This was a private trip of 26 nights visiting Brazil's Pantanal, the world's largest wetland. Known as a stronghold for the Jaguar, we visited two locations in the Northern Pantanal - Hotel Baiazinha on the Paraguay River just south of Caceres and Hotel Pantanal Norte on the Cuiaba River at Porto Jofre, where at both places wildlife viewing is all from boats - and one location, Caiman Lodge in the Caiman Ecological Refuge in the Southern Pantanal, where we used 4x4 vehicles, in a similar way to an African safari.

Although it should be the height of the dry season, we were plagued by a number of days of torrential rain and subsequent hoards of mosquitoes. This compromised wildlife viewing, particularly at Caiman Lodge, as with water everywhere, all the prey animals had spread out. Usually in the dry season wildlife is concentrated at waterholes, and is consequently relatively easy to find, but this time the waterholes were completely unproductive.

However, notwithstanding these issues, we did enjoy a number of superb sightings - one of the most memorable being a Jaguar that appeared to think we were prey, and charged full tilt at our parked boat, only turning away at the last moment - phew!

The trip was planned, booked and guided superbly by Frederico Tavares of Brasil Aventuras. My thanks to Fred, who is without doubt one of the very best guides I have ever been privileged to travel with.