We woke up early and had breakfast.\u00a0\u00a0It transpired that what the Slovakian guy had told me about beer actually being water was true as that\u00b4s what all the\u00a0Slovaks were having for breakfast.\u00a0 Actually not all of them were, some of them were having rum!<\/p>\n
After breakfast\u00a0we were shown our horses.\u00a0 The ride started off slowly but my horse was lovely.\u00a0 After some pleading and managing to convince them that I wasn\u00b4t about to wobble off they let me canter, gallop and do my own thing.\u00a0 On one part of the ride we were in open savannah and I galloped around chasing cows and herding cattle with one of the guides.\u00a0 It was absolutely great fun and made me feel like a real cowgirl.\u00a0 The only downside to the ride\u00a0was that I got eaten alive despite having several gallons of insect repellent on.\u00a0 I also managed to rip my jeans when I got off and got comedy bruises on my calves from the stirrup leathers pinching me.\u00a0 It was fantastic though and I was sad when I had to get off and leave my lovely, if slightly sweaty horse.\u00a0 After I got off I looked at its mane which I thought just had dead skin in.\u00a0 On closer inspection what I thought was a lack of \u00b4Head and Shoulders\u00b4 was actually hundreds of dead ticks, accompanied by a lot of their live friends.\u00a0 As he\u00b4d been such a star I went and got me insect repellent, some strong, horrible Anis we hadn\u00b4t drunk the previous night and set to work de-ticking my trusty steed.\u00a0 It was pretty minging actually and some of the ticks were way bigger than I had ever seen.\u00a0 All the time I was telling myself that he would probably go and scratch on exactly the same tree, or whatever, as soon as he was put back in the paddock, but I felt like I was making some small difference.\u00a0 I\u00b4ve just realised that I\u00b4ve focused on tick removal rather than what was one of the best rides of my life….hmmm!<\/p>\n
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Back at camp we had lunch and waited for it to cool down a bit prior to our jeep safari in the afternoon.\u00a0 As we were chilling out at camp, Junior (one of the guides) called for us to come to see an annaconda.\u00a0 We were running through grass half wondering if the small local child who had reported it had a\u00a0vivid imagination, when we got to a path and saw the hugest snake.\u00a0 A couple of the guides caught it, we touched it, photographed it and then watched it slowly slither away.\u00a0 It was amazing to see such a large snake in its natural environment.\u00a0 I was also noble and sprinted to fetch Rainer who was at the camp having a shave or something, so that he could see the beast.\u00a0 I told myself that counted as my exercise for the day.<\/p>\n
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In the afternoon we set out on our jeep safari.\u00a0 We sat on the roof of the van which was a really cool way to travel, literally!\u00a0 There were birds everywhere from finches the colour of the morning sun to huge cranes and herons.\u00a0 Almost as soon as we left camp the jeep stopped and a couple of the guides sprinted across a field towards a giant anteater.\u00a0 They put themselves the opposite side of it to the van and we all followed.\u00a0 We were really close to it, it was sensational.\u00a0 Somewhat bizarrely one of the guides was coaxing it to stay with a bottle of beer and it loved it.\u00a0 Apparently the anteaters sometimes break into camps in search of beer!\u00a0 After a while the anteater pottered off and so did we.\u00a0 We carried on and, at the sides of the road, saw loads of caimans both in and out of the water.\u00a0 There were rattlesnakes mating and, further on, herds of capybaras.\u00a0 Being the largest, and possibly most stupid looking, rodent, I was keen to see the capybaras in their natural habitat.\u00a0 What was really great to see was them crossing the rivers and waterways.\u00a0 You saw them at one side, then they held their breath and swam under water as you watched the bubbles and ripples on the surface, before appearing the other side.<\/p>\n
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We carried on until we got to a quickly flowing river, where we got out to try to catch pirahnas.\u00a0 I was slightly lame\u00a0but as soon as Manuel (another guide) got involved\u00a0I reeled one in.\u00a0 I didn\u00b4t really appreciate the bashing it over the head with a rock bit though.\u00a0 I don\u00b4t think I\u00b4d be a very good fisherman!\u00a0 Some people proved better than others at the pirahna fishing with a lot of the gringos joking that they were just feeding the pirahnas who seemed particularly adept at removing bait from hooks.\u00a0 It was cool to see the pirahnas close up and their teeth were really worrying.\u00a0 Manuel used one of them to cut leaves and showed us its bite.\u00a0 One of the guides caught a bass which was the most beautiful greeny colour and I took one of my favourite photos inside its mouth.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
After feeding the pirahnas we walked down the road which proved to be not so full of wildlife apart from sandflies and mosquitos which welcomed our visit.\u00a0 As it got dark we were told that this was the time to catch a caiman and, shortly afterwards, Junior did.\u00a0 It wasn\u00b4t a huge caiman but, as we all stood around looking at it, it wrestled its way free and was suddenly worryingly close to our feet.\u00a0 I was inside one of the vans in a split second and a lot of people commented on how fast I moved.\u00a0 I wasn\u00b4t fussed as I\u00b4d prefer to look like a bit of a wuss than lose a leg!\u00a0 After they had regained control of the caiman I had my photo taken next to it, albeit somewhat tentatively having seen how fast the thing could move.<\/p>\n
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Back at camp we ate the pirahna we had caught which was surprisingly good, although very boney.\u00a0 I asked Junior about buying cigarettes and we went on a long drive in the dark with another guide and Rainer.\u00a0 After a few stops at houses we got to a “supermarket” which was basically a house with a hole and a hand that appeared and gave you things.\u00a0 It all felt a bit cloak and dagger but in a very non-threatening way.\u00a0 Back at camp I had a couple of beers with Rainer, watched the Slovaks and had an early night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We woke up early and had breakfast.\u00a0\u00a0It transpired that what the Slovakian guy had told me about beer actually being water was true as that\u00b4s what all the\u00a0Slovaks were having for breakfast.\u00a0 Actually not all of them were, some of them were having rum! After breakfast\u00a0we were shown our horses.\u00a0 The ride started off slowly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}