Just one last post to round out my stay in the Pantanal. On our last full day at the Fazenda Rio Negro, the research assistants took us up river on a boat. In a relatively shallow (waist to chest deep) stretch of the river be tied the boats off and went for a swim. At first I was hesitant, wasn't this the same river infested with caiman, piranhas and had the occasional snake swimming in it? The researchers had assured us that the relatively fast current in this stretch of the river meant that none of the above mentioned creatures would be around and so we dove in. There's still something quite disconcerting about swimming in murky brown waters but by the end of the week we just didn't care. The water was cool, the sun was shining and I couldn't believe I was actually swimming in the middle of a river, in the middle of the Pantanal, in the middle of Brazil a thousand miles away from home. What a way to end my short and brief stint as a conservationist.
Just one last post to round out my stay in the Pantanal. On our last full day at the Fazenda Rio Negro, the research assistants took us up river on a boat. In a relatively shallow (waist to chest deep) stretch of the river be tied the boats off and went for a swim. At first I was hesitant, wasn't this the same river infested with caiman, piranhas and had the occasional snake swimming in it? The researchers had assured us that the relatively fast current in this stretch of the river meant that none of the above mentioned creatures would be around and so we dove in. There's still something quite disconcerting about swimming in murky brown waters but by the end of the week we just didn't care. The water was cool, the sun was shining and I couldn't believe I was actually swimming in the middle of a river, in the middle of the Pantanal, in the middle of Brazil a thousand miles away from home. What a way to end my short and brief stint as a conservationist.
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