Brazil Pantanal Jaguar Wildlife Photo Expedition I

Itinerary

Saturday, July 16

Depart U.S./Canada

Sunday, July 17  (D)

Arrive São Paulo (GRU) or Brasilia (BSB) and board your connecting flight to Cuiabá. There will be a representative to greet you at the Cuiabá airport and transfer you to the hotel this evening. Welcome group dinner is planned at a nearby venue. Overnight Slaviero Slim Cuiabá Airport  near airport.

Monday, July 18 – Wednesday, July 20, 3 nights (B, L, D)

After an early breakfast, we’ll 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 encounters with capybara, coatimundis, crab-eating foxes, caiman, or neo-tropical otters. Anaconda, the world’s largest constrictor, can sometimes be seen along with other elusive mammals including the giant anteater or tapir. 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 areas along the way with birds and wildlife.

Please Note: Other tour operators will use an open “military style” vehicle for these transfers which is SO uncomfortable! It’s hard to get up and down the ladders to get on and off the vehicle, and the seats are very hard for such a long ride. The temperatures are hot and the roads very dusty. We prefer to have guests in an air-conditioned bus. It’s easy to get in and out of for photography stops and you’ll welcome the refreshing air-conditioning.

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’s 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. There may be opportunities to see jaguar here (Dan got one of his best shots here!), however, jaguar sightings will be more prevalent when we stay at the flotel on the river.

Thursday, July 21 – Tuesday, July 26, 6 nights (B, L, D)
1 Extra Day on the Flotel, as Compared to Past Itineraries and Competitors…More Time for Jaguars!

Depart early after breakfast, continue on the Transpantaneira Road en route to our second lodge, the flotel. 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’ll be staying at a superb alternative to the tented camps or land lodges that many other tour operators use. Located 40 minutes closer to the best area for sighting jaguars, the Jaguar Flotel, is an air-conditioned floating hotel. This optimal location combined with administration by biologists, highly trained jaguar spotters, and their unique fleet of radio-equipped scout boats have enabled all guests visiting in past years to see jaguars multiple times.

In the early days when tourism in this region was getting started, the flotel was mostly used by sport fisherman. The jaguars became accustomed to hearing their motorboats going up and down the rivers. For the flotel to accommodate tourists, it needed some updates and TLC. This will be our fifth year staying at the flotel and we’ve seen great improvements by the management team, including “floating suites” which provide larger and more comfortable rooms, a better variety of quality food, and of course, a friendly accommodating staff.

Other tour operators will stay at hotels in Porte Jofre at the end of the Transpantaneira Road. The flotel is located 30-40 minutes up the river from Porte Jofre. If staying at Porto Jofre, you have to travel up the Cuiabá River each day to get to where the majority of jaguars live. Not only would you be traveling more by boat each day if staying at the land lodges, but you wouldn’t have a place to go for a bathroom break or a place to stop for lunch between searching either. Many people don’t realize how important it is to be at the right location to view wildlife in this area. We feel if you are going to spend the money to do an expedition like this, you should be as close to the jaguars as possible!

At the flotel, we’ll begin our full day searches for jaguars along the riverbanks in the radio-equipped boats. The jaguar flotel offers the highest probability of any Pantanal camp of seeing the Big Three South American rainforest mammals – the jaguar, the giant river otters, and tapir.

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 (July, August, September) 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 ability to photography from both sides of the boat. Dan and the guide will rotate between the boats. We’ll do our best to track these cats for optimal viewing and photography. Boat sizes will vary. 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’re where the action is, 24/7. Since we’re 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 to the boat).
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 40 minutes 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.

Wednesday, July 27 (B)

After a quick, early breakfast,  head back on the Transpantaneira Road to Cuiabá. We’ll arrive in Cuiabá by 12:00pm 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.

Thursday, July 28

Arrive home

Scroll down to see NE Explorer galleries from previous trips.