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Harry the Good

Pardon My French!: The Pantanal by Road

There is something heavenly about waking up early whilst in the tropics. A delicate dew glistens upon the grass, concocting the most delightful aromas from the damp soil and nectar-rich flowers. Though the sun is barely up, there is gentle warmth that gently welcomes you to the morning, and the colours are already dazzling. As I emerged from my room, early the following morning, I noticed just one thing: there was none of this! It was still perishingly cold. I tried to be all cultured and read by the river bank, absorbing the early morning rays, but I don’t have instagram so there’s no point. I jest of course, but I did have to rummage through my bag, desperately looking for a hoodie, very conscious of the fact that waking up Ethan is less preferable than dying of Hypothermia. Bless his little, black, sordid heart I thought, maybe I should smother him with my pillow?


Slightly protected by the hoodie, I made it a little bit further than our bungalow’s threshold this time, and made my way down to the river to read and simply be. There is something so wonderfully blissful about just being. Doing nothing in particular, not striving to achieve something, think about anything or forget anything, just allowing your senses to enjoy all that the moment entices them with. The air was chilly, and small blankets of mist hovered over the water like a fat mans hand over the last cupcake. The water was sluggish, but the current obvious, gently lapping the edges of the canoes that were moored to a little jetty. And whilst I settled, there was a silence, not the deafening, unnatural kind, but rather the calm silence that speaks of rest and peace. I had beaten the dawn chorus. And I had the best seat in the house.


As I sat and mused upon creation, somebody turned the sound levels up just a tad. On the other side of the river, throaty honks betrayed the presence of macaws, whilst the general chit chat of bird life began with a whisper and gently crescendoed. Gentle babbling proceeded the arrival of several plump muscovy ducks, who staggered onto the bank the way I stagger after eating an all you can eat buffet. And then a hum that starts as just a sound but becomes a tangible throb that vibrates the very air around you. And before I knew it, the air was densely packed with a flock of several hundred parakeets. They descended upon the lawn as if I was some z-list celebrity and they were journalists who hadn’t quite made it yet. Their squeaks and whistles and squarks and croaks were almost deafening and then every so often, as a hawk or a falcon would come too close for comfort, they would rise, as one, a huge living cloud that almost sucked in the air around it. And then, as if choreographed they would settle again, leaving just dust and feathers hanging in the air. And as the earth slowly began to warm, it was almost as if I was sitting in Eden itself. Southern Crested caracara, a ground dwelling falcon and natural comedians, would dance around, laughing at their own jokes. Large Curassow, plump game birds that slightly resemble a pheasant crowned with a glorious yellow wattle, would also scamper around, clearly the butt of the Caracara’s stand up routine. Delicate scythbills would bounce up tree trunks and maverick woodpeckers, looking like a deranged old woman who has forgotten her age, would hop down them. I could have stayed there forever. If there wasn’t an even better offer!



 

Scrawled on the blackboard on the veranda, we were informed that we were joining a land safari for the day, and that our guide would be somebody called Tony. Maybe this is a bit stereotypical, but I was expecting a Santiago or a Matteo. Tony seemed a little, well, English. My toupee almost flew off when I found out that our drive was called Bradley. I’m joking- he didn’t have a name, or not that anybody told us. Joining our motley crew was a lone Brazilian man, a separate Brazilian older family, a Japanese couple, a French family and two other Brits. Armed with cameras and sub-par banter, our truck choked into life and we were off.


I have been blessed to watch wildlife in many places. I have explored the Floridian swamps, penetrated the Bornean jungle and even witnessed the stunning spectacle of the wildebeest migration in Kenya’s Masaai Mara. But I was absolutely staggered at just how much life there seemed to be in the Pantanal. Wherever you looked, birds hovered, dived and soared. Vultures would line the road, a morbid guard of honour, whilst snail eating hawks would swoop across the shallow swamps that had so far survived the summer. Macaws would honk above us, a real juxtaposition between graceful and rowdy, like an old aristocratic couple that had lost their fortune through a gambling addiction and resorted to hurling abuse at each other wherever they go.

In the water, herons and egrets would delicately tiptoe around. I wondered if they hadn’t received the message that Ethan was awake and in a relatively good mood…


“Caiman!” Somebody exclaimed. As often happens on safari, everybody suddenly stood up and leaned across one another jostling for position. I became very well acquainted with the man behind me, and in particular his third chin, which I’m fairly sure he was unaware of, and yet he seemed to frequently caress the top of my head with it while he took photos. It was like being crowned with a slice of cheap ham.


