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iewing wildlife in the Pantanal is like taking a
spaceship back in time. The enormity of the
wetland is mind-blowing. The huge Rio Cuiaba
divides into three other rivers that break off
into a maze of tributaries stretching back into
the wetlands for more than 100 miles. Often
we would find ourselves 30 miles or more into the
wetlands, virtually lost in an Oz of greenery as far as the eye
could see. We felt very remote in our little metal boat, though
we were accompanied by our constant friends, the mosquitoes.
This is the domain of Panthera onca, the jaguar. We spotted
caiman and capybara at nearly every turn of the river — both
important food sources to the third largest cat on earth. Onça
can weigh up to 250 pounds and are stealthy predators that
are difficult to locate in the vast reaches of this, their most
substantial remaining holdout on the planet.
The sheer delight of watching nature on this scale is a
nagging reminder of how much wilderness has been lost
in exchange for our current way of life. We seldom realize
the price of human intervention until we experience an
undisturbed corner of the world like the Pantanal. Wildlife
flourishes everywhere, and rarely was there an idle moment
when our attention wasn’t called to something magnificent.
Coming to a bend in the river we happened upon a family of
giant river otters (Pteronura brasiliensis), also known as ariranha.
As if in response to an alarm, these rambunctious swimmers
(and largest members of the weasel family) put on an impromptu
Broadway show. Hunting, catching and eating fish as we drifted
down stream with them, they were ever on the move. They were
territorial, argumentative rulers of their domain, and they were
endlessly fascinating to watch. Streamlined and nearly five feet
long, their webbed feet and winglike tails give them power and
grace in the water to rival that of dolphins.
During the dry season most wildlife is drawn to the banks
of the river; caiman, in particular, travel long distances to
aggregate by the tens of thousands. Capybaras cautiously skirt
the waterways in attempts to avoid onças, anacondas and the
caimans. As the most sought-after entree on the menu, only
overwhelming thirst is enough to lead the capybaras to the
danger-rife riverbanks.
Each day we set out in search of onça, but we never seemed
to be at the right place at the right time. We spotted a young
juvenile along the banks of the Cuiaba River catching the sunset
one evening, but upon our approach he became uncomfortable
with our presence and dissolved into the darkness of the forest.
We nearly left the next morning, but Ken didn’t even get a
glimpse of the jaguar the previous evening, so we decided to give
it one more day. A short distance upriver of our camp, a guide
from another company had been tracking an onça for nearly
an hour in his boat as he drifted down river toward us. He
V
Clockwise from top left: Three-toed sloth, known locally as preguiça, which means “lazy”; freshwater fish (piraputanga) in Bonito; in addition
to gills, pirarucus have a labyrinth organ that functions as a primitive lung, allowing them to breathe air; a giant green anaconda in Bonito’s
Formoso River; Opposite: Tea-stained water (colored by decomposed vegetation) is the lifeblood of the Amazon Basin during the dry season.