The 2023 Brazil Journals, Chapter Eight

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Chapter Eight

The Sinkhole

 

 

I hope you love birds too.   It is economical.

It saves going to heaven.

—Emily Dickinson

 

 

 

 

 The ladies who run the kitchen at Hotel Cabanas come to work early just so we can have breakfast at 5-ish and be on our way to a special place.   It’s about a 30-minute drive and we leave in darkness.

Just a small part of the large buffet for breakfast.

Buraco das Araras is the name of this private property that has been turned into an attraction so that thousands of people can marvel over the birds that live there.   Rediscovered in 1912, the sinkhole is now part of the 29-hectares Buraco das Araras Private Natural Heritage Reserve.

Buraco das Araras means, literally, Hole of the Macaws.

 

We register at the greeting center (I guess if we don't return, they'll assume we fell in the sinkhole) and begin a ten-minute walk through the woods. I'm lagging behind and suddenly red and green macaws are flying over my head so closely  I feel the movement of air and duck.

 

Local legend has it that cattle thieves and other miscreants that the locals wanted rid of would be blindfolded and driven to this area.   They would be untied, blindfolds still in place, and told they were free—run!   Of course they would run in the opposite direction of the lawmen and right into the sinkhole.

 

We come to a two-story platform with high railings overlooking a 330-foot deep sandstone crater that is 1640-feet in circumference, and more than 522 feet in diameter.   

Photo taken after the tourists arrived.   Hence the arm in the photo.

A short video of the sinkhole.

 

At the bottom is a small green pond that is the natural water table in this area.

Broad-snouted caimans live at the bottom and their survival is thought to be because they eat their young, there being no other food in the crater.

 

And so begins the most challenging photography I have ever encountered.   Half in sunlight, half in shadow, my camera's auto-ISO is all over the place and mostly way too high.  Bird in light with darkness in the background, or the other way around.   

I take photos of perched birds first, then try my luck at flying birds.

 

To do that, I have to lift my camera above the top guard rail and lean it out.   Now I’m afraid I’ll drop the camera into the abyss.

 

This railing is way too high for me to lean my camera over, as you can see by this photographer who is a bit taller than me.   I had to stand on a step stool.

 

The day heats up quickly and soon I’m taking frequent breaks on a bench and gulping water.

 

I should have done what Shelly did—ask Octavio questions right off the bat.   

At length he comes over to see how I’m doing and when I tell him “not very well” he takes my camera and changes the auto-focus settings.    That helps a lot and long after this trip is over, those settings remain on my camera.   

 Rather than a tiny rectangle to try to place on a flying bird, I now have a larger rectangle and need only get part of the bird within that rectangle.   It gives me a fighting chance and enables me to get bird-in-flight photos throughout the trip.

 

There’s still the flying bird thing.   They might look like they’re just drifting along, but try to track them with your long lens and they might as well be Secretariat at Churchill Downs, except that famous horse wasn’t constantly in and out of  changing light.

 

Eventually, I get something approximating a decent, though not great, image but by then I am exhausted from the heat.

These photos are not all from this first day.

A bunch of non-photographers arrive and we leave.  It's almost lunch time anyway.

Last evening, we drove the backroads around pastures, looking for giant anteaters.   Octavio spotted brown shapes that were barely visible above the dried grasses.

I took a couple shots.   I thought they were boulders but after down-loading and looking at them on a computer screen, I can see the long brown hair of anteaters.

Are they or aren't they giant anteaters?

 

A mated pair:   red and green macaw and blue and yellow macaw.

Making baby macaws.

The same mated pair.

Red and green macaws

Buff-necked ibis

Plumbeous ibis.

 

Black vulture

The 2023 Brazil Journals, Chapter Seven

(To see photos full screen, click on one and then scroll through them.)

Chapter Seven

Travel, Travel, Travel

 

 

It’s not what you look at that matters.

It’s what you see.

—Henry David Thoreau

 

 

 

 

It’s the end of our “pre-extension” trip to the Atlantic Rainforest of Brazil. Today, after lunch, Ruan and his father will take us back to Sào Paulo, where we will spend the night.

 

Tomorrow begins the main course of our trip—the Pantanal Photo Tour, four remote lodges that all feature different things.   

 

This morning we hang out on the deck of the lodge watching for new species of birds and feeding the squirrels sunflower seeds.   Later in the morning, we are on the front patio where Sergio has set up a flower to entice hummingbirds.

 

An ibis, perhaps an Hadada ibis.

The gang.

At last the Brazilian Ruby shows the bright red feathers on its gorget (throat).  Unfortunately, my camera focused on the flower instead.   Should have used a longer depth of field.

Violet-capped woodnymph.

And then, we leave the wonderful, welcoming Trilha dos Tucanos for the four-hour drive to the city.   We do stop at a convenience store for a break, and this time we all know what to do with those large plastic devices, but this one throws another hitch into the mix.   

 

I have a couple items to purchase and step up to a machine that looks like a self-checkout register.   I swipe my card and the purchase is noted.  Not until I move about ten feet away and drop that plastic thing into a slot on the turnstile do I get a receipt, as well as an unlocked turnstile.

 

Quite ingenious, I think.   I wonder if this would work in the U.S.?

 

In Sào Paulo, we check into the Hampton hotel and finally meet our principle guide, Octavio Salles Compos, owner/operator of the company.  He’s a photographer, too, and has been published in National Geographic.  We have dinner and then breakfast the next morning.

Bring, boring, another hotel room.

 

Early!   Very early.   We have a flight to catch and Octavio wants to make sure we have plenty of time to get through any situations that might arise.   None do, and after an hour-long flight, we land in Campo Grande, somewhat in the center of Brazil.

In Campo Grande.

We travel from São Paulo, at lower right, to Campo Grande (A) in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, then WSW to Bonito and the Hotel Cabanas(A)

Octavio supervises the loading of our luggage into a steel container on a trailer attached to the van.   I wonder about what is in my luggage that might be affected be this "baking oven."

 It's a five-hour drive to our hotel, and along the way we stop for lunch at a large restaurant.

This is a very large restaurant with many dishes served buffet style.   After you finish there, you proceed to a grill area when you select whatever meat you want.   I ask for rare beef and Octavio translates.   Still no rare beef and it is as tough as the rest of the beef I've had in Brazil.

We aren’t yet in the Pantanal yet, but close.   Today’s destination is Hotel Cabanas, a short distance from the town of Bonito.

 

Our rooms are in a two-story cottage that has several rooms.

There's a common seating area that is very nice.   My room is behind the brick wall to the left.

Another view of the seating area.

Yes, this is my room.   This might explain a lot of things that will occur in the upcoming days.

Lots of desk area for my computer and camera gear.

Three beds.   There's also an area to hang clothes and a refrigerator under a counter behind me in this photo.

And a nice bathroom.   As you can see, the bathroom window is open.   The room is air conditioned so we leave the bathroom door closed.

 

We have two objectives here:  a natural sinkhole called Buraco das Araras and locating a giant anteater.

For now,  we have time to unpack and wander the lovely grounds.   

We meet Octavio in the open-air lounge and place our dinner orders, as he suggests, then agree to meet back at 7 P.M.

I do not take any photos of dinner.   We encounter one problem--the little packets of ketchup are impossible to open.   

I have a solution to the ketchup problem and once I'm back in my room, I slip  the solution into my camera bag so I'll have it the next time: