The Luckiest Unlucky Girl

I have been trying not to write this blog because it means I have relapsed, my cancer has come back, and I am undergoing treatment again. Although I wish it were not, all of those things are true.

A few months ago I started getting these headaches that would start when I turned my head and neck and it immediately radiated to this funny, fuzzy feeling in my head. It felt like extreme tension headaches and my muscles around the neck were really sore, so I just said that was the culprit. I had just started some work out classes again and playing softball so I just chalked it up to increased muscle work in the back of the head area. I mean, I hadn’t done sit-ups or sprinted to first base in a few years, so I’m guessing something had to hurt… right? The pain subsided for a month or so, but I knew something was wrong when I started getting some pretty debilitating headaches about a month ago. However, I am really stubborn (maybe the understatement of the century) and I didn’t really want to make it come true so I lived through the pain.

It got so bad, however, that I would turn my neck and these horrible seizures would invade my head for minutes at a time. I couldn’t dry my hair for work, I couldn’t walk up stairs, and I sometimes had to turn away from students because my head was seizing up or I couldn’t hear them. I eventually couldn’t even go to work because I was in debilitating pain just from laying my head down on the pillow at night. I slept a lot, thinking I was just tired. I wasn’t enjoying any of my social engagements either, because they were just a lot of effort and I felt really, really exhausted. My doctor had given my some muscle relaxers to see if that was the trouble, but they weren’t working. Eventually Jon took me to the emergency room because I was crying out in pain from the bedroom; he even had to put his hands behind my neck in the morning to lift me out of the bed.   But I kept with the pain because I didn’t want to stop my regular life for cancer treatment again.

The ER neurologist scheduled an MRI to see what was causing the pain in my head. The insurance claimed to take five days before they could get the payment pre-approved and I didn’t want to spend 2,000 dollars out of pocket, so it was scheduled for a week in advance. I didn’t know if I could make it. Luckily they called me on a Sunday night and told me they had an opening early the next morning. At 7 AM.  I dutifully rose, put on an outfit to wear at school after the exam and threw up bile for about fifteen minutes before the exam took place. I was pretty nervous and, unfortunately, it took a really long time. Two hours in that noisy metal tube without being able to move my head. And my brain was swelling. That was painful. I’m pretty sure that if a country is looing for a new method of torture on humans they should put them in an MRI tube for two hours.   But somehow Jon and I made it through. I was extremely dizzy afterwards and threw up again, but yet somehow I managed to go about my normal daily tasks. Did I mention before how stubborn I am? The next day I had an appointment with Dr. Majlis. He did not know that I had gone to the ER the week before and also had done an MRI because the pain had gotten so bad.

Jon took me to the appointment.   Now I don’t know what it feels like to walk to your own death sentence, but I would say that long, slow trudge to the doctor’s office to have my MRI results read felt a lot like I was going to die. I couldn’t move my feet, I thought I might fall over or faint, there was a weird buzzing in my head, and I was just so dizzy. Jon had to stop a thousand times to offer me a wheelchair, but I wouldn’t take it. Eventually we made it to the waiting room for Dr. Majlis and promptly fell asleep on each other’s shoulders. It was the most peaceful sleep I think either of us have had in a really long time. It was the calm before the storm, I guess you might say, and we both remarked on it. Eventually my name was called and Jon and I went into the office. I immediately told Dr. Majlis about my MRI and he went to the computer to look up the results.  I sat with my arms crossed and Jon sat across from me, but the look on Dr. Majlis’s face was not good.

“Here it comes,” I thought.   “Our lives are about to change forever.” I braced myself for the truth to come washing over me. And it did.

“You have multiple lesions in your brain,” he remarked as he read the results.

“Do I need to go see my family?” I asked. “How long do I have?”

“If left untreated you only have a few months,” he said.

“Well, hmm,” I think I managed to respond. My teeth were chattering and I felt like a chicken with my head cut off. “I’m doing to die,” was all I could think about and probably said a few times. I was ushered over to the outpatient oncology section to get me some drugs to ease the pain in my head and also some really fantastic happy pills that I think were meant to calm me down. I think they should have also given some to my husband because they were really fantastic. Immediately the tears began washing over Jon’s face and I was in such a good mood that I didn’t really understand why he was so upset. “Get that man some pills,” I thought. I couldn’t cry because I think I was in shock. We began our phone calls to family members and I think the pills were really doing the trick because I couldn’t understand why everyone else was sobbing and carrying on so. I received my drugs for a few hours, which luckily provided immediate relief for the headaches and I was no longer in pain. We headed home and I checked into the hospital the next day for more tests about what the treatment would be.

