Crocodile watching at the Pantanal in Venezeuela
The following day was a relatively short drive that took all day as we seemed to stop every time our enthusiastic spotter saw a duck or ibis that (only) he thought was of interest. The first few were quite nice, but after a while everyone just wanted to get wherever we were supposed to be going.
Lining the road side (other than huge numbers of dead dogs) were lots of children with stuffed ‘guys’ to burn on New Year’s Eve. Alan the guide gave us a large bag of coins to throw to them from the moving truck windows. Immediately this turned into 1 point for the head, 3 for the mouth and 5 for an eye, but we never really clarified whether this was for hitting the guy or the child standing next to it. This resulted in a large orange truck full of foreigners driving round the countryside throwing money at children and if they failed to hit quite possibly getting them run over when they came into the road to retrieve the coins.
Despite our grumblings we did see a few animals of interest including caiman, the pink national bird of Venezuela, the Scarlet Ibis, the other name of which I immediately forgot, plus giant storks and things. Most enjoyable and unexpected were the large groups of turtles sitting on sandbanks, which simultaneously dived into the water at the sound of the oncoming truck.
We stopped to make lunch by an area that had caught fire and was burning away quite fiercely. This allowed us to watch predators at work as hawks circled above waiting to swoop onto the animals fleeing the flames below.
Eventually we arrived at a nature lodge and packed all the couples off to one room together whilst the fun people all dormed in the other, on a mixture of beds and hammocks. I quickly grabbed a bed, as with New Year’s Eve the next day I didn’t want to be swinging round in a hammock the morning after a few beers.
A very early start saw us on a safari drive to see lots of birds and capybaras. Our guide was very enthusiastic, wading through muddy puddles and slowly creeping towards flocks of birds, until we felt a bit sidelined whilst he enjoyed his photo outing.
Just a little further along the river we dangled little pieces of raw chicken into the water and immediately feeling the strong tug of a bite pulled out wriggling piranhas. Easily catching a couple each we had baked piranha for lunch, but not before Dan managed to get bitten on the hand by the razor sharp teeth. A month later it’s only just healed and will scar for life.
On the way back to the truck volunteers were called for to go anaconda hunting. I jumped out and grabbed a stick too soon, before they explained the process: Wade into a muddy bog, poking the mud in front of you with a stick. If it doesn’t feel squishy it’s an anaconda so guess which end is the head and grabs its neck. You now have hold of the business end of an angry anaconda that’s just been poked in the head with a stick, or the tail end in which case you’re going to get bitten. Undaunted I waded in and poked about a bit but probably luckily didn’t find anything before our guide Ramon returned with a 2m long specimen from behind a rock. I suspect it may have been left there in a bag, but that’s mostly because I didn’t find anything myself.
That afternoon was spent on a somewhat bad tempered Safari boat, during which we saw a very rare blue heron, which I also forget the name of, a particularly goofy looking caiman, and innumerable turtles on logs. The highlight was apparently seeing a bird that looks just like a stick, although I still maintain it was a stick until I see it flying. Guide was unimpressed when I found a stick that looked like a bird. It flew further too…
That evening was New Year’s Eve, which coincided with a full moon, so we partied outside in the warm night. Staying at the same lodge was a remarkably polite Canadian group a collection of sulky Scandinavians and a rowdy English tour bus that seemed to be having one long argument. The Canadian decided to let off their fireworks at 11, but they were pitiful so at midnight we provided a proper fireworks display with huge bangs, multiple rocket launchers and Catherine wheels, culminating in setting fire to the neighbouring field of grass.
Whilst we were distracted by fire damping duties the Canadians went to bed only to be awoken by the English group’s argument developing into a full blown punch up. We returned from the fire blackened but not beaten and rather than put a stop to the fracas just stood watching occasionally cheering ‘Fight, fight, fight!’ as they didn’t seem to be hurting each other too badly.
We returned to the dorm rooms about 4am, in time to see the Swedish girls undressing in an open doorway, which Dan put an abrupt end to by shouting ‘Way-hey!’
Waking in the morning the whole lodge was a disaster area with smouldering fires, broken fences, smashed tables and chairs and some still quite unamused Swedish people glaring at us over breakfast.
