Month: April 2018

The Pantanal, I believe, is the largest freshwater wetlands in the world. Due to this the population is sparse and the animal (and especially birdlife) is abundant. Spent 4 days touring around, had a great lodge, good room mates, good food and saw great things. 

Now in laidback Paraguay. Hardly a picture been taken for the 5 days here. 2 of those days spent in a river town called Concepcion and now 3 days in the capital Asuncion. On to Argentina tomorrow towards Salta and hopefully a place I haven't explored much (and 2 separate tourists have told me a must see). Quebrada de Humahuaca here I come.

Anyway, out of my comfort zone in Brazil. After convincing my Dutch room mate to join in (after all Nicole kept on mentioning how she once did a skydive) we went to the underground cavern known as Abismo de Anhumas. What starts as a small crevice in the ground explodes into this huge grotto filled with water, minimal light filters in from above. The idea is our (hopefully) professional handlers fit you into a harness then attach you to a rope where the first 'trust' moment comes into effect as you place all your weight on the 2 straps that wrap around your bum (see above). Floating above the hole, knowing the drop below is definitely a one-off if something goes wrong is something you try to keep out of your thoughts. Fun is not the word I would use, adreneline filled fear is closer to the mark. Going down was not too bad, you control your speed and my main issue was trying to make sure my t-shirt didn't get caught up in the gizmo that feeds the rope. After what seems a very long time (it wasn't) you arrive onto the platform below that sits upon the lake. While waiting for others to arrive we cruised the perimeter of the cavern.   

Next we donned our wetsuits for a visit to an unique underwater world. Unfortunately my pictures don't give it credit as our guides were the only ones with flashlights and those guys darted the light around as if they were afraid it may be caught.

And then the time came to climb out. We were rigged up differently than the descent so that by extending your legs and then raising your hands that were holding a gizmo (don't know the names of these things) would take you up around the half meter I mentioned before. Initially with the lake below in close proximity there wern't any issues but as we climbed higher fatigue and anxiety (it seemed a long way down, yes I did look down on occasions) crept in. Nicole (understandably) just wanted to get the climb over and done with, but with us attached together with a safety rope she had to wait for out of breathe Dave a number of times. I actually found my niche as we got higher, yes I wanted the anxiety over, to feel hard ground, but somehow I found an inner karma that had an enjoyable aspect to the climb. That is not to say that there wasn't instant relief when grabbed from behind when we arrived at the top.