Aug 8--Hotel Pantanal Norte, Porto Jofre

Saturday, August 8, 2015

Hotel Pantanal Norte, Porto Jofre

Our room was in a duplex and contained three single beds. Kathy chose the one in the center and I slept on the one under the far window.

We were up for breakfast at 5 am, having been warned that if we missed the 6 am boat departure, we’d “missed the boat.” No one did. 

Shortly after we started upriver, we came upon a section of the river bank colonized by social or colonial spiders. Their web was thick and covered perhaps 10 feet by 5 feet, covering the riverside bushes. My Internet reading tells me that "Most species of social spiders live in the tropical regions of the world where insect size and density is highest. Most of these social spiders broadly fit into the quasi-social definition of sociality, meaning they show cooperative brood care and use the same nest (web). Having a larger web and multiple spiders that work together to subdue prey allows them to prey on larger organisms than would be possible if they led a solitary existence. The colonies can grow large enough to capture birds and bats as well as very large insects." The photo below is from the Internet. The boat sped by too fast for a photo.

We birded the river from 6 until 11:30, seeing several woodpeckers: Crimson-crested (1), Cream-colored (2), and Golden-green (3). The Crimson-crested looked a good deal like our Pileated but had a striped belly.

Our very first day on the river was to be our best day for JAGUAR sightings. We saw two, but the first sighting was by far the best. Marcelo and I saw the animal at the same time. It was sitting on a bank stalking a small caiman on the sandbar below. Our boat driver positioned the boat expertly so that we could all see and snap off photos and videos of this magnificent animal. We were about 20 to 30 feet away. Marcello took some burst shots and Pierre had a super camera, so most of the following pix are theirs, but a couple are from my little point-and-shoot also. The jaguar pounced on the caiman, but missed. It then walked the edge of the river and swam to a sandbar providing for the great shot. We had the animal all to ourselves for about 10 minutes before the paparazzi roared in from upriver and down.Top right in both sets of photos below are mine. Top left in the bottom photo group and that on the cover are Pierre Henkart's photos. All the rest are Marcelo's.

After seeing the photos below, you can see why I said it was such a pleasure to have the animal quietly and all to ourselves for a bit. I imagine that this is what it is like on African Safari—Land Rovers full of tourists that respond from all directions when a cheetah or lion is spotted. Marcelo says that the jaguars on this section of the river have become habituated to all the boats and cameras. While the cats we saw were definitely wild, the gathering of so many people took a bit away from the sighting. At another sighting, one guy in a boat that had only two tourists in it, roared in from upstream, rammed into another boat, and then hot-dogged it right to the shore where the jaguar was, scaring the cat off. Everyone was incensed. Though he was yelling in Portuguese, I think that Marcelo told this yahoo off.

Dig the guy in the grey shirt giving me or someone in our boat or behind us the"evil eye." 

Today, instead of taking a siesta after we returned to the lodge, I walked the  property, taking photos of the Caracaras(3), Buff-necked Ibis(2), and a Jabiru (1) that were strolling the lawn before our room, as well as horses owned by the owner’s daughter.

At 2:30, we again took to the river in boats and went out in search of Giant River Otters. After we’d been out 2 hours or so, Marcelo guided the boat driver to a spot along the shore where he was going to get out and check to see that no jaguar tracks or evidence of jaguars, anacondas, or caiman were around so that we could take a “green door” break.

The driver nosed the boat into shore and Marcelo jumped out . . . and sank to his knees in mud. He had to dig deep for his flip-flops. We found another better spot but at this one, we had to climb a bank and walk through leaves to find a place behind a tree to relieve ourselves. I was wearing sandals. When I got back to the room, I found many tiny red bites on my feet. Ants? Tiny something-or-others? I never felt a bite and these did not itch or swell but lasted for several days.

We did not see many new birds, but this is a good place to include the kingfishers we saw. By trip's end, we saw every species of kingfisher that calls Brazil home: American Pygmy Kingfisher (right). Ringed Kingfisher (top left), Amazon Kingfisher (top right), Green Kingfisher (bottom left), Green-and rufous Kingfisher (bottom right). I was very pleased. Kingfishers are another of my favorite species.

It was not until just before our lodge, on the opposite side of the river and near dark, that we spotted the endangered Giant River Otters. They are not “cute” as the pictures below attest. The group of 5 that we watched seemed to be an extended family. They swam beautifully and fast, and two of the adults had fish and hid under the roots to eat them (see Pierre’s photo below), making loud chomping and cracking sounds. Marcello told us that the fish were akari catfish.

The right photo above is by Bjorn Olesen. Check out this wildlife photographer’s fantastic Pantanal photographs here. His work is absolutely stunning. I’ve never seen better.

Speaking of fish, below are some pix of the fish in Rio Cuiaba .

The Surubim  catfish plaque, bottom left, hung above our dessert buffet table. It was the exact coloration and size of one that we saw a giant otter eating. Besides fish-loving otters, the Pantanal attracts about 700,000 tourists a year, of which about 68% are fishermen. The biggest fish in the Pantanal is the jaua, a gigantic catfish reaching 16.5’ and weighing up to 270 pounds, but  I do not know whether this fish was in the Rio Claro or Rio Cuiaba.

As the sun began to go down, Marcelo passed forward a chilled glass of white wine for each of us, and we celebrated our first and most successful jaguar sighting as we watched the sun sink below the horizon. We ended the day again watching Bulldog (fishing) Bats and Band-tailed Nighthawks (right).

Marcelo, my roommate Kathy and Heine Holopainen