I had a pet scan scheduled for the afternoon to see if the cancer had come back anywhere else in the body and also appointments with several neurologists and the radiologist to see what we were dealing with. You see, Dr. Majlis had not known about the MRI and was reading it for the first time. His face showed that the results were not good, but I’m not sure he had all the information he wanted in order to deliver his verdict. But luckily we did receive some good news in the hospital. My pet scan came back clean which means that cancer is not present in any other part of the body, so I have that to be thankful for. I do not have to worry about chemotherapy right now because the medicine I take every three weeks seems to be stopping the spreading of cancer to the other organs.

After several appointments with neurologists in which they gave me a lot of tests where I had to touch fingers and feel toes going up or down, and walk a drunk line, etc, etc, I felt pretty confident that the cancer was treatable. I passed all the tests with flying colors, even a brain EKG that was so strange I felt like a monster.   They put all these electrodes on my head and in my hair and then showed me a photo light show for a minute that was so bright that I think I almost passed out. I’m not sure what the point of it was, but I do not have seizures, thank god. Indeed, the neurologists confirmed that the lesions were in my cerebellum, a level below the main brain mass, so they are not interfering with cognitive functions. The treatment right now is brain radiation for ten sessions in the hopes of shrinking the lesions and maybe even eradicating them. It seems a bit much to hope for. But there’s not much I can do, except to finish this treatment so I’ll let you know how it goes.   I’ll write another blog about the brain radiation itself, because it’s very uplifting and I’m sure you want to know all about what that entails….Good times! But I need to take my pills and eat some breakfast and get myself into a state of relaxation before my treatment, so I’m going to leave you here.

I haven’t done a whole lot this week besides lie around the house and nap this week, but I wanted to leave you with some things about life that will always be true, no matter what: your dogs will always need feeding in the morning, even if you don’t feel up to it. Their fur will feel like a soft, comforting blanket, and petting it on the couch will make you feel a ton better. Clothes left on the floor will always be slippery and you will fall (with style and grace of course…). Hot water from the shower dripping on your body will always feel good: so good that you don’t want to get out of the shower and people will come to check on you. Facebook friends will continue to post stupid shit on social media (Note to self: cancer patients: do NOT go on facebook…) Parking spots at Clinica Alemana are too damn small for the massive trucks and SUVs that are trying to park there. The people in your life that you love will always be there for you, even when you are at your absolute lowest. They will take care of you when you need it. So… I guess the long and short of it is, thank you to all those who’ve responded to my emails and taken the time out to call, email, or text. It’s hard to know what to say at a time like this and I know I’m not in your life on a daily basis, but your love and support means the world to me.

I don’t know if I can win this battle again. I try not to think about the future and what that means for me because we just don’t know. But please know that I am still here and I am hanging on and I am going to fight to keep my life because that’s what it’s all about. It’s about family and love and happy times and good memories and I vow to keep that going as long as I can. I hope I can spend the rest of my life doing meaningful work that celebrates life and all that it entails. I really hope that all of you can do that too (even if I have to read about it on facebook…)

Hi all, I’m back to my travel pod blog for my summer travels. If you’d like to follow along use this address:

http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/eliswift4/3/tpod.html

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I haven´t blogged in awhile, and that´s okay because I have a lot of summer travel plans, so I expect to be blogging regularly about my adventures soon. I prefer to blog about happy times than cancer, so I am very much looking forward to seeing new places and having some time away to think, regroup, and find my inner strength. My parents are coming for the Christmas holidays so we will spend the week together and then head down to Patagonia for twelve days to visit the southernmost tip of the earth and revel in it´s glory. I´ve also been told we might get blown over by the strong winds and that we might need to hold onto chains on some of the trails so that we don´t blow over, but I´ll save that story for when it actually happens.

This blog is not about my relief that a summer respite is in sight, but rather that there is someone that I need to thank profoundly for my being here today. A few weeks ago, a friend of mine told me that Dr. Buhler, the man who diagnosed me on that horrible October day back in 2012, is leaving the country shortly. Dr. Buhler, with his kind, blue eyes and pragmatic way of dealing with illness, is taking his family and moving back to Germany. I decided I needed to see him one last time, both to ask him the difficult questions about my future, and also to thank him in person for what he had done for me and for my family.

