something. Just under the tree, less than 10 meters from ourselves, there was a huge female jaguar!

 

Onça pintada - Jaguar - Panthera onca by Goulevitch Jérémie, sur Flickr

 

She was not very confident with us, always staying behind dead branches and then behind a tree. She then decided to scratch a tree, to mark her territory. She should be the resident of this part of Pantanal.

 

Onça pintada - Jaguar - Panthera onca by Goulevitch Jérémie, sur Flickr

 

She stayed less than 5 minutes with us before continuing her way. What a terrific sighting!!!

[jeremie]

On the way back to the Floatel, we find the resident group of giant otters hunting in the water hyacinth.

 

Ariranha - Giant otter - Pteronura brasiliensis by Goulevitch Jérémie, sur Flickr

 

Pedrinho as usual tried to imitate them to see if they would come closer. At one moment, appeared in a small hole in the vegetation under the bank of the river....

 

Jaguar - Panthera onca by Karina Abarca, sur Flickr

 

This young female was the one we had been looking for every day, the fisherman was sure she was in the area. And he was completely right!

The funniest thing is that she came by alone to check which animal was responsible for his strange noise. Pedrinho is clearly not a good imitator of the giant otters!!!!

She stayed here for half an hour, behaving really naturally. She didn't seem to care at all about us. We took some really nice shots. The otters did not realize the jaguar was just here but it didn't care at all about them.

As it was getting hotter and hotter, the jaguar decided to move a couple of meters in the shadows inside the vegetation.

 

What a terrific last morning at Rio Paraguay!!!!

[jeremie]

Conclusions about the Paraguay River for jaguar safari

 

Our first morning was amazing because we had our first jaguar sighting only a couple of hour after leaving the floatel.

We then had 2 frustrating days. We two last days were just amazing.

If Taiama Reserve is today not a good location for jaguars, there is a good population around the floatel. The difficulty is that there are very few boats on the river, and they are not connected on radio.

I think that you need to stay a minimum of 5 nights at the floatel to have good chances of seeing jaguars. If you have less time, you should prefer Porto Jofre instead, even if they it is definitely overcrowded.

 

One day I would like to see how is Porto Jofre.

[jeremie]

Before leaving Northern Pantanal, I would like to post two last pictures of tapirs taken at Pouso Alegre, that I have edited these last days.

 

Tapir - Tapirus terrestris by Goulevitch Jérémie, sur Flickr

 

Tapir - Tapirus terrestris by Goulevitch Jérémie, sur Flickr

[Alexander33]

@@jeremie

 

Great jaguar sightings. Good for you for negotiating another night at the flotel.

 

You also saw a lot of tapirs, to my mind. Do you have any idea if the number you saw was unusually high, or whether this was a typical experience?

[jeremie]

@@jeremie

 

Great jaguar sightings. Good for you for negotiating another night at the flotel.

 

You also saw a lot of tapirs, to my mind. Do you have any idea if the number you saw was unusually high, or whether this was a typical experience?

 

 

@@Alexander 33: It is clear we have been very lucky with tapirs. It is not uncommon to see them on the Paraguay river. I would say they are very common at Pouso Alegre. As they are highly nocturnal, I would recommend doing as much as posible night safaris and leaving the earlier as posible. One thing in our favor was that we were always the first jeep to leave in the morning, some animals obviously left after seeing us.

 

Before booking with Andre and Leen, I had been in contact with South Wild. The agency was guaranteeing tapirs at Pouso Alegre, so I guess it is quite easy to spot them here.

[jeremie]

We went back to Cuiaba and took an early flight to Campo Grande with Azul. At Campo Grande weather was really bad, there was a cold. If cold weather is pretty bad for jaguars, it is great to spot giant ant-eaters!

 

We drove from Campo to Aquidauana. Unfortunately weather was pretty good in there, there was no cold in Pantanal.

From Aquidauana we took a flight in a chartered aircraft for 45 minutes to reach the Rio Negro area and the Fazenda Barranco Alto.

 

From Aquidauana to the blackwater Rio Negro river, one downstream tributary of the Paraguay river, landscapes were quite monotonous, apart from the green gallery forests surrounding the Aquidauana river, the cerrado forests were really dry.

Crossing the wonderfull Rio Negro, the landscapes changed completely, with ponds and clearings everywhere. The Taquari river, currently located dozens of kilometers to the North in a vast floodplain, used to change its riverbed quite a lot, and shaped the wonderful region of Nhecolândia covered by ponds, some of them filled with salty waters.

 

I will not post pictures from the Fazenda, but let you the link of the lodge:

http://www.fazendabarrancoalto.com/pantanal-lodge

It is a rather confortable lodge, with wifi, excellent and organic food. All the meals are taken with the Leuzinger family and the staff of the fazenda, something which is highly appreciated by the guests! The staff is composed of guides and scientists, who are leading different subjects at the farm.

 

We met the guises from the Onça do Rio Negro Project, who are investigating the relation between jaguars and livestock in the Rio Negro area. They are based at FBA but work in a much larger area. They have camera traps and different traps, in order to fit radio collars to the jaguars.

Jaguars are found in much lower densities in this area, compared to the Paraguay or the Cuiaba rivers. It can be explained by the much lower level of preys, especially caimans and capybaras. In the other hand, there are large herds of peccaries in Nhecolândia, which is jaguar's main preys! I then guess the main reasons why jaguars are less often seen on the Rio Negro river, are that jaguars live more inland due to a different diet than at Meeting the Water State Park, and that preys densities do not reach the outstanding levels of Northern Pantanal.

 

https://www.facebook.com/oncasdorionegro/

[jeremie]

I have not a lot of pictures from FBA, if we booked for 5 nights, we only stayed for 2 nights. In fact, Karina was hardly infected at here eye and contracted a bad corneal ulcera, and nearly lost her eye. We had to leave the Fazenda in emergency to reach Campo Grande after contacting some friends ophthalmologists (WIFI was of great help for us at FBA). This incident also explain you why I took a lot of time to go with the edition of the pictures. Karina did not have good memories of Pantanal and especially about FBA because of this very sad event.

 

I have to say that Lucas Leuzinger and his wife Marina (who was at Campo Grande by the time of our trip) have been of great help for us.

 

In a nutshel, instead of going on a detailed TR, I will post some few pictures.