Brazil 2023 - a loooooong time coming!

[Zubbie15]

Back, what feels like a very long time ago, my wife and I wanted to expand our horizons beyond Africa.   Well, more accurately I wanted to and typically my wife is happy to go along as long as I arrange decent lodging and good food.    So way back in 2019 I started researching trips to the Pantanal, and I reached out to a variety of tour operators to schedule something for July/August 2020.  We came up with a plan, that would involve both the northern and southern Pantanal, and selected a tour operator, and everything was good to go.  Of course, 2020 hit, and we had to push things back to 2021.  We were confident 2021 was going to work, but that also had to be pushed as it would have meant leaving our kids with their grandparents, and at that time the border between Canada (where my in-laws are located) and the US (where we currently are) wasn't open.  So we pushed back again to 2022, only to have at that time too many trips and not enough vacation time.  Having to choose which trips to actually take, we again pushed the Pantanal back because we hadn't actually deposited any money, so that seemed like a safe choice.  Finally, early 2023 came around, and I started wondering about not having paid a deposit so I inquired with the TO we had booked with - he hadn't made any bookings despite what I thought was our agreed itinerary, and when he looked into it he claimed there weren't any openings at some of the locations we wanted.  Being rather frustrated by this, I decided to reengage some of the other TOs we had originally contacted, and ultimately we booked with Pantanal Jaguar Safaris.  

 

With the delay, the other big change we made was adding our kids to the trip.  They would be 8 and 5 at the time of the trip, and having already been to Africa (I never wrote a trip report for that trip on this site, unfortunately) we thought they would enjoy the adventure.  This meant that the flight from Porto Jofre was going to be out of budget (we were quoted $4500!) so we also stuck to the northern section.  I also asked Leen, who helped with the booking, to prioritize pousadas that were kid-friendly, and we decided together to not book too long at Porto Jofre to allow for some variety.  So in the end we had the following itinerary:

 

- daytime direct trip to Sao Paulo from Boston; O/N by the airport (how nice to not have to deal with jetlag, I'm always so jealous of the Europeans who are one flight away from Africa)

- Fly to Cuiaba, transfer to Pousada Piuval for 3 nights

- transfer to Pousada Araras for 2 nights

- 5 nights in Porto Jofre at the Hotel Pantanal Norte

- back up the Transpantaniera to Pousada Aymara for 2 nights

- to Cuiaba, fly to Sao Paulo.  Day room and then overnight flight back to Boston

 

Overall I think it went well - LATAM changed our flight back to SP to be quite early so we had to leave Aymara at 4AM the last day, which was annoying, as we'd hoped to have an extra half-day there, but the rest worked out quite well.  

 

But in the end we managed to finally take our trip to the Pantanal, and it was definitely worth it!

 

 

No suspense - yes we did see jaguars... lots of jaguars!

[janzin]

oh definitely looking forward to this, it's been a long time coming!!  Fabulous photo to start with too!

[Ginny]

@Zubbie15I too am looking forward to your trip report.  my sister and I returned on Oct. 18th from a 2-week trip to the Northern Pantanal

also organized by Pantanal Jaguar Safaris and the marvelous Leen. You were also helpful to me during our planning stages. Thank you again.

[offshorebirder]

Nice intro and teaser photo @Zubbie15.

 

I am looking forward to this report.

[Whyone?]

You can never have enough Jaguars!

[Zubbie15]

Thanks @janzin, @Ginny, @offshorebirderand @Whyone?for the comments!  I should have mentioned that Janet was a big help with planning, especially earlier this year when we were rushing to get a new booking.   @Ginny, I'm really glad your trip went well, hopefully you can write up a report sometime for us. 

 

Clearly updates for this report are going to come slowly, sorry for the delay.  I usually start my trip reports with some background info before starting to dig in, to have all of this info in one place rather than sprinkled throughout, and I think I'll do this here as well.  I want to first talk about photography on this trip, because it was definitely an adjustment from other wildlife trips we've taken.  

 

I'm not sure if it was something that I said to Leen, or if booking relatively late meant that we weren't in line for one of their main guides, but we ended up being guided by Henrique Olsen (https://henriqueolsen.com/)  Henrique is a younger guy (he had his 29th birthday while traveling with us, but a really good photographer (if you count Instagram followers as a readout for photography impact, he has 180K).  He's got a very interesting history, as like most Brazilians he did not speak English until quite recently.  In fact, he only really learned in 2020, when he spent some time in the Pantanal during covid and shared lodging with an Australian doing the same - Henrique learned English, and the Aussie learned some photography).  It was fun to have a young guy too with the kids - while Henrique told us he'd never guided a family before, he was really good with the kids and we all had a great time.