The caiman stared at us from the water’s surface. He was small, probably no longer than my arm. As we looked, we suddenly realised that there were a few others, a little reptilian gang. We stayed and watched them for quite a while. If we’d known just how plentiful caiman were, I’m sure we would have moved on a lot quicker and I would have been spared my clammy friend’s vocal sac.


I can’t quite describe the wildlife bonanza on offer. It was plentiful and it was close. The bright flash of a toucan would regularly bring us to a halt, as did a small family of crab eating foxes crossing the road, almost oblivious to us. Suddenly, to the right, Tony pointed out what looked like a huge ball of tumble weed, stuck in a tree. And sitting majestically on tip, was a huge bird, pure white with a black head and long canoe-shaped bill. It’s neck had a bulbous protrusion and was a pinky-red.




“Happy Birthday toyouyou, happy birthday toyouyou”, sang Tony.


As one, every passenger nodded and smiled, mentally categorising him as a nutcase.


“It’s what it’s called,” Tony smiled. “In English it’s a Jabiru (pronounced “Ya-beer-oo”), but it’s name here is Tuiuiu.”


Eyebrows were raised, and Tony was moved out of the mental mental-asylum and into the “should probably go on QI” box.


“It is the symbol of the Pantanal,” he continued. “You are lucky to see it.”


It certainly was beautiful. A solitary sentinel against the deep blue sky, she was serene. From her viewpoint, way above the flat landscape she must have been able to see for miles. And I’m sure Miles would have been very grateful to her if somebody had let him know.


It was good to see Boris Johnson's hair put to good use


If somebody were to take a photograph of my face, there would have been a hapless grin plastered across it. I truly was in my element. The day was perfect. Except for one thing.


The French family consisted of a middle aged Father and mother and their two children: a girl about the age of 16 and a boy about the age of 14. The man seemed a perfectly nice man, and his wife, though quiet, seemed very pleasant. But their children were beginning to get on my nerves. When you are distracted, you barely notice even the most irritating of itches. I know that to be true because that’s how mosquitos earn their living. When I was engrossed in the wildlife, I did not notice them, but when we were not…


The girl, for the most part, annoyed me with her attitude. Her parents must have spent thousands of euros on this trip, taking them to paradise. She spent most of the morning playing candy crush. Actually, I discovered later when I looked over her shoulder, it was worse than this. It was a cheap imitation of Candy Crush. What is the world coming to?


The boy was annoying because despite the fact that he was well into his teenage years, evidenced by his very obvious Adam’s Apple and lingering BO, he seemed unbelievably needy for his sister’s attention. Clearly devastated that a cheap imitation of Candy Crush had stolen his sister’s attention, he invested his precious time into poking and jabbing his sister. This would escalate into a mini scuffle, laughter and then about two minutes of blissful quiet while he plotted his next move. The fact that his next move was exactly the same as the previous forty seven moves told me that he was clearly an expert in British and French trench warfare.


The dusty track seemed to stretch on forever. And it was by now blissfully hot. Every now and then, a lorry carrying cattle would blitz past us, blessing our lungs with a thick dusty lining and our noses with the stench of cow dung. I was quite surprised to see several fires ablaze by the side of the road. Unlike Moses, we had no desire to go and look at it, choosing instead to race on past.

Arson?


“The trees here have a natural oil in them,” explained Tony. “When it gets too hot, they…” he paused to try and find the words before deciding upon, “poouuufff!” I wondered, hopefully, whether French teenagers are naturally full of oil too…


We had passed several patches of completely burnt out land on the journey from Campo Grande, which I had automatically assumed was the fault of a poorly-extinguished cigarette. But apparently this is not likely to be the case.


“The land here is supposed to burn.” Tony seemed almost philosophical in his acceptance. The fires bring regeneration. No fire, no life.”


I thought about what Tony said. There was a deeper truth to what he said that I think he had considered. Life often withers, sometimes to the point that simply watering it will not do. Only burning the old and allowing the new to come will suffice. Painful, yes, but the reward is life and life in abundance.


 

Without any warning, our truck had stopped, and we had dismounted. We would proceed on foot.


“Ok everybody, I need you to listen.” Tony was no longer the singing story-teller, a serious look had come upon him. “We are about to go in the jungle. I want you to know that there are lots of things in there that can kill you. Please do not touch anything unless I tell you to and please only step where I step.”


Everybody else looked slightly perturbed, I looked around at our french friends, delighted that neither of them seemed to have listened to a word of Tony’s speech. I could picture them strung up on a gigantic spider web, calling for mercy. We would obviously assume that they were crying “merci,” and we would smile and wave and say “absolutely no problem, any time,” as a jaguar sized spider drooled over them.


