I had only been there for a few hours but already felt like an unwelcome house guest, the large birds flapped their billowing wings above me and seemed to cackle, "You don't belong here city girl, be gone, be gone, be gone!" The red neck mosquitos buzzed around me more than anyone else in my tour group and used my body as an all you can eat buffet. Now, high maintenance I am not, I enjoy and appreciate nature, especially when fermented and served with ice or char-grilled, neatly arranged in a tower formation on a plate and drizzled with a delicious sauce. I should have guessed that three days in the Pantanal, would not be my thing, perhaps due to the fact that I am not someone who enjoys accidently swallowing moths, squinting in the blistering heat at trees trying to find the invisible bird everyone else in the group is in awe of and lying awake in the dark, waiting for a jaguar or puma to maul me to death. In this Jungle like environment, even the tiniest of creatures can kill you, like the microbes in the river that swim into your urethra and eat your privates from the inside out. Fantástico, I´ll give it a shot, I thought.
I started the tour in a positive frame of mind, particularly when I laid eyes on our handsome guide, Alex. He shook my hand as his deep brown eyes looked into my soul from under his cowboy hat, his shirt flapped open to expose a perfectly muscular and tanned chest. "You are my Brazil", I thought and once again my urethra crossed my mind. I then realised that I was going to have to feign interest in nature to get him to like me. Shallow? Yes!
Alex´s back.
Me, Alex and (unfortunately) the rest of the group travelled towards the camp in an open topped truck. The cool breeze blew through my hair as I admired the scenery, flat, green marshy land stretched as far as the eye could see. I felt momentarily as though I was in one of those films where a young journalist or photographer travels to the depths of the jungle to pursue her passion for art and nature. Me, a slightly more worn out and older version of the person I was imagining and not a journalist, but unemployed and with very little prospects felt as though I should have been wearing a large brimmed hat, dark, glamorous sunglasses and a chiffon scarf, which would elegantly flow in the wind. I envisioned myself later, sitting on a mosquito guarded porch, drinking iced tea, overlooking vast plains and perhaps holding hands with a nappy clad baby chimpanzee that I had rescued from baddie, evil monkey poachers. I would say something like, "One simply adores the Pantanal, the animals are my family. Alex, you can get dressed now"
Alex´s back.
In reality, we arrived at the camp and I was given the choice of either sharing a room with eight men or a tent with Julie. I went for the tent, or what should have been more aptly named "the sweat box". After sharing a meal of rice and a lot of beans with the rest of the group, there was nothing to do but retire early to my tent and try to fight the effect of the beans. With angry mosquito bites dotted around my skin, screaming to be itched, wearing sandals with my thick hiking socks, which were tucked into my trousers to avoid bites, I had never looked so unattractive. Without a torch, I blindly felt my way around the camp to my tent where I bedded down for the night. I slept for about an hour in all my clothes and with a sheet over my head in an effort to deter mosquitos, before being woken up by the noise of something grazing outside my tent (not Alex unfortunately).
I bolted upright and slowly unzipped the tent. I saw five horses outside, running around the campsite and neighing. I woke Julie up, "There are horses outside, they might run thorough the tent and kill you", I told her. For the next few hours, I alternated between lying down, bolting back upright when I heard a noise, unzipping the tent, looking around, lying down again, bolting back upright and repeating the whole process over and over again for hours. Occasionally, the horses would gallop around the camp site, I had visions of them tripping over the wires that held the tent up and dragging me around as I screamed for help. "Take me back to the city!" I said to Julie in a tiny, quivering voice as I slapped a mosquito off my cheek.
The following morning, after only three hours sleep, I was pretty tired, but went with Alex and our group on a "trek", to find some wildlife to look at. The trek consisted of us walking slowly around a forest area in circles; Alex would occasionally point at a tree, whilst I looked at his ass. We came across some very large birds at one stage, which we all stared at for what felt like forever to me. I am really not a fan of birds, but whenever Alex said "What a beautiful bird!" I was very vocal in my pretend agreement with him. "Yes, beautiful!" I told him, which was followed by a mental order for him to find me attractive, it didn´t work.
Alex´s back.
We walked around and around the forest in circles for about five hours and saw a total of maybe three animals. There were however lots and lots of Toucan birds. Each time Alex said "Look, a Toucan!" the group would "Ooh" and "ahh". Now, I am not a bird racist, but to me all Toucans look the same, if I've seen one, I've seen them all. Every time someone in the group saw one of these birds, they would all exhibit signs of the early onset of Alzheimer's and "Ooh and ahh" again as if they hadn't already seen twenty or so of the damn birds in the last few hours. At this stage, I was sun burnt, itchy and irritated, I wished I could pull a chord; release a trap door and that would be the end of me.
I began to suspect that Alex had a touch of the bullshitter about him. He chose not to wear shoes on the trek, in order not "to scare the animals." "What animals?" I thought. He didn't wear a shirt, which I appreciated and had three very large knives placed down the back of his shorts. The knives, aside from serving to further clarify his extreme masculinity, I believe were no more than props for the benefit of us tourists. As there were no animals, I considered the knives as useful as me taking my itouch or credit cards into the forest, which I did. After walking for hours and not seeing very much at all, Alex began to do things like whisper for us to wait and then he would disappear, light footed, off further into the forest. Each time, he would return and say, "It was nothing, I thought I heard something", or "It´s gone now". "Yeah, right" I thought “heard something, my ass!” After seeing yet more Toucans and eventually an Armadillo, "Beautiful animal" according to Alex and no one else on the planet, we headed back to camp for more beans.
That afternoon, we clambered into a small tin boat for a tour on the river. Again, the scenery was really pretty, but the animals had clearly checked out except for the imaginary ones Alex kept thinking he saw. "Look Toucan!" someone said causing me to feel like screaming until I lost consciousness.
That night, I went to bed early again as there was nothing else to do. It wasn´t horses that kept me awake that night, it was some kind of devil animal making loud grazing sounds and rustling in the trees above my tent. Once again, I was sleep deprived and spent the night sitting upright, slapping myself and watching the shadows outside in fear of seeing hungry eyes and fangs looking to eat some Irish meat.
On the final morning of the tour, a small group of us went Parana fishing. I hooked large juicy pieces of meat onto my rod and threw it into the river, one second later I would pull it out with the meat having been devoured and my hook Parana free. This happened time and time again, I was obviously emitting my city girl fumes as everyone else in the group was successful in catching numerous fish and I caught nothing. When we ran out of meat, we actually used the Parana that had been caught as bait to try and catch their friends and family. A severed fish head, still warm from life on my hook came back cleanly polished off. "Isn’t nature wonderful?" I thought.
Finally, the time came for me to leave the Panthanal and return to civilisation. I unfortunately had to go without saying goodbye to Alex , so my dream of inviting him to my country to give him a tour around my world and city will never happen. I´d point to a stiletto heel mark on a hard wood floor, "Look Alex!" I´d say, "the tracks of a fashion conscious female!". I returned to my hotel, sun burnt, itching and literally full of beans. I stretched out in a normal bed, closed my eyes and dreamed of bright lights, big cities and wonderful places where animals come packaged and the smog filled skies are Toucan free. "Ah, bliss" I thought.
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