How I lived to eat another lunch and number 13 becomes lucky...

Dear friends, this is going to be a pretty amazing post, so I suggest you sit down and enjoy it. And if you are at school and started reading this post towards the end of the day, consider leaving it for when you get home so you have time to be amazed by the incredible list of animals I am about to describe. 

Are you ready?

On the drive to Porto Jofre, we crossed over a hundred bridges that were old and rickety making the drive so much fun. Porto Jofre is really the ideal destination for seeing jaguars from a boat, a completely new experience of doing safaris for me and Ismene. As we approached Porto Jofre, it felt like our next destination was going to be worth the hot and sticky drive. A large gathering of spoonbills (Ioanna's favourite bird in South America) and storks were waiting to welcome us to Porto Jofre. 

Our boat driver, Maxi, was brilliant - in 2 days out on the boat we saw....are you ready for this?...a grand total of not 1, not 2 but 13 jaguars! Jaguars walking, jaguars running, jaguars sleeping, jaguars chilling under trees, jaguars swimming, jaguars playing and practising their hunting skills...it was incredible! If you know me well, you know that the wolf is my favourite animal but after this safari I am not so sure who would win (just joking, Sebby! Wolves are the best!).

Maxi was amazing; at some jaguar sightings where there were close to 25 boats with tourists, he was great at navigating us around them to get the best view. 

The jaguars were not the only sighting though: we were lucky enough to finally spot a family of around 10 giant otters with their babies. One of  the younger ones was smart enough to capture a fish and munch on it rather proudly.

And now related to this post's title: did anyone guess that when I said 'I lived to eat another lunch', I hinted on anacondas??? On the way back on our last day safari, a yellow anaconda (the larger of the two) swam across the river in front of our boat. It looked around 3 metres long and was going speedy speedy through the water wiggling its body as if it was on land. In the shock of seeing it, I momentarily froze and only had enough time to take a couple of pictures. Silly me! Annoyingly for the anaconda, it was past lunch time and we didn't have anything to give it (hahaha!). 

In two days time, we are crossing to Bolivia. Country number 4 out of 8, 6,000 kms done and dusted!