Jon and I attended the meeting together but International Patients had first somehow mixed up my name with a friend of mine, and then cancelled my appointment when she told them she did not have an appointment when they called to confirm. (Sigh…..) Regardless, the problem was fixed, but I´m sure Dr. Buhler was not expecting me to walk through the door that day. When we arrived he was very glad to see me, as the last time I saw him was in early September when I had my first post-remission pet scan. We talked about his upcoming move and then we began with the questions. It was important for me to talk to him about more long-term issues because Dr. Majlis, although I adore him, is more of a day-to-day kind of guy who dispenses medicine but maybe doesn´t worry so much about the long term. I don´t blame him since he probably needs to have some sort of escape method in order to deal with the worst of the cancer patients that come through the hospital. But Dr. Buhler has always been the guy I could go to if I ever needed real, hard answers.

Our questions were simple but important:

1. What does my future treatment plan look like considering I will hit my two-year remission point in early April?
2. If Jon and I were to move to another school somewhere in the world, what regions would my medicine be available in?

Dr. Buhler thought for a minute and then kind of shook his head.  “You know, Elizabeth, you are a very special person. You´re what we in Chile like to call a Pescado something or other (Chileans help me out here…)_, which means that you are literally a head scratcher; you puzzle us. Most people who are diagnosed with advanced, metastatic cancer, like yours wouldn´t be here today. It is very rare for someone with your degree of illness to respond so well to the treatment and to have no signs of cancer two years later.”

I replied, that I definitely understood that most people with Stage Four aren´t expected to recover and that it was rare for people to go into remission and have these types of questions about long-term life. But, for sanity´s sake, I don´t like to think about that too much. He replied that he really admired that attitude and praised Jon and me for dealing so well in the face of a tragedy.     He continued by saying that, “always, our goal with cancer treatment is quality of life. Considering your physical quality of life is very good again, about the only thing you can do is stick to your treatment and hope for the best.”

He also suggested going to see a geneticist in order to test for the BRAC 1 and 2 gene mutations. He discussed the Angelina Jolie phenomenon and told us about the benefits and statistics related to removing the other breast and ovaries as a precautionary step. Dr. Buhler said that if I tested positive to the gene, it would probably be statistically beneficial to go ahead and take the precautionary steps. However, he also said that usually people with metastatic cancer tend to relapse in the other places where the cancer spread and not in the original organ. That means that it is more likely that my cancer would come back in the bones, lung, or liver, rather than in the breast.   And he said that, if my cancer were to come back, another doctor could pump me full of chemo again and hope the treatment worked, but that there wouldn´t really be much they could do. He said at that point it was more of a question of whether I wanted to or not.

Having more surgeries to remove another breast and the ovaries would also be up to me. This tactic of cancer prevention is useful for people who test positive for the gene mutation and therefore have an 85% chance of getting breast or ovarian cancer. However, since my disease spread to other parts of my body, those surgeries would not guarantee that my cancer wouldn´t come back. So, emotionally, the surgeries may impact my life worse than not having the surgeries. It might make it statistically more unlikely that it would return, but then again, I´m not really one for statistics. Basically, if I tested positive, the question would be, do I want to live without all of my female body parts or do I want to take my chances with them? They don´t have any data about patients who recovered from a stage four diagnosis, and so he can´t say whether or not this treatment would actually be helpful.

Jon also asked if I should be getting regularly scheduled Pet Scans as they do in the states to monitor whether the cancer had returned. In the states usually a person goes in for a Pet Scan every 6 months, or even more frequently, in order to test for relapse. He told us that he would really only go in for a Pet Scan when my original symptoms returned. If I felt good and could still do everything that I wanted to, he said it was probably better for me to go on living as though the cancer was not present. He said there was no evidence that patients who check regularly for cancer recurrence through a Pet Scan survive longer than those who don´t. He said that although it is a little fatalistic, it was up to us whether to get the exams or not. Some people feel better knowing that they are still in remission and some prefer not to know. Again, he said it was a quality of life issue and that if the cancer were to return, no invasive exams were going to help me survive more than not having the tests done. All of this, while difficult to hear, coincided with my philosophy towards my disease: don´t worry about it until it´s actually a problem. That was how I got through my initial diagnosis and that is how I´m trying to get through my days as a survivor. Sometimes it´s tough, like I have said in previous blogs, but I know I need to just focus on the positives in my life, of which there are many. Particularly, that I can afford my expensive health care unlike many who cannot.

