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| Sunset in the Pantanal |
The highlight of our visit to the beautiful Pantanal in South-West Brazil was undoubtedly the jaguar sighting on our first day. However, we also enjoyed the rest of our stay at the Pousada Santa Clara – which is about 5 hours out of Campo Grande.
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| The pool area at Santa Clara |
On the ride out to the lodge, we saw more caiman than we’d seen on our whole visit to the Bolivian jungle.
And when we arrived at Santa Clara, we were pleased to be introduced to the resident peccaries.
We were also amazed by the number of exotic birds flying in around the pousada, as well as on our trips out.
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| Blue macaw in flight |
James became particularly obsessed with trying to photograph the beautiful blue macaws. He managed to get a couple of shots, but they frustrated him by continuing to land in the shade or fly past when he least expected it.
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| The colour of the blue macaws is beautiful |
After the excitement of our first day, we spent the rest of our stay animal and bird spotting, horse-riding, wading through rivers on nature walks, snoozing in the hammocks and sampling the homemade cachaça!
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| Are you sure its this way? |
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| What a wingspan!
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| Monkeys overhead! |
I particularly enjoyed spotting toucans and James got some great pictures.
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| Peek-a-boo |
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| Toucan in flight |
Overall, our stay at Santa Clara was a success. Some of the activities weren’t quite as conducive to seeing as much wildlife as we would have liked – such as the night safari, which involved as driving along the road in a noisy truck. And on the nature walks, we may have seen a bit more if there had been fewer of us tramping through the trees.
However, we did get to see lots of monkeys, a whole range of beautiful exotic birds, endless caiman, deer, tapir, capybara and of course two jaguar! The food at the lodge was also good, plentiful and very vegetarian friendly. And we were with a great bunch of people.
2 thoughts on “The rest of our time in the Pantanal”
Hi Sarah,
how big was the group actually?
Big yes, this can be quite bothering
Cheers, Gilles
It was quite a big group – there were 10 in the group for most of our outings, which I'm sure damaged our chances at times in seeing some of the wildlife. When we saw the jaguar, we were in a row boat and so easy to not be making any noise at all, but when we were out walking through a forest, the size of our group did become a problem. We had a lovely time though – saw loads of amazing birds just sitting around the hotel grounds – and of course we were really lucky to see those jaguar!
For $330 each for three nights, all food and the guide, it was good value. If you want a smaller group and more guaranteed animal sightings, its just way more expensive!
Hope that helps a little?