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December 19, 2005
Mosquitoes, Parrots, Alligators, Piranha, and more Mosquitoes
Today we woke up and had a good breakfast before we set out on foot to a nearby river where we would be looking for wildlife and fishing for piranha. While we were getting ready to leave though, and while Em was in the shower, the owner of the hotel yelled out that two mccaws were in tree right in front of the ranch. I grabbed Em’s camera and took a few photos of them before they flew off. It was amazing to see parrots that big in the wild. I don’t think I had ever seen a picture of a H mccaw that are entirely blue except for a yellow ring around their eyes. Em had worked with the DNA of this species at the San Diego Zoo so she was extremely disappointed she missed them. The owner assured us though that they would be back tomorrow morning.
At the river Todd and I jumped in one canoe with Jose, a Brazilian cowboy how works at the ranch. Em, Gabriella, and Paulino jumped in another. We paddled upriver for a bit, passing alligators and various birds along the way. Then we came to a stop and Jose handed both of us a makeshift fishing rod made of bamboo and a bag of cut up steak. It was the first time in my life that I’ve fished with steak in my life but we quickly learned it worked. Putting the line in the river you could quickly feel piranha nibbling at the meat on the hook. The trick was getting one big enough to bite that could get it’s mouth around the hook. It didn’t take too long and Todd pulled up the first piranha 2 minutes into the trip.
For the next hour we slowly made our way down stream as mosquitoes began to swarm around us. At one point I counted over 20 on Todd’s back. At another point he extended his arm and said “Look at this” to reveal 10 mosquitoes on his forearm all sucking blood.
While he was swatting mosquitoes I got lucky and pulled up a huge piranha. While Jose pulled back its lips to show me its teeth I reached forward to lightly touch it’s sharp set of chompers. Jose jerked the fish away and gave me a look like I was crazy. “It will take off your finger” he explained in Portuguese and then continued to tell me about a friend who had lost half his finger removing a hook.
Once back on shore Jose fed one of the small piranhas to a alligator and then put the rest in a bag to eat latter. According to him they were a good eating fish. It sounded a little strange to me though. Some of the other animals that we saw were river otters, red-billed tortoises, more caimans, more hawks, a tiger heron, maguari storks.
Back at the hotel one of the workers showed me a guitar he was learning to play that had five double strings and I helped him learn a few songs in English with the normal guitar he also knew how to play. After lunch we all relaxed in the pool for a few hours and played tubarão (i.e."Shark" in Portugees) with Gabriella.
In the afternoon we all set out on horseback to explore the surrounding area. It was a great way to travel with so many of the trails and roads flooded. Shortly after leaving the ranch we met up with another Brazilian cowboy fixing one of the cattle fences. He invited us come over to the neighboring ranch where he worked. After a 45 minute ride we arrived at his home off the side of the ranch, surrounded by chickens and lazy hound dogs. . They all joked around, let us try a drink with sugar and guarana, and told us about the Pantanal as the horses got a break.
A few hours later we were back at the ranch having dinner. Before heading off to sleep we went for one more swim in the pool. That was interrupted when one of the girls that works in the kitchen came out of her room screaming that there was a “cobra” in her bed. She was obviously disturbed. One of the guys ended up killing the long thin snake and that was in the bed of the beds. After that adventure we headed off to get some sleep.
Posted by Peter Mork at December 19, 2005 5:32 PM
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