 

For us, we brought the following:

Canon R5, Canon R6, and a rented Canon R6 Mk II (for non-Canon people, all mirrorless cameras).  I wanted to try out the R6 Mk II because we've been having intermittent issues with the R6 freezing during high-speed bursts, as a potential upgrade option. We struggled with the autofocus though, but I think that was an issue with that specific camera.  Whatever I tried it kept losing focus after a few seconds.  The freezing of the R6 also got worse and meant it wasn't usable for high speed action - I'm not sure what's wrong, but I sent it to Canon for repairs upon our return but they couldn't find anything (they still charged $400 for that "service" unfortunately).  My son also had a Canon Powershot SX70 that he used quite well, the only issue being that he decided on his own at one point to switch to Manual mode (since my wife and I both use that) but his settings weren't right, and I didn't notice.  So a few days worth of his photos were quite blurry.  My daughter had a GoPro, I'll include some of her videos later on.  

 

Future photographer - first day of school he told everyone he wanted to be a wildlife photographer when he grows up

 

In terms of lenses, we brought an RF 400 mm f/2.8 (my main lens - rented sadly, I'm always sad to return it), an RF 100-500mm (for my wife), an RF 70-200mm f/2.8 (didn't use as much as hoped) and an RF 14-35mm  f/4 (also not used very much).  

 

Photographer at work (courtesy Henrique Olsen)

 

I found some of the photography challenging, in particular on the river.  First of all, while in Africa the eye focus tracking has always worked well for me, even on spotted cats like leopards and cheetahs, all of our cameras really struggled to identify jaguars.  I'm not sure if it's the busier environment or not, but I would say eye focus worked less than 50% of the time.  I have all of the cameras set up for dual back button focus, and I was quite often having to switch back to old-school autofocus.  This was compounded by the challenge of shooting from a boat, I quite regularly would have a composition I like set up only to have the boat jerk as the pilot sought to fight the current, and then the eye focus would lose target and I'd have to start all over again.  I also found it a bit challenging handholding with the life jacket on the boat; a lot of people seemed to remove these, but with the kids we didn't want them to get any ideas.  The bulk made it hard to tuck my left elbow in to support the lens, so again I wasn't as stable as I'd like.  

 

One last challenge was with our boat, and something that I didn't think to consider but will try to modify when we return.  We were a family of four, and adding in Henrique and the boat pilot that made six people.  We ended up being given a 6-person boat, which proved somewhat tight.  That was one of the reasons I didn't use my 70-200 too much, it pretty much had to be stored in my camera bag and getting it out was a pain so I often didn't bother.   We also had a boat where the pilot seat was at the front, and so Henrique was up front to be able to communicate with him. Normally this wasn't a problem, but if we stopped for something happening on a riverbank we would obviously have to go into the vegetation bow-first.  So the best views were for the pilot and Henrique - they would invite us to come forward, but I usually let the kids do that. It just meant I was often photographing over/around other people.   So I think I would ask for a slightly larger boat with the pilot in the back when we return; we did have this for a couple of hours when our normal boat broke down mid-morning, and I think it would work slightly better.  

 

One other mistake I made initially on the boat was that I wouldn't take photos while we were moving, rather doing an Africa-like process of waiting for us to be relatively stopped.  This clearly reduced possibilities, especially for some birds, and so the second half of our time on the river I would just blast away even if composition was hard to control.  

 

But with all of these issues, I am quite happy with the photos we came away with. 

 

Giant River Otter. It took me a couple of sighting before I figured out how to have some luck in getting photos in focus. 

[Whyone?]

As a Canon user, and recently starting the transition to mirrorless (albeit an R7, so a crop sensor....something I haven't used for a long time, but I did find the extra reach useful) I find your comments about the challenges of photography in the Pantanal especially interesting. 

 

I also found photography from a small boat 'interesting' and tended to shoot at a higher shutter speed than would be the case from a static base and letting ISO take the strain - thankfully I found the high ISO performance of the R7 quite impressive.  

 

I didn't experience the problems with eye focus on Jaguars that you mention - the camera locked and held focus really well.  Giant Otters were another matter though, with the camera routinely focussing on their ears rather than eyes!

Edited October 28, 2023 by Whyone?

[Miss Biscuit]

Gorgeous jaguar to start off! Excited to read this trip report as I am considering this trip for next year.  Been reading everyone's I can find.

