Brazil Pantanal Jaguar Wildlife Expedition

Itinerary

Sunday, September 8

Depart U.S./Canada

Monday, September 9 (D)

Arrive São Paulo (GRU) or Brasilia (BSB) and board your connecting flight to Cuiabá. Welcome dinner this evening. Overnight Hotel Hits Pantanal

Tuesday, September 10 – Wednesday, September 11, 2 Nights (B, L, D)

After breakfast, depart from Cuiabá for the elevated Transpantaneira Road, one of the best wildlife-viewing areas in the world. The road is unpaved with over 136 little wooden bridges. There may be numerous encounters with capybara, brown capuchin monkeys, howler monkeys, coatimundis, crab-eating foxes, caiman, neo-tropical otters. Anaconda – the world’s largest constrictor along with other elusive mammals including the giant anteater, tapir, jaguar or puma. This area harbors a world record 82 species of large birds. This time of the year the Transpantaneira is typically quite dry, so we’ll stop periodically to photograph any wetland areas along the way with birds and wildlife.

Explore wildlife all around the ranch-style lodge on trails or from unique wildlife observation towers, one near a nest of habituated Jabiru Storks. In morning or mid-afternoon, take a boat ride on the Rio Pixaim River, a great source of photo opportunities for caimans, capybara, brown capuchin monkeys, howler monkeys and also birds including toucans, kingfishers, parakeets and hawks. It is also one of the best sites for predictable viewing of a wild family of giant otters from a distance of only 3 to 16 feet away. Often they will come close to the boat, craning their necks, and snorting loudly. The group will split up and alternate between boat and truck safaris.

Thursday, September 12 – Monday, September 16, 5 Nights (B, L, D)

Depart early after breakfast, continue on the Transpantaneira Road en route to our second lodge. We’ll travel to the end of this road (about two to three hours with stops) and then boat on the Cuiabá River to our remote camp in the Meeting of the Waters State Park.

We’ll be staying in the heart of jaguar country.

To improve the Jaguar viewing experience, we have switched accommodations from the tented camp used in previous years to a new superb alternative located 40 minutes closer to the best area for sighting jaguars. This alternative is the Jaguar Flotel, an air-conditioned, floating hotel.

This optimal location combined with administration by biologists and its unique fleet of radio-equipped scout boats and highly-trained jaguar spotters have enabled all guests visiting in 2012 to see Jaguars multiple times.

Here we’ll begin our full day searches for jaguars along the riverbanks in our radio-equipped boats. The Jaguar Flotel offers the highest probabilities of any Pantanal camp of seeing the Big Three South American rainforest mammals – the Jaguar, the Tapir and the Giant Otter.

A number of the giant otter groups that live nearby are quite habituated, permitting superb photo opportunities of these hyperactive, entertaining “river wolves”. Monkeys and numerous species of birds can also be seen.

We’ll use comfortable motorboats connected by radio to search for jaguars in the narrow and wild rivers. The driest months in the Pantanal are the prime time for spotting jaguars – many of them are at close range for extended periods of time. Often they can be seen on the riverbanks resting, drinking water, hunting prey or swimming. All photographers will have their own row of seats in the jaguar search boats for gear and shooting. Dan and the guide will rotate between the boats. We’ll do our best to track these cats for optimal viewing and photography. Patience is always needed – wildlife tracking can be hard, long days. This is not a zoo – on this trip you are venturing out to see jaguars in the wild which can be challenging.

All camps in the Pantanal are NOT EQUAL
10 reasons this is the BEST jaguar camp

1. We’ll wake up and go to sleep in the middle of jaguar country (and have lunch there with a snooze after lunch). We are where the action is, 24/7. Since we are staying where the cats live, we’ll be out searching one to two hours before and can stay one to two hours later than competitors.
2. Our camp keeps close track of which cats are active, where they are and what they are doing.
3. We have the only camp with a systematic radio network linking all boats, and there is a central control tower that coordinates how and where our boats should go to see any cats that one of our boats finds.
4. Scout boats with radios help us to find more cats.
5. Meals are eaten where the Jaguar are. We’ll never take you from a sitting Jaguar unless you vote to leave (we WILL take people away one by one for a bathroom break and then return them).
6. No other tour operator has information with maps of where the cats live.
7. Our tour operators have tested all speeds and distances from the riverbank and know which speeds and distances produce the best results for jaguar sighting. Some of the competitors go much too fast and miss a lot of cats and also erode the riverbanks with their big waves.
8. Our tour operators carry out scientific research on the cats by building up a profile of their use of time (a so-called “ethogram”).
9. The Jaguar Flotel is right in prime jaguar country. The competing lodges have cement block houses one to two hours away from the central Jaguar Zone.
10. We work with the only operation that has a full-time biologist on staff to help coordinate data collection and give lectures.

Tuesday, September 17 – Wednesday, September 18, 2 Nights (B, L, D)

After breakfast, take one last boat ride and head back to our first lodge via the Transpantaneira Road. We’ll work the road and photograph along the return and have an afternoon truck safari/boat ride up the Rio Pixaim River in search of mammals, birds and possibly jaguar. There is also an abundance of wildlife to photograph right at the lodge!

Thursday, September 19 (B)

Eat early breakfast and return on the Transpantaneira Road to Cuiabá. We’ll arrive in Cuiabá by 10:30am for your flight to São Paulo or Brasilia. Please try to get a flight out of Cuiabá after 1:00pm. Evening flight home from São Paulo or Brasilia.

Friday, September 20

Arrive home