Barely had I finished my fantasy when our driver suddenly yelled, “Stop!”


We turned, eyes wide, hearts beating.


“I must piss first.”


As he hurriedly disappeared into the bush, we did that thing where everyone just looks at each other awkwardly unsure of how to pass the time whilst he passed water.


“Oh look!” Ethan whispered, awe in his voice. I turned to see a large bee hovering between the leaves of a nearby bush. It was a strange bee. It made no noise and seemed to fly in every direction in dramatic, assertive movements. And then as it landed on a branch it seemed to metamorphose into a beautiful hummingbird. We gasped. It was stunning. But it wasn’t just the subtle pinks and greens that amazed us, it was the microscopic complexity of this delightfully dainty bird. It was like looking at an expensive Swiss watch, where you can see the mechanism whirring within. Every part of it skilfully coordinated, lovingly sculpted by it’s master craftsman. If just one part is off kilter, the whole thing will be damaged, and yet it works with such precision that it is never in doubt. And so after it’s little rest, the hummingbird once again whirred into action and we lost sight of it.


As we entered the jungle, I was struck by how little light managed to reach the forest floor. I was expecting shrubbery, there was in fact only leaf litter and bare, rock hard earth. Out of nowhere came a shrill, high-pitch shriek.

Peering upwards, Tony pointed out a large grey bird, perching at the top of a tree.

“We call them ‘Screamers’”, Tony explained.

That’s interesting, as in the UK we call them Scousers.


The first half an hour of our hike was very quiet. Tony spent the time introducing us to the forest: animal tracks, species of plant and the odd spider. He tapped into one of the trees and showed us how in the past, birds would be caught for the pet trade using the sticky sap that drizzled slowly out. The more I spent time with him, the more I liked him. He had a childish grin and a good sense of humour, but also a deep knowledge and obvious love for the world he was introducing us to. I didn’t feel like a tourist, I felt like a guest. It was also clearly apparent that he didn’t like the French kids very much which made me like him more.


All of a sudden, he stopped and motioned for us to be quiet. We held our breath. Mine was quite heavy so I let Ethan hold it. Tony was eyeing the foliage, his highly trained eyes scanning for the faintest twitch or erroneous patch of fur.


He put his hands to his mouth and let out a whoop. Not a celebratory whoop, like when you discover that the approaching service station has a Macdonalds, but a sort of confused and slightly alarmed whoop, like when you discover that the approaching service station has a KFC. Then a rustle, and a crash, and we saw his conversationalist: a large black howler monkey. I say conversationalist, in all honesty, Tony had done all the talking. This monkey was just staring at the strange long haired man calling up at him, probably wondering which bit of him to fling his poo at. It was a large male, a silky black, with deep, sorrowful eyes, and though we were not that distant, he seemed unconcerned at our staring. There is something wonderful about primates: they often seem as interested in you as you are of them.



It was not long before, other animals began to make an appearance too. Not too far beyond the howler monkey, a large Coatimundi snuffled his way through the undergrowth, making little effort to conceal itself. Coati’s are strange looking creatures. They sort of resemble a racoon, but in my mind look like a small child has mashed together a fox and a lemur. This one was bright orange with a long bushy tail. Their faces are masked, almost comedically like a robber, tapering into an almost pig-like snout. These are incredibly common and are actually pests in some places.



In what later turned out to be a very small patch of jungle, their was a great deal of life. Beautiful birds of all shapes and sizes would dart across your line of sight, like a poorly aimed firework. An agouti was spotted, gnawing it’s way through a gigantic nut with it’s huge chisel teeth, and another small family of howler monkeys crashed in the trees above us, pulling off the sort of gymnastics display that I, with my feeble core and excess blubber, could only dream of.


The noise here was deafening. The crash of the trees and the whoops of the monkeys were joined with the chaotic chorus of twittering parakeets. And French. My two continental friends were hanging on their fathers arms, one on each side. The poor father’s face looked defeated, two miserable to pretend to be smiling but too weak to bother shaking them off. I took in the scene. I work with children, and I really love them. They are hilarious and sweet natured most of the time. But as I watched these two teens, completely draining their father of his money, time and will to live, I realised that teenagers are essentially expensive parasites. Old enough to fend for themselves and put their lives to good use, they just seem to fester and live off the fat of the land. Fortunately, their father still seemed to have plenty of fat left for them to live off, but I couldn’t help but pity the poor man. I wondered how much he used to enjoy his life twenty years ago. I wondered what colour his hair used to be and what he’d looked like with full coverage. Now I understood why the welsh were so angry when Margaret Thatcher closed the mines; how else would they rid themselves of their teenagers? I was also quite concerned for this gentleman’s arms. If his parasitic offspring hung off them any longer they might turn into two useless hosepipes and every time he wanted to scratch his nose he’d just have to sit their and leak instead, cursing the day he chose not to send them to boarding school.