Edited October 31, 2023 by Miss Biscuit

[Zubbie15]

@Whyone? thanks for the update.  I know the R7 is a newer generation than the R5/R6, I wonder if that could explain the difference you saw.  Or maybe my settings were just off... I agree about the ears of the otters, they were challenging to get!

 

Before I get into the sightings, I thought it would be worthwhile to give an overview of the lodging we chose.

 

Pousada Piuval:  I came away from here thinking this was the most rustic location we stayed at, but this was probably driven entirely by the lack of fanciness to the dining area.  The room was perfectly fine, beds comfortable, etc.  I liked the food, it was nothing fancy but just good Brazilian food. Our kids loved the restaurant because it was the one place that had a stock of ice cream, they learned the Portuguese word for ice cream and would go and ask for it every meal (including breakfast...).  The lodge caters to a lot of Brazilian tourists, it was probably about 50:50 during our stay .  I would say it also was probably the best wildlife watching we had at a Pousada, there was a lot to see in terms of birds and mammals.  They even have jaguars on the property, and while we saw fairly fresh footprints at one point we didn't get lucky.   From the hammocks, to the wonky ping-pong table by the bar, to the capybara that would come on the grounds in the night, this was just a very charming place to stay and somewhere I'd be happy to return.

 

Typical safari truck for Piuval. We normally had 3 rows of seats, I don't remember why we only had 2 on this drive

 

Pousada Araras:  This was probably the lodge that fit us least well, but mostly because I think it caters to a more adult clientele.  My impressions may also be colored by the fact that our first evening there I developed some pretty bad intestinal issues, which lasted several days and didn't really resolve until I started antibiotics.  Thankfully it wasn't so bad that I couldn't go on any activities, but I wasn't super comfortable while we were at this lodge.  The lodge is situated by a swamp and pond, and there were caiman around at all times.  There was also a nest box with a pair of Hyacinth Macaws located right over the pool, which offered a lot of enjoyment.  A big activity at the lodge is walking, with a collection of boots found outside the main office to offer some snake protection to the guests.  We were told that the kids were too young to go on a walk, so instead we spent most of our time driving through their fields on the other side of the Transpantaniera.  This was a very nice area, but not overly productive for us.  We did see some small cat prints at one point, and Henrique and our guide weren't sure if it was an ocelot or a baby puma (given the lack of larger prints I assume more likely an ocelot), but no luck. There were also extensive termite fields around, but despite extensive effort we didn't have any luck with giant anteaters.  The challenge we had with the lodge really was the meals, and it was entirely our issue.  The food was really excellent, but for a more refined palate than our kids have.  So they struggled with eating enough, especially at dinner.  The lodge also does dining as a semi-communal effort, with medium size tables with assigned seating.  We felt a little bad about the people who got us - the first meal was a retired British couple, and the dinner was two younger European couples.  They were all very nice, but I don't think they expected to be seated with kids.  

 

A couple of more notes - Araras runs a "jaguar express" tour, which leaves at 5ish in the morning, drives all the way to Porto Jofre (3 hours or so), then spends several hours on the rivers before coming back to camp.  It sounds exhausting to me, but almost everyone we talked to seemed to be doing it (and not bothering to stay at Porto Jofre).  I guess if you just want to see a wild jaguar it would work ok, but not for a dedicate safari enthusiast!   The other think to mention is that one night we had all gone to bed when my phone buzzed, and it was Henrique saying that there was a tapir outside. The kids were passed out, so I ran outside to try to see it.  Unfortunately the camera batteries were charging, so I had just my phone.  I did see the tapir's butt, but more excitedly we had a barn owl in the tree over us letting us know how unhappy it was with our presence.

 

Crappy phone photo of a barn owl

 

Hotel Pantanal Norte:  A lot of people stay here, I don't think I need to say much.  I found it odd how everyone's name and tour operator was on the outside of the door - I'm a "curious" person (not nosey ) and so was definitely checking out the tour operators to see what they offered (and maybe also trying to find websites/Instagram profiles of people on photo tours, although I don't admit to anything).  It's certainly a large lodge, but well-run and very efficiently run.  One hint that I got from @janzin was that at the lunch buffet the restaurant puts out two different peanut treats.  One is like a powdered peanut that is formed into a bar, while the other is somewhat like peanut brittle.  We really liked both, and each of us would go up and grab a handful before leaving after lunch.  They tasted quite good while out on the river. I won't add much else, beyond another cool, phone-only sighting we had one night, with 3 barn owls up in a tree.  I tried to find them during the day with a real camera, but they were either hiding well or had moved on to a different location.