Dr. Buhler also said that we should feel free to move anywhere we like, and that if I could afford to pay for it, my drugs would most likely be available in any capital city in the world, barring a move to a remote African or Asian village. Two and a half years ago, Perjeta was a brand new drug, but now it is the most commonly accepted form of treatment for patients who present with an HER2 positive cancer. With the advent of the internet, most doctors in the world now have immediate access to information about new treatments and drugs and so I should not be scared to move to a place where I would not be able to continue my treatment, because anywhere we would want to go, would most likely have the drugs. This seemed to ease some of Jon´s immediate fears about moving and so I am hopeful again that we could leave Santiago some day and try somewhere new, as long as my insurance plan included coverage for breast cancer treatment.

As all of our difficult questions were answered, we rose to leave. Dr. Buhler ended by saying that all of the days, months, and years that I felt good and did not present any symptoms of cancer, that was another day, month, or year closer to my being “cured” of my disease.   I rose to thank him, and was annoyed that I hadn´t brought a card and a bottle of wine as originally planned because I knew I was not going to be able to say everything that I wanted to say to him. As soon as I said, “We want to thank you…” my voice went all wavery, the tears began flowing, and I couldn´t get a coherent word out. So typical! But he gave me a hug and told me that my ugly cry face was the best thank you he could have received. (I personally feel like a good bottle of Cabernet would have been preferable, but… to each their own.)

So, since I didn´t get to write what I wanted to in a meaningful and heartfelt card: Dr Buhler, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.   Thank you for helping me, and my family, deal with the scariest parts of my disease. During that initial, shocking meeting where you told me that I had cancer, through my first chemo session and the three times I had to go under the knife for surgery, your kind face and sense of humor were there reassuring me that everything was going to be okay. I will never forget this kindness and I know that your future patients will be lucky to have you whenever they are faced with a difficult decision. My quality of life has been greatly improved because of you, your professionalism, and your ability to treat the whole patient. Auf wiedersehen and good luck in Germany!

This month has been very busy, as I know most months are busy for most people. This new, modern, technological age where people are expected to do it all tires me out. I know, in particular, that it definitely affects my female friends who are trying to juggle a high paced career and the joys of motherhood, all under the heavy glare of judgment from social media. I mean, it was probably hard enough to find or make Halloween costumes for your kids before Facebook, and now I´m sure it´s even worse knowing that come October 31, your feed will be filled with small children and smiling families donned in amazingly creative and intricate outfits. It´s all so much pressure!

My reasons for feeling rather harried and extremely tired are no different than others (aside from the baby thing). My job requires a lot more personal patience when I don´t do it perfectly. I also seem to be overcommitted and a little overzealous about my extra curricular activities at school: every free minute of the day is spent doing a hundred little tasks that probably don´t matter so much in the end. My computer is so covered in To-Do List sticky notes, that I can barely see the screen to type. In addition, I have an active social life, which is nothing to complain about, but sometimes it does prevent me from fully relaxing on the weekends. We also got a new puppy (Kubi Two, to replace the Kublai that went missing about a year ago) and the new puppy´s bathroom schedule does not allow me to get a full night´s sleep as I used to. I know all of you parents out there can sympathize, what with up-all-night feedings and diaper changes. Since motherhood is not really in my plans right now, Kubi Two´s bathroom needs fully satisfy my maternal instincts.

The point of all of this complaining is to say that no matter what your personal story and your own personal problems, we all live in a high stress world. In my opinion no one really deals well with stress: me included. I recently broke down one night in sobbing heaps after I realized that I had spent almost an entire two weeks being pretty much miserable and complaining about everything I had to do. I was definitely not looking on the bright side and completely blind to all of the good things in my life.

