Foz Iguazu and the Pantanal

We hit the road again, this time heading towards Foz Iguazu. We stayed overnight in Fransisco Beltao at the Palace Hotel and arrived at Foz Iguazu by noon the next day. Once again, the downtown had no appeal at all. We stayed at San Martin, the closest resort to the National Park. Very nice, with grounds for a bit of birding and a good pool. And buffet meals! We survived. It's super value at less than 100 USD per night.

Early next morning, we walked up to the falls. It rained on and off all day. The whole place is super touristy and it gets crowded so we were lucky to arrive early. You catch a bus from the entrance to the Falls, where there are various stop offs. Most people follow the same route, so we did the opposite and virtually had the Falls to ourselves for the first hour. These falls are truly spectacular, not as high or as wide as Victoria Falls but with many cascades.

 Viewing platforms allow you to get very close. When walking along the paths against the flow of tour groups got too crowded, we bailed and headed up to the Belmond Hotel. This is an iconic, old hotel with wide verandahs and comfy cane furniture. It's the only hotel within the National Park park and a room would have set us back over 500 USD a night. We drank great wine and had a lovely lunch on the terrace, watching birds with a view of the falls in the background.

On 15 March we drove to Bonito. This is a town that offers lots of adventure activities and is popular with backpackers. We enjoyed the birdwatching, especially the parrots and toucans.

After a night in Miranda, we were to transfer to Pousada Sao João for our Pantanal Safari. Being the wet season, we expected a 4x4 but instead were met by a lady in a VW Polo, who already had 2 tourists in her car! We loaded up our SUV and followed her all the way to Passo de Lontra, in the Pantanal. We were left here to wait for the Pousada truck, which we then followed all the way to the farm. There's a major drought this year, so the roads were easily passable.

The Pantanal is really beautiful. It's the largest wetland in the world, about the size of Germany. It's a protected wildlife area with strict conservation rules but all the land is privately owned ranches. 13 million head of cattle are farmed here. Some ranches, like Pousada San João, where we stayed are tourist lodges. A 3 or 4 night stay includes game drives and walks, boat cruises, horse riding, night walks and piranha fishing. Home cooked meals are provided and luckily we had our own wine with us. 

The bird watching was awesome, the capibaras and caimans were plentiful but the rest of the wildlife was quite scarce.

We drove back to Sao Paulo with a stop in Presidente Prudente.