 

Phone photo of 3 barn owls

 

Pousada Aymara:  I really liked this lodge, it's relatively new but has a lot of potential.  They have a pretty good set up, with the various buildings in a clearing where the larger trees have been maintained.  This allows for a lot of wildlife to be present in camp.  This is further helped by the permanent canal that comes in right by camp, so as things get dry the animals are drawn to this water.  Further, they put out corn and seeds at various locations around the lodge, attracting a whole variety of birdlife (as I'll show later).  There is apparently an ocelot in the area - when we checked in the owner told us to keep our eyes open, although in the end we dipped. I think they were looking to install some hides to try to increase the chances of seeing it, which would be cool. They also have a resident tapir, and they had started putting out seeds in a specific area to try to make it more easily seen (I'm not a huge fan of this, but I don't think it would change much from the tapir getting seeds from the farm fields).  The rooms were very comfortable, and perhaps a bit fancier than our other stops.  The one comment would be that the walls are very thin, we could easily hear what our neighbors were saying, but it wasn't an issue as everyone went to bed early.  The food was good, I have to mention the desserts which were the best of our stays.  Finally the have a Macaw nest on sight - but despite there being a nest box, the birds are nesting in a hole in a tree.  I tried to figure out why, and looking closely at the nest box you could see a head peaking out.

 

Barn owl at Aymara

 

Overall it was a nice variety of lodges to stay at, and we liked them all.   

[Whyone?]

Pleased to hear that you liked Aymara....we also felt it was a good set-up and a nice place to while away a few days. 

[janzin]

Glad you found the peanut candies! I discovered you can actually get the ground peanut ones on Amazon (Paçoquita Doce de Amendoim), but I haven't found the peanut brittle ones which I like even more. 

 

Cool that you saw all those Barn Owls...I've never seen one in the Pantanal!

[Alexander33]

Thanks for the detailed run-down on the lodges. Very helpful and informative. 
 

You seem to have hit the jackpot on barn owls in the Pantanal. I’ve never seen one there, either. 
 

As to photography, although I shoot Nikon, I agree with your assessment as to the 70-200 2.8. While that lens is indispensable to me for Africa, in the Pantanal, even in a boat for the just the two of us where we had maximum flexibility, I found it a bit short.  I took it on our first trip, hardly used it, and left it at home this time around. 
 

Despite my initial reservations in even purchasing the lens, I ended up taking the Nikon Z 100-400 in addition to the 500 PF and, to my surprise, around 75% of my photos on the river were with the 100-400. Although one of my favorite Jaguar shots of the trip was at 100mm, having that extra focal length from 200-400 in the Pantanal proved to be pretty important.  Given our frequent fixed position on the boat, the zoom often was helpful for framing, but a 400 2.8 like you rented would also be really nice. I’ve never had the pleasure of using one, but I can imagine I would have been sad in returning it as well. 

 

And yes on the peanut treats at Porto Jofre. We took some to our boatman every afternoon. He claimed he really loved them, but maybe he was just being polite!

[janzin]

 

6 hours ago, Alexander33 said:

I ended up taking the Nikon Z 100-400 in addition to the 500 PF

That's the exact combo I took, in fact I purchased the 100-400 expressly for the Pantanal trip. I think that's a great combo as long as one is shooting primarily in good light, as in the Pantanal. Although it seems, according to ExposurePlot, I used the 500PF more, but I would guess that was primarily for bird shots. 

[Miss Biscuit]

After dealing with digestive issues in Tanzania this year, I started taking Travelan with every meal. It either worked or my digestive track had already hardened itself as I didn't have any further issues. It will definitely be something I pack for every trip going forward to places like these.

[Zubbie15]

On 10/31/2023 at 4:09 PM, janzin said:

Cool that you saw all those Barn Owls...I've never seen one in the Pantanal!

I've never seen one period, so I was quite excited.  I wish they'd come out during the daytime, but it wasn't to be!  I don't know if it's good to know that the peanut treats are available on Amazon, could be dangerous!

 

14 hours ago, Alexander33 said:

I agree with your assessment as to the 70-200 2.8

With the high MP cameras, I am not too concerned with cropping if it's a little short, especially if it's just for internet sharing.  I was definitely too tight at times with the 400, but usually my wife is good to zoom out with her camera so someone gets the shot.

 

6 hours ago, Miss Biscuit said:

taking Travelan with every meal

We used Travelan for the first time in India, and didn't have any belly issues there - I agree it's a good product.  We actually brought it with us to Brazil and always seemed to forget to take it, unfortunately.  