This past Saturday Brittany Maynard (the death by dignity advocate with terminal brain cancer) died, and while I do know her story was hyped up too much by the North American media and that she has plenty of nay-sayers, I do know that the story is tragic. Brittany´s experience, as I have mentioned previously, really hit close to home, especially since her treatment yielded the exact opposite results of mine and she fell victim to the status-quo regarding Stage IV cancer patients. I felt so sorry for her and her family and so amazed at her bravery in the face of such an overwhelming situation. In her latest video she mentioned that one of the hardest things about her disease has been her weight gain- she had gained about 25 pounds in just a few months. This was due to nothing she put in her mouth, food-wise, but largely due to the man-made drugs she was taking. She mentioned looking in a mirror and not recognizing herself, which is most certainly a scenario I´ve dealt with since my treatment and surgery.

While reading the article filled with opposing judgments regarding her decision, I continued to wallow in my own misery and grief over the loss of a person I didn’t even know. Because I wanted to be even more miserable I guess, I ended that article by clicking on several related articles such as ¨My mother deserved to die with dignity¨. With a title like that, I´m sure that you can guess it was not a happy story. Strangely, I emerged from my session of surfing the web for more devastating cancer stories, feeling not depressed, but more determined than ever to change my emotional path.

There´s no shortage of adages out there that encourage you to ¨stop and smell the roses¨ or to view the cup as ¨half full, rather than half empty¨, but it´s hard sometimes. Every time I hear someone´s sad personal story I feel more and more helpless and angrier at the world around me. There are so many sad stories.  Unfortunately, the older we get, the more prevalent these depressing tales become, so sometimes it´s easier to focus on the negative than the positive. I know this sounds strange, but sometimes I long to be the bald, Stage IV breast cancer Eli again, facing the 5% odds of survival with a kind of attitude I don´t even recognize in myself any more. During those months of treatment, hair loss, chemo, job loss, radiation, and personal struggle, I truly felt like my best self. It was so much easier for me to seize the day and smile through it all because I didn´t really have any other choice. And now that I´m healthy again, I feel a bit jaded because I´m definitely not that person any more: I´m still the same, imperfect, flawed person that I used to be, maybe even more so because I desperately want to make meaning out of my life and get over what happened to me.

But the truth that I realized while reading stories of women who lost all of their female body parts while undergoing treatment for 4 different types of aggressive cancer over a period of 15 years is, that with that kind of real suffering in the world, all of the small stuff bothering me right now shouldn´t even matter. I need to just let the anger and feelings of injustice go. People are flawed, people are imperfect, and people are going to make mistakes. Not everyone is going to like me, not everyone is going to be empathetic, and I need to not let that bother me. No one on the planet can really say they´ve experienced the same hard times as me, which means they can´t truly empathize. But many other people have experienced their own hard times, some much worse than mine, and they manage to go on with their lives and smile and find hope and make the most of the short time we have on earth. I also realized that although I am currently in remission: my cancer could come back any time and life could revert back to being really scary and overwhelming. If I don´t spend time focusing on the positive things that make up my days while I am healthy, then I am not doing a good job of living. Life is hard enough, without making it harder on your self by adding all that stress.

From now on, I am determined to complain less, be more positive on a daily basis, and let the imperfections of humanity slide a bit. This is not the same thing as evading or ignoring responsibilities or sadness, but I do hope that I will be a lot happier as a result. Mainly I want to be kinder and more patient with the people who are closest to me. I don´t want to be a ticking time-bomb of stress, wondering when I might blow up again. That is definitely no way to live.  Last time I wrote I received a lot of good feedback and advice about life mottos and philosophies. I would really appreciate any and all thoughts regarding how to lead a good life and reduce stress and whether you think there are some philosophies out there that I should try.

The beginning of this month marked two years since my breast cancer diagnosis. Coincidently, my diagnosis occurred on October 1^st, the first day of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which is celebrated in both the United States and Chile with an onslaught of pink ribbons, pink posters, and pink T-shirts. (It´s a good thing that both Jon and I like pink!) This year, I didn´t really know what to do about my cancer milestone since I am now two years out and pretty much living life normally, but since it is a date that I certainly won´t ever forget, it felt strange to let it pass without any mention of it whatsoever. During the News and Feelings section of my resource class, in which I attempt to get to know my pre-teens better, I told them that I was feeling happy today because it has been two years since my cancer diagnosis. After I shared this personal bit of information, my sixth graders seemed rather perplexed as to why someone would want to celebrate something as sad and horrible as cancer. And then, as sixth graders tend to do, they promptly forgot about my news and focused on the new video game they got from their parents the day before and how nervous they were feeling about the Spanish quiz next period. Gotta love 12 year olds! And, honestly, their feelings got me to thinking: what is the point of a cancerversary? And also, what idiot came up with such a cutesy title for something so not cutesy?! (Probably the same one who thought that combining celebrity names such as Brangelina or Bennifer was necessary to help the public know that two famous people are in a relationship.)

