Cats of Pantanal
We flew from Atlanta to Sao Paulo to Cuiaba, a city of about one million.
PantanalCats2019122 times.From Cuiaba we travel by a small bus to the South Wild Lodge. Here's a typical bridge that we crosssed
From Cuiaba we travelled by a small bus to the SouthWild Lodge. Here's a typical bridge that we crosssed, 122 times.
SouthWild Lodge provided good basic accommodations for our 3-day stay while we photographed mostly birds and ocelots. That's a jabiru stork in front of the lodge.
From SouthWild we drove 5 hours back on the same bumpy road, lots of bridges, and dust.
To enjoy the Pantanal we traveled to Porto Jofe in an open-air truck.
Here is Porto Jofre, all of it. It's simply a dropoff for getting on boats for the next leg of our journey.
We get ready to take about an hour ride on the Cuiaba River to our accommodations.
Here is our hotel, built on a barge and tied up to the riverbank. It's called the Jaguar Suites Flotel. Our room was very nice.
Here is our gang of photographers with their cameras mounted. We would go out early each morning until about 11 am and then again in mid-afternoon until dark.
John, our boat driver on the left, and Lailson our guide on the right. Lailson was an outstanding guide throughout the trip.
A typical scene as we navigated the waterways in search of jaguars.
Others searching for the big cats.
One of the many backwaters that we slipped into in search of the elusive jaguar.
One of the colorful trees that were blooming as Brazil goes into its spring.
There is a cat in there somewhee.
When a jaguar was spotted the word would go out to the boat drivers and soon a crowd would gather.
Not everyone had equal interest in photographing jaguars.
We often would wind our way back into narrow waterways where the prop had to be lifted up a bit to avoid scraping the bottom
Occasionally we would pass natives who were fishing.
As the sun set, we headed for the Flotel and a healthy meal.
At SouthWild a blind was set up to photograph ocelots, a nocturnal animal. A person would put out some food and we would wait for the cats to come. We saw two different cats over the two nights. No cat showed up the third night.
Look closely at this ocelot's face and you'll see he tangled with a porcupine.
The dawn of a new day. We're now going in search of jaguars.
