The Pantanal

I spent the past week in the Brazilian Pantanal, a wetland offshoot of the Amazon River. We started with a safari, in the back of a pickup truck on rickety attached seats. Ten percent of the world's bird species live here in the Pantanal. The variety of colors of feathered creatures felt like cartoons. Our driver frequently stopped to point out the thousands of birds: the bold brown King Fisher Hawk, the enormous white Pantanal Loon, the thin Grey Heron, gorgeous blue parrots, bright green parakeets, and Short Nosed Toucans, as well as other animals: thousands of cayman (crocodiles), guinea pigs larger than golden retrievers, a baby three meter long anaconda, and tons of deer, monkeys, and river otters. River Paraguay, where we were, is so overpopulated with piranhas that these fish feed the entire ecosystem of the Pantanal. The cayman, the birds, the mammals all feast on piranhas. When we took a motorboat downriver, the piranhas would literally jump out of the overcrowded waters and hop right onto our boat. It was like Bert and Ernie doing their "Here fishy, fishy, fishy, fishy" routine. We used these stray fish as bait to catch larger piranhas for dinner (they are a pretty bland white fish, but have rows of razor sharp teeth). We only had to dip our fishing rods into the water for seconds before new piranhas would already be hooked. These fish just swarm and overpopulate the river. I was glad to be on top of the food chain during this trip.

The Pantanal