I, for one, have mixed feelings about celebrating my cancerversary. On the one hand, celebrating something in October makes it easier for me to reflect on my own experience with the disease by participating in breast cancer awareness events that often happen to take place at this time of year. This year, I gathered a bunch of ladies and together we participated in the Avon Caminata for the Cure: a 2K walk/7K run held along the Rio Mapocho in Santiago. Despite the early hour, it turned out to be a really nice event, with lots of people out and about in pink, running, walking, and celebrating in some way, the thousands of women every day that are newly diagnosed with the disease.

I, personally, enjoy any reason to celebrate, and I figure being alive two years after such a devastating diagnosis is plenty of reason to celebrate. However, this year I didn´t really want to make a big deal out of it, so Jon and I didn’t go ahead with the big party at our house after the race. For some reason, it just didn´t feel right…. I rarely celebrate my own birthday, so I thought some might find it strange to celebrate the day I was told I had cancer.

Like my sixth graders, many cancer survivors find it morbid to immortalize such a horrible date as the one you learned that you had a deadly disease. In fact, after I did some research I realized that many cancer survivors don´t like to celebrate this milestone at all. To them, they spend most of their life trying to forget about cancer and move on with their lives that to celebrate the diagnosis seems contrary to their current happiness. Some are private people who don´t want anyone to know they had cancer because they don´t want to be treated any differently or discriminated against. And I understand all of that, but at the same time, I figure that if we don´t celebrate the big things in our lives, then, for me, it really cheapens the whole life experience. If I don´t acknowledge that cancer forever changed my life, then I won´t be able to handle the good or bad things that may be to come.

Last week, a young woman named Brittany Maynard, wrote an opinion article that aired on CNN.com, and it reduced me to tears for several consecutive days. I´m sure you might have heard of it: it has received a lot of press, both negative and positive.  This young, beautiful, vibrant, world traveler found out at the age of 29 that she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and has six months left to live. Brittany got married about a year ago and, of course, her article was posted along with these devastatingly beautiful pictures of a happy bride surrounded by other happy friends and family. It was clearly an event of joy and elation: the kind that can only happen when surrounded by those that love you most. After Brittany´s diagnosis, she decided to move to Oregon where they have a death with dignity law that allowed her to obtain a pill that she can take if the pain gets to be too much. She has decided she would rather die on her own terms than slowly and painfully die from a brain tumor that will render her helpless and put her family through the pain of watching her deteriorate in front of their very eyes.   If you are brave enough, you can read the devastating details from the article at the bottom of the page. But I warn you, even thinking about it now is really upsetting for me. I can´t even imagine how difficult it must have been for her and her family to make such an awful decision.

I think the article resonated so much for me because, if the dice had rolled the other way, that could have been me.   Two years ago I came extremely close to being that girl and having to make such an unthinkably horrific decision. But it wasn´t: I was lucky. There was nothing I did to deserve to survive cancer any more than Brittany Maynard did anything to deserve dying of a massive brain tumor. And I feel that I owe it to her, and to all cancer victims, to celebrate my life in any way possible. And if that means having a ridiculous pink cancerversary party on October 1^st in order to fete another year of Eli Timms, then I´m all in. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays: they are all an assortment of random dates marked on a calendar. However, they represent a passing of time and should be honored. So, while October 1^st might not mean much to others, except for those who were born or married on that day, it does to me. And I guess that´s really the point of a cancerversary.

Brittany Maynard´s Story

Day Six: Birds, Birds, and More Birds

       The day started off rather slowly. We had an early morning wake-up as usual, but the river was really shallow so we stayed on the big boat a bit longer while we attempted to find the channels in the river. Vagno was needed on the bigger boat to help guide and, at one point, I saw he was in the motorboat alongside us, with a big wooden pole that was definitely touching the ground. Several times our boat had to turn off its engines and shudder through the sandy areas in order to make it through. It is amazing how much the water has receded in less than a week since our journey out to the reserve. Some of the different side waterways were completely impassable only a few days after we had spent time perusing them. Douglas said that the river water this year is actually unusually high for September as this winter they had what Douglas refers to as the “Fifty Year Flood”. In fact, the numbers of capybara and jaguar are way down compared to normal and he thinks its because the animals had to go farther away during the flooding this year, and that maybe they haven´t made their way back yet.

