11/12/2005

Tuesday November 1st: Pantanal

Tuesday was a pretty awesome day. After breakfast, we had our morning activity (ps-my alarm didn't go off-- so I got ready in like 5 minutes). My group's activity was horseback riding. I think this was my favorite part of our 3 day stay in Pantanal. The weather was absolutely beautiful! The sky was as blue as can be with just a few wispy clouds scattered throughout it. There was even a nice breeze. It was seriously perfect-not to mention that I LOVE horseback riding. Krystina asked our guide what her horses name was-he said "horse" but if she didn't like it, she could just make up a new one (lol). So she did--(she named it bubbles after the power puff girl). It was interesting to see how everybody handled their horses. The two German girls rode perfectly-they just looked so proper-so stereotypically European… There was a Mexican guy, Ricardo, who rode exactly like a cowboy from the old Western movies that I watch with my dad. And me? Well come on, my family's from Montana-of course I know how to ride a horse! Actually, after we finished riding, our guide came up and complemented me, Ricardo, and the two Germans on our horseback riding "skills"-it was pretty cool to be put into the same category as those three. All the horses had quite interesting personalities.

Jessica's horse, for instance, felt the need to stop and eat whenever it felt like it-even when all the other horses were quickly trotting past it! There was another Mexican guy, Christopher, who had a completely insane horse. His horse would just randomly come up and bite other horses on the bum just to tick them off!!... This was comical until his horse tried to bit my horse, and my horse turned-and I got a surprise attack to MY KNEE!! Don't worry, it wasn't too bad-but it did scare the crap out of me.

Anyways, back to the journey…. We even got to ride our horses across an alligator infested lake!! It was pretty extreme! The water came up to my knees (while I was on the horse!). Anyways, yeah, I loved it. After horseback riding we came back, chilled in the hammocks for a bit, and then headed to lunch.

After lunch we had another activity. This time all 45 of us went fishing for piranhas!! We split up into different groups (we got to choose the groups ourselves) and headed to different lakes to fish… Our group had some serious problems with alligators… See the alligators figured that we should just be giving them a little piranha buffet… At one point, there was a rather large alligator getting uncomfortably close to where Hilary (from Minn) and I were fishing. Our guide told me to smack the gator with my fishing pole. I was just a couple inches short of actually being able to hit it-so I just smacked the water in front of it. The gator went under the water, I figured he'd swim off. I turned to talk to Hilary and BAM there was the gator about 4 feet from me, already half-way on the beach! AHHH! I started WHAMING that thing with my bamboo fishing pole!! Obviously, I won the fight, cuz I'm sitting here telling you about it ;-)…. Anyways, pretty scary.

I did catch a piranha-a pretty one too-it was half pink-bet you never thought a piranha could be pretty!! Anyways, we put all the fish we caught into a bucket (like I said, I caught one, but it wiggled free and I didn´t bother trying to stop it-just let it go back to the water, what did I care?). When we got back to the hotel-the guy fed our fish to the alligators that live in the lake right in the backyard-that´s why the hotel wasn´t too worried about the gators-they aren´t very aggressive cuz the never have to hunt for their own food. Can you believe that I fought off a gator just to give a different alligator the fish?! Some things just make no sense to me… anyhow… the night wasn´t over yet.

|After dinner, we all went on a night safari. We got to see nocturnal animals with a spotlight. Unfortunately, this wasn´t as sweet as I thought it would be, cuz I´d already seen all the animals we saw that night-capybara, gators, you know the like. Probably the coolest thing we saw was this HUGE alligator dead, laying belly up in the water. I think the coolest thing about it was wondering what could´ve killed that big guy. After our night safari, we all headed back home and eventually went to bed around 3am. That´s it for Tuesday!

Lots of love,
The new and improved "Crocodile Hunter" (watch out Steve Irwin-here I come!)