Thankfully my slightly delirious thoughts turned to the huge metropole in front of me. Wedged in a nearby tree was another Jabiru nest. Both parents stood guarding this one and it was easy to see why. For in the middle of the Jabiru nest, a massive colony of parakeets had also taken up residence. In every crevice and between each frond, a little parakeet seemed to have made it’s own nest, giving the whole thing an almost liquid look. The noise was incessant and the space limited. I felt for the two Jabiru patiently guarding the home that they had built with their bare… wings? Beaks? Perhaps they were incredibly patient, or mercifully hard-of-hearing or perhaps like the French father, they didn’t quite have the get-up-and-go to get up and go. I wonder how they reacted when they first discovered their squatters. Whether Mrs Jabiru had demanded that Mr Jabiru call the police. Whether Mr Jabiru had told her that he would try and talk to them to persuade them to leave. I imagined the argument that would have ensued when Mrs Jabiru found out that Mr Jabiru had felt sorry for them and told them they could stay and the furore caused when they claimed squatters rights. I wondered how close to divorce the couple were and hoped they’d survive this rocky time in their marriage, but my doubts were raised when I spotted the third occupant of the nest: a pair of black vultures waiting patiently for their time to come! I could imagine them ringing the bell one day:


“Hello?”

“Hello, we live in the flat below.”

“Can we help you?”

“Well we just wondered if you have any children for us to eat…”

“Paul, I told you we should leave!”

“But darling, let’s just give them a chance.”

etc.


Considering the behaviour of the french teens, it may have been worth feeding the vultures now…

 

The day was a glorious one. The sights and the sounds and the smells were almost overwhelming. Lunch had been a simple, home-cooked affair by a large lake, totally infested with Caiman. Life seemed to slow down for an hour. We basked in the sun and admired the plethora of birds skimming over the water. As if from nowhere, (although actually from a little wooden house whose field we were using) a little girl appeared carrying a chick. I like chicks. I love their fluffy heads and their little waddle, so I was keen to say hello. Ok, it’s not quite on a par with ducklings, but nearly! A little later, the girl reappeared with a few kittens and began placing them on various members of the group. It was entertaining to see some melt in spontaneous affection and others recoil at this tiny, needy, little scrap of life. Their eyes were still closed, they were clearly very, very young. I’m not the biggest fan of cats so I tried to avoid them. As much as anything else, I had no idea about what may have taken residency in their fur. I must admit, my suspicions about who this girl was increased dramatically when she next emerged towing a small calf. Docile as it was, she had dragged it from the house. Considering the house was the size of a large shed, I wondered what else there could possibly be room for? A camel? A rhinoceros?


I ate my lunch slightly more puzzled than I was expecting to be.


This was about 1% of the caiman that shared our lunch space with us

 

The mission after lunch was slightly different. Whilst our morning had been spent musing at whatever we happened to come across, our afternoon had a very clear purpose: we were off to find anteater.


The Giant Anteater is one of the strangest animals. Larger than most dogs, if they stand on their back feet, which they occasionally do when threatened, they would be taller than me.


Shut up. Yes, I know that garden gnomes can see the top of my head but that’s beside the point.


Despite being approximately two metres on their hind legs, yes able to kiss Peter Crouch, their head is absolutely tiny. In fact, if you look at them, it’s almost as if someone forgot to give them a head, and, realising their mistake too late, just moulded their nose straight into their neck. If you look closely, two tiny round ears can be spotted, and if you are blessed with 20/20 vision, two even smaller eyes. Clearly, hearing is not their strength, nor is sight, but their sense of smell is phenomenal. With 40% more acute sense of smell than humans, I dreaded the impact that the French teen’s armpits may have on our chances of seeing an anteater. And despite the fact they look like somebody has hoovered up and then tried to fix somebody’s corgi, they are extremely well suited to life in the Pantanal. They walk on their knuckles, a bit like a Gorilla, because their claws are so long and sharp that they would do themselves an injury otherwise. These are not for disemboweling annoying teenagers as you may have have thought, but are instead used to crack open termite mounds. Their tongues, famed for being almost as long and dextrous as mine, dance their way through the exposed cavities, collecting up termites along the way. Their tail, is actually the length of the rest of their body, and bushier than a vicar’s eyebrows, used to provide shade for themselves in the heat of the day, a natural parasol and fan. And despite the fact that scientists seem completely unsure of the world population of the Giant Anteater, they are certain that the Pantanal is completely full of them.