[Zubbie15]

I don't think I will do this report on a blow-by-blow basis, except maybe for our time on the rivers.  Rather, for the Pousadas I will break things out by sightings I think.  We had two real exciting sightings at Pousada Piuval, and in fact both were when I was alone with Henrique.  Both occurred right at the break of dawn, and both days the kids wanted to sleep in so my wife stayed with them (she had some work to catch up on, unfortunately).  So I headed out on a solo game drive, leaving just as the horizon was showing a bit of light.  It was really quite quiet at first, and I was getting worried we wouldn't see anything in the nice early light when our driver stopped the car and pointed to a dark shape in an adjacent field.  Henrique got out the binoculars, and then said to quickly get down.  We headed off into the field, slowly and quietly making our way toward the animal.  It was a southern tamandua, which I was really excited to see as I wasn't sure we'd find one.

 

 

Tamandua, in very low light.  (ISO 16000)

 

We could see which direction it was heading, and so went around the other side of a group of trees and then crouched down on the ground.  As luck would have it, it came around the trees and started heading directly for us.  It got so close that I almost couldn't fit the entire animal in my frame, before it realized we were there and stood up to check us out.

 

Hello there - glad we didn't have to deal with those claws!

 

Once it decided we weren't a threat, it made a turn and headed off toward a tree to look for termites.  We were lucky that it stopped briefly for us in a relatively open area, with the dawn sky behind it.

 

Heading up for food

 

We watched it for quite a while up in the tree, and while photos were a challenge it was fun to see how well it could maneuver through the branches.  It was at this time that the first other tourists arrived, up to now we had had the sighting to ourself.

 

Eventually it came down the tree, and then came out into the field.  I think it was a little overwhelmed by the people that had arrived (we were maybe 15 at that point), and so it headed off through the fields. None of us decided to follow it, so it was able to leave in peace.

 

 

So long, farewell!

 

It was a really good start to the trip, definitely, although I felt a little sad to be the only one to see it!

 

[Treepol]

Great southern tamandua sighting - the little guy looks as though he is dancing.

[TonyQ]

A wonderful sighting of the Tamandua. Beautiful photos of a special creature.

[Towlersonsafari]

lovely tamandua- and very helpful to read about peoples photography experiences on a boat-and reassuring that nobody has dropped a lens in the river!  @Zubbie15

[TonyQ]

1 hour ago, Towlersonsafari said:

and reassuring that nobody has dropped a lens in the river!

I dropped a lens hood in the river when looking for Jaguars

[Towlersonsafari]

hurrah! @TonyQhaving once dropped my  spectacles in the river ouse whilst they were on my head I am resigned to dropping something! 

[Zubbie15]

Thanks @Treepol, @TonyQand @Towlersonsafari for the comments!  I can thankfully say we didn't drop anything in the river this trip - I didn't even lose a lens cap, which is what I always misplace when I'm traveling.

 

This trip report is clearly not moving along very quickly.  But in any case, the other special sighting we had was the next morning.  It was Henrique's birthday, so I joked we needed to find him a birthday gift.  Unfortunately I was once again the only one going out at dawn, so once again it was just me who saw this sighting.   Well, we headed out through the fields where all of the termite mounds were, hoping for a giant anteater, and quite quickly saw a lone animal walking through the field.  We were about to get out when our driver got word that another giant anteater was nearby, and this one was a mother with a baby.  So we decided to head over there.   We quickly found her, because there were 2 or 3 other cars already there. 

 

 

She was clearly on a mission, the sun wasn't up yet but it was getting lighter and she wanted to get to her home before the sun came up.

 

 

It was a challenge keeping up with her, trying to get a good photographic composition, and trying to avoid tripping in any holes on the uneven ground.   The light was also extremely low, I had to resort to very low shutter speeds and just shooting off at full frame rate in order to try to get a few that were sharp.

 

 

The entire sighting lasted less than 5 minutes - they went into a patch of forest and while we tried to catch them coming out they either decided to bed down in there, or we missed them.  But despite the brevity of the sighting it was a great treat, one that I again wish the kids had wanted to wake up for (they still are too young to realize that taking a nap in the afternoon would allow them to wake up in the morning; we spent all afternoons at the pool instead). 

[TonyQ]

Two wonderful sightings. It shows the value of getting up early!

[Miss Biscuit]

A mama and baby, a truly special moment for you!

[xelas]

I love your photos, and I like your details about accommodations and gear.