Welcome to the Jungle

Before writing anything, I'd like to congratulate Ari on having kept such a good blog while travelling, apologize to Sam for giving him shit for never posting (and tell him I understand now why he never posted), and just say that it's not that I'm constantly busy but just that it's real hard to convince yourself to sit down and type at a computer. But so it goes.

After Floripa I went to Iguacu Falls on the Argentinian/Brazilian border, but since I've seen it before and had my camera stolen a while back, I ditched it for Paraguay - the land of no travellers (it's not that it's bad, it's just that every other place in SAmerica is better so people go to those instead). Since no one probably understands why I'd go to a third world shithole to buy a new and advanced piece of technology, it might help if I added that Paraguay pays no import duties, so products cost virtually the same as the US. Unlike US stores, Paraguay more resembles a Hong Kong version of a Moroccan market. The streets are filled with tiny little huts that house clothing stands, and in the few places where its possible to walk, you are almost guarenteed to get hit by a motorbike or van. Between and slightly in front of this constant bustle, street vendors sell the shittiest meat you can imagine, always with more grease than your digestive system can handle. But behind and under these stalls, the magic stores hide. Finding them is next to impossible without a guide (I paid a guy to walk around with me for 3 hours), and once you've been to 4 or 5 of these tiny, hidden, electronic stores, they all blend together and you can't find any of them again. Despite constantly being lost, and after much searching and painful negotiations, I got most stores to hate me for being a cheap Canadian; I did however get a Canon SLR for 10 bucks less than its list price on Amazon.

The trip was lovely and had absolutely no culture involved, but my illegal crossing to Paraguay finished with me ripping up the receipt (so the Brazilian border checkers couldn't prove I purchased the camera) and not even being checked (yet alone showing a passport). The one problem is that I had no idea of the exchange rate, and its possible I was charged double for this act of stupidity. In retrospect, since the rate is approximately 5800 to the dollar, any number they had showed me (since it was about 1.5 million pretend coins) sounds about right, I hope. Having taken a 15 hour bus and then had a long day of bustle, I
decided to get a nice night's sleep... on another 15 hour overnight bus. For those of you that don't know, a nice overnight bus is an oxymoron and is practically impossible, except on Argentinian buses, which weren't available, and won't be at all this trip. I got to Campo Grande in the morning, far from refreshed, and booked a tour into the Pantanal with some Vikings (Danes that fill all physical stereotypes of Scandinavia).

At approximately 25x the size of the Everglades, the Pantanal is the largest wetlands in the world. It's basically a massive flatland surrounded by a few large mountain ranges, and every wet season the rain all floods in, filling it to approximately a 3 meter deep lake everywhere. Now, there is no water and it looks like a massive corn field in Iowa, filled with cool trees and lovely plain grass instead of boring corn. Plus there are tons of really strange animals that you never see anywhere else in the world. We went on a jeep safari, a nice trek, an interesting boat tour, and a painful horse ride... which basically sums up 4 days of totally unique exploration into about 15 word. I also caught a baby piranha and ate him too. From the Pantanal I traveled 2 hours by Brazilian van (as in 5 hours where I couldn't feel my feet) to Bonito (which means beautiful in Portugese and lives up to this name), the eco-tourism capital of Brazil. The guide books are totally correct in their description of these rivers: imagine throwing 10000 exotic fish into a river of crystal clear water, and then going snorkeling with them. It's really cool.

So that's basically a super quick summary of what I've been up to the past week. As bad as it is to remove all humor from my writing, especially when that means removing all details too, I sorta am short for time and am watching cartoons while eating breakfast (the latter is happening with the former as background noise). It's really nice to have a camera, even though most of my pictures from the Pantanal sucked (that's what happens when you put a $1800 lense on a camera and try to use the manual settings which you miserably experiment with), but just having 5 cool ones is worth it in itself. I'll be going back to Campo Grande (the launch point for the Pantanal) Friday night, and will probably decide at the bus station Saturday morning what comes next. Happy July 4, and hope everyone is having as much fun as I am!