Regardless, we were out on the hunt to accomplish Jon´s goal of 100 different species. Douglas was very eager to help and took us to a large cattle ranch where we got out of the boat and actually walked around for a while. It certainly felt good to stretch my feet! The ranch was absolutely teeming with bird life and Douglas even brought his telescope so I could really appreciate the different species. Douglas told me this morning that he hoped we would become birders after this trip, and who knows: maybe we might. Well, at least I can vow to pay more attention to birds now, because they really are very beautiful up close. We saw several kinds of parakeet, some stunning red crested cardinals and several other bright and colorful birds that we hadn´t seen before.

It was neat to be able to do this with someone who really appreciates birds, like Douglas, because otherwise it would all have been a little lost on me. We spent many minutes in front of each tree, listening to the birds call and trying to figure out what species were in the tree. Douglas has pretty much all of the thousands of bird species and all of their calls memorized, which was quite impressive. I guess if I spent 8 months of the year, for the past 30 years, in nature I also might be able to identify all the birds by their flight patterns or by their call. Actually, no- I still probably wouldn´t be able to.

My favorite bird on the ranch was the hyacinth macaw. It was easily recognizable, even for me, because of the deep blue color of the feathers and the bright yellow markings on its face. The macaws were really noisy and kept following us from tree to tree around the ranch. I guess they were curious as to what we were up to, and it definitely seemed like they were a little ticked off when we decided to look at other birds besides them. I pretty much watched them the whole time, except for a brief while when a group of toucans also flew into the tree. What a wonder to see all of those famous, tropical birds in person, in the wilds of Brazil!

When we´d had enough walking around and gazing in treetops we headed back to the boat where we ran across three rheas in the field that Jon began busily photographing. A rhea is a grey, emu-looking bird with amazingly fluffy feathers. They were also very impressive.

After our morning looking for birds we headed back to the same hotel we had passed on our way in to the Pantanal. We were hoping that the monkeys and the wild pigs were there, feeding on corn. Well, there were no pigs, but we could definitely hear the monkeys in full effect. As we climbed the embankment into the forest, we could tell there were about forty capuccin monkeys in the treetops around the hotel. They were amazingly human-like and very agile as they jumped from tree to tree. I saw one monkey lying down across its partner´s lap, and the other was petting its head, just like a human couple might do. I was pretty obsessed with the monkeys because they were so cute and furry looking with their cappuccino colored faces. I must have watched this one monkey for about 20 minutes as he carefully made his way out of the tree and attempted to approach the corn laid out by the hotel workers. It kept advancing slowly but was staring at me to see if I was going to make a move. If I did, it retreated quickly. Eventually I walked around the corner of the nearest building to see if the monkey would make a break for it and head for the corn while I wasn´t looking. And sure enough, when I peaked my head around the corner there he was gathering the corn up by the armful and laughing with delight. I adored him.

However, by this time it was rather hot and definitely time for us to head back to the boat for lunch and a siesta, which I enjoyed on a hammock on the top deck of the boat. Yep- life ain´t so bad after all, I thought, as my hammock swayed in the breeze. That evening we headed out in the boat again. Jon was eager for another jaguar, but it didn´t materialize, so I just enjoyed the beauty of the Pantanal and the way the light changed colors on the water as the sun set behind the clouds. I could tell Jon was sad the trip was ending, but I know both of us will be quite happy to sleep in our beds again without the sheets smelling like sunscreen, sweat, and bug repellant. Cheers to our last full day in the Pantanal!

 

Day Seven: Our trip comes to an end

      The bus that was going to take us back to Cuiaba from Caceres was coming to pick us up at 10 AM, so that meant we had to do our morning tour of the area very early if we wanted to get back to the town in time to make our bus. Instead of having breakfast at 5:30 we were supposed to head straight to the motorboat so we could appreciate the Pantanal at the break of dawn. I know I have mentioned how much I love mornings so I skipped my shower, threw on some clothes, and