The terrain changed ever so slightly. The frequency of passing rivers and lakes decreased and was replaced by larger flat areas of grass. Trees were replaced with shrubs, and the orange dirt became a deeper red. The bird life changed too, there were fewer herons and kingfishers, more vultures, rheas and long-legged seriemas. Little deer were seen darting among the shrubs and we would regularly see large herds of peccary in the distance. Even the cattle were replaced here, by cattle corpses, which explained the vultures.


I like to think I am a fairly patient guy. I Try not to let emotions get the better of me, and most things run off me like water off a bald guy’s head. But the French teenagers were really grinding my gears. In their laziness, they had completely given up on enjoying the Pantanal and had begun laying down on the benches that ran down the middle of the truck. Without room to lie down along the bench, they had both slumped, lifting their legs up and resting them on the edge of the truck. However, as our bench was back to back with theirs, in their coiled position, they would try and stretch their legs, pushing their bench back and our bench forwards. When we spotted our first armadillo, I was noticeably leaning forward. By the second, I was beginning to fold in half. By the third, our bench was so steeply tilted that we were essentially standing on our feet, with our knees bent, the benches back-rest coming over the top of us. With the bench in place, we must have resembled a strange, multi-headed tortoise, each head desperately trying to work out how we had got into this position. If someone had taken the bench away, you would have been forgiven for mistaking us for olympic swimmers, knees bent, leaning forward, ready to dive in at the sound of the starting gun. The beer-bellies and lack of speedo’s may have given the game away but our stance at least was perfect. I was wondering whether diving overboard headfirst onto the scorching, baked mud would have been more pleasant than putting up with this assault on my spine, for as lovely as the truck was, I preferred riding it to wearing it.


The situation was laughable. But not the sort of laughable that makes you laugh. The sort of laughable that meant that you really didn’t feel like laughing. I was seriously considering saying something, to them or their parents. My mind was desperately trying to recall all of the French words I could salvage from the deep recesses of my very English brain. I would have dearly loved to have surprised them all by fluently exclaiming my frustration at their horrendous attitude. It would have been such a treat to have watched their faces contort in horror as I explained in perfect French what an embarrassment they were to their parents, Frere Jacques and indeed the entire nation of France. To have warned them that Charles de Gaulle would be wishing he was called Charlie the Brit, that Napoleon’s dignity would have been Blonaparte (ahahaha history joke) and that Asterix and Obelix would have willingly surrendered to Caesar if they had known how pathetic the future of France was to become, would have been a crowning moment in my day, nay, life!


But unfortunately, I am English. And I have had a British education. Which means that the two sentences that I can confidently say in French:


“Excuse moi, s’il vous plait, est-ce que je peux enlever mon blazer?” (Excuse me, may I take of my blazer?)...


...And...


...“Quand j’étais plus jeune, jaurais voulous devenir un papillon.” (When I was younger, I would have wanted to become a butterfly)...


...would have been about as useful as a front row seat for Stevie Wonder.


Mercifully, our truck shuddered to a sudden stop. Our driver had seen something. Tony hadn’t yet seen it.


“So lazy,” he muttered under his breath. “He can never be bothered to tell me what he has seen.”


But it didn’t take long. To our left, trotting between termite mounds, was a Giant anteater. Immediately, anglo-french tensions ceased, well, put on hold, at the sight of this bizarre creature. She (for it was apparently a she, no idea how Tony could tell) didn’t really walk, she ambled, a cross between a waddle and a shuffle, almost a scurry apart from she was too big. Though she was fairly distant, we all just sat in silence and watched her as she went about her business. In fact it wasn’t long before we saw another, a lot closer this time, lazily ambling in the sun.



It is funny how wildlife can sooth a soul. Within minutes, these two bizarre, strange creatures had completely left my mind, replaced by the two beautiful giant anteaters that had decided to show up in my life.

 

The journey back was uncomfortable, but blissful. Buoyed by all that I had seen, every sense tantalised and satisfied, baked by the sun, and with tiredness drawing in, I barely noticed the two teenagers on the long journey back to the lodge. Hey, they were still annoying, but I didn’t care. I would be rid of them soon.


Then the truck broke down…


Sacre Bleu!


Sacred blue indeed!



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