12/11/2024
🇧🇷🇧🇷 Brasil!!! 🇧🇷🇧🇷
When a dream comes true
🔥🔥🔥
I don’t know how to put into words the experience that we have just had but, with the help of my photos, I will do my very best.
Since I was a kid, already totally obsessed with wildlife as far back as I can remember, it was always my biggest dream to get to Brazil, and to the Amazon. Fast forward 40 years, with a beautiful wife by my side, and my dream finally came true. After months of planning and setting up this trip, with an insane list of target species, we headed off with high hopes and expectations, and the fear of how on earth we were going to cope with the abundance of biodiversity around us, and the stupid need to sleep, which steals away time from searching for… basically EVERYTHING. When you are wild about nature, and all biodiversity, you have major problems. Because there is no time of day where you cant find special things. Some species need early morning and evenings, some need the heat of midday, and the most inconsiderate species prefer to come out way after dark and you only find them at 1:30am on your final night in Brazil, when you are then needing to wake up at 5am to see all the birds that come to feed on the moths from the moth screen, and then you have an overnight flight back home the next day, and you basically live three full days on a total of 3 hours sleep. You very quickly learn what narcolepsy is!
There is SO much to say, and I can never get through it all in this post. There are so many amazing creatures and photos I would love to include. I will have to do many posts in future to try do justice to it all!
My personal 3 main dream targets were:
1 – Jaguar
2 – Harpy Eagle
3 – Anaconda
But then after this, there was a ridiculous wishlist between Mrs LionHeart and I, which included ocelots, Toucans, _Bothrops_ (Lancehead vipers), hyacinth macaws, otters, giant bird-eating tarantulas, maned wolf, puma, tapir, hummingbirds, blue morpho butterfly, anteaters, tanagers, armadillos, pink river dolphins, sloths and a BILLION other things!
Our trip was predominantly focused on the Pantanal, in search of Jaguars. After a week there, we then had a short night in Manaus (hoping to find Harpy Eagle), 3 nights in the Amazon, and then 2 nights in the South Atlantic Rainforest.
I am going to do separate posts to go into detail on each section of the trip. There is no way I could put all that magic into this post. And because of how incredible our sightings were, I am also going to have to do separate posts on jaguars, birds, mammals, reptiles, and ‘all other cool stuff’ like orchids, tracks, butterflies, etc.
There was also a sad element to this trip that requires mention. We experienced the same in Zambia, (which, like Brazil, used to be a true wilderness on earth). The impact of mankind on this planet is so evident, and it was devastating to see the slash and burn of the forests of the country. We drove through over 200km of smoke, where forests are cut and burned and turned into land for cattle farms. If you dream of going to Brazil, do it soon.
Back to the good stuff….
One moment that will live with me forever, was our first day in the Pantanal. After an overnight in Sao Paulo and a morning arranging the vehicle etc, we were finally on our way to the first lodge. As we entered the transpantal road, we started seeing natural habitat and birds.
It was a nightmare trying to balance getting to the lodge in good time, and not stopping for every bird we saw, but as we turned off into the access road to the lodge, the pull to stop for birds was just too much, and we stopped the car and got out in the 43 degree heat. All of a sudden, like stepping into another universe, the world around us was alive, with a flock of parrots in the tree above us, deep echoing caws from unknown large birds in the forests around, caracaras floating around, vultures circling almost everywhere we looked, and each foreign bird sound making us more and more excited by the second, until we were totally overwhelmed. We didn’t know where to look. Each foreign sound and sight of a bird more exciting. Each observer panicking to ID what they were seeing, and panicking when the other shouted ‘what's that?!?’ Running quickly because of major FOMO, (one individual in our group has this more than most on the planet, but I won’t say who!) and it was just utter mayhem. Pandemonium. As if things couldn’t get worse, when I spotted the first toco toucan flying down into a pan, all hell broke loose. We were just running in all directions. It was a dogshow. After looking like ants under a lifted log for some time, we finally regained some composure and got back into the car to get to the lodge in time.
This was our post on our whatsapp update group:
‘Arriving at the first lodge, around 3pm, was utterly overwhelming. The bird calls echoing through the forests, the insane amount of raptors all the way in for the last hour, and the abundance of life (and lifers) was a sensory overload that actually reached the point of being stressful as there were too many exciting things to see and the stress of needing to see it all was too much !! 🥴😂😂.
Just before arriving at the lodge, we saw a bird I've wanted since I was a very little boy, a Toco Toucan. We then checked in to the lodge booked night drive, and had 1.5hrs to kill in the lodge grounds. It was nowhere enough time and the sensory overload and stress continued, with a common potoo, the chestnut eared aracari (what an incredible bird!😍🔥) 3 species of parrot, hummingbirds, screamers, seriemas and more. It's too much. We jumped onto a nightdrive hoping that day 1 on our adventure would be epic... it was beyond epic. We had been in the Pantanal for a total of about 3 hours.... when BOOOOMM!!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Jaguar!’
The next week was just being totally flooded with jaguars, an incredible ocelot sighting, tapirs, giant-anteaters, breath-taking bird after breath-taking bird and more.
We were obviously focussed on jaguars, and we got a bigger dose than we could have dreamed of! We learned about their amazing hunting techniques, their individual personalities, totally unusual behaviours (compared to leopard), how aquatic they actually are, and just how ridiculously massive they are.
We then shot off to Manaus and were privileged to connect with the director of Projeto Harpy / Harpy Eagle Project, and a professor from Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, and we were given the incredible opportunity to visit a harpy nest to change camera traps from above and below the nest. More on that in a future post.
It was then off to the Amazon. It is potentially the worst drought in recorded human history there, so what a crazy time to visit. It was incredible to finally see the Amazon river, and equally concerning to see it more than 10m lower than what it should be! We were worried about how this may affect our experience of it, but we were so wrong to be concerned! The abundance of birdlife is like nothing I have ever experienced! I will post a video of this that captures just a lit bit of this extravagant beauty.
Our floating lodge, surrounded by large, scary black caimans that launched out the water after fish, sometimes even knocking the edge of our room in the darkness of night (no kidding!) and the stunningly loud shotgun-like snapping sound of the worlds largest scaled fish, the Arapaima, as it breathes air, echoing around day and night constantly, was an experience like nothing I have ever had before.
Our birding, butterflies, frogs, tarantulas, toucans, skimmers, screamers, howler monkeys, and all the abundance had us totally captivated from morning til night. The heat in Brazil is no joke, and clothes had to be changed often throughout the day as you were literally dripping with sweat after a walk in the forest.
On to our last stop, the South Atlantic Rainforest. This is without doubt, the most beautiful forest in Brazil. Lush, trees literally dripping with orchids, bromeliads, and moss. And some of the most colourful birds on the planet. Our last 2 days saw me shoot 2700 photographs, as we spent hours and hours with parrots, parakeets, toucans, woodpeckers, hummingbirds, tanagers, moths, opossums, pacas, and snakes.
I have battled to adjust back to normal life, and we have to get back there. We are already planning a tour for a small group of clients in 2025. This is a place that all wildlife lovers MUST visit.
We are so grateful to have had this opportunity and we have laughed so much about how we literally just ran riot in Brazil for almost 3 weeks.
We will be back.
Much love for this precious planet and all its inhabitants. ❤️
