Fishing in Pantanal
This was an amazing experience. When they told me that our programme included fishing, I immediately said that John would go fishing, but that I would take the opportunity to go walking and take photos. I could think of nothing more boring than going fishing. How wrong I was!

They persuaded me to go by telling me that the lake where we would fish was exceptionally beautiful. I was not disappointed. It was stunning - especially with the reflections thrown up by the evening sun.

As soon as we entered the rowing boat (our guide did the rowing - see the photo gallery for a picture of him), the Jacare (alligators) began circling. Fishing means that there will be some effortless food gain for them, although we had to move location in the middle of the trip to get away from them, as their presence was keeping the fish away from us.

Before we started fishing, our guide rowed us round the lake so that we could see the Aguape plant in flower and play with the otters which kept popping up and teasing us to follow them. (Unfortunately I was not able to get a photo of this.)

And then we settled down to fishing in earnest, with bamboo rods and fish pieces on the hooks. We were fishing for Piranha and we caught quite a few of them! We left our guide to get them off the hooks as their teeth were incredibly sharp and vicious looking and you had to be very careful in handling them. I kept well away and made sure I kept all my fingers!

All the time the Jacare were circling. One of them was particularly large and threatening with so many teeth missing that you wondered whose flesh they were now occupying. We discovered from Silvio that Jacare really do like Piranha. If you dangle the rod with the Piranha you have just caught over the Jacare, they will actually jump out of the water to try and get them off your rod (see photo gallery). An amazing experience! However at one point our guide bashed the large Jacare on the nose with his rod to get him to move further away. He explained that my hand holding a shiny camera (taking the photo attached) was looking very tempting for the Jacare, which could easily jump out of the water and grab it! Quite a thought!

We left the lake as the sun was setting, each of us surrounded by a cloud of mosquitos. However, this should not put anyone off having this wonderful experience. A hat, long sleeved shirt, trousers, long socks and loads of insect repellant keeps them at bay!

I have put quite a few of my photos of this experience in my Photo Gallery (Flickr) on my website.