Man points

The night held no respite from the heat.
Residing somewhere between brûlée and flambé, we bake throughout our slumber, waking to rehydrate through the night. The air con (failing to keep up with demand) could only manage to reduce the heat to twenty six degrees by 7 o’clock the next morning.

We arise and scoff our Brazillian buffet breakfast in preparation for our next excursion, a trip on a motorboat to see the wildlife of the Pantanal region.
The area is teeming with wildlife, (especially birds and fish) but the Water Pigs and Caiman crocodiles win the best-animals-you-don’t-see-every-day award. To describe a water pig, first of all forget about the pig bit. Imagine a reddish brown guinea pig that is the size of a dog with a chunky old face, that looks like nothing you have seen before (despite that actually excellent description). They sit motionless on the shores of the river and watch us float by.

As for the Caimans, they look like crocodiles.

And there are a lot of them. Throughout the course of the day, we spot perhaps twenty to twenty five crocs on the shores of the Pantanal River. They vary in size, but still share that post-pre-historic menace displayed by Dinosaurs as we know them. One silently slips into the water towards us, mouth agape, trying to absorb as much sun as possible to heat his cold blood. Menacing and deadly like.

We canoe through a section of the river, sometimes against the wind and tide, trying to synchronise our paddles. Mostly we succeed, but the distance is long and our girly arms start to ache (Lucy has an excuse for her girly arms).

We return to the hotel and the sun is still blazing. As we are exiting the boat Carlos says to our group:
“If you want to swim, you can. It’s quite safe”.
This is from the exact same dock we went Piranha fishing from the night before and we shrugg the suggestion off, being reminded of how aggressively vicious packs of Piranha are. Dusty TV memories of Cows being stripped from flesh to bone in under five minutes, voiced by David Attenborough are dusted off and relived in my mind.

Slowly the thought of swimming in piranha infested waters keeps trickling back. Perhaps needing to regain some man points after Lucy’s epic twelve metre jump was a factor. Perhaps needing to conquer some of my own stifling, disabling, repressive, fear hang ups also had a part to play.

Then I realise we probably won’t get the chance to do this again in the future. I say to Lucy, “Maybe we should?..” And we build ourself up to partying with piranhas. We walk down the old red wooden steps wearing sandals (so as not to cut our feet on the way in, that would be bad) and step in to the muddy waters. The fear of what lies below never really leaving my side, we swim for a short while in the warm river waters of the Pantanal. The current is strong and we don’t venture too far from the shore. I suddenly feel something soft touch my back, freak out and exit the river.

Later that day, we are taken upriver by Carlos in his green passenger speedboat and given foam noodles to float downwards towards the dock. We travel what seems quite a distance, perhaps five to ten minutes until Carlos decides to stop. Hand in hand, we jump far into the water. As we begin our ascent I open my eyes and see the reddish-green hue of the river, slightly breathless in how deep we had descended. I grab the noodles and raise myself up to the the surface of the water. The current is slow here and we half float, half swim towards the banks of our hotel. Carlos switches off the engine of his boat, lays back and floats alongside us, letting the quiet sound of the river get loud. Our floating speed surpasses that of the boat by such a distance, we realise Carlos has fallen asleep. The elongated time period of being in the water begins to worry me knowing that there is a high density of Caiman crocodiles alongside the Piranha population of the Pantanal. Something surely needed feeding. Lucy takes it in her stride and keeps on keeping on. Not outwardly concerned, deflecting any worries I have into the calm surface of the water (Hakuna Matata indeed). The weather suddenly turns grey and we are treated to a slightly magical sub-tropical shower. The rain is refreshing and cuts through the sweltering temperature. UFOs (unidentified fishy objects) occasionally brush against against my legs in a slightly unnerving fashion, but we go the distance and return to the shores of the Lontra Pantanal.

Rightly of wrongly, we feel proud and triumphant dealing with a fear met head on despite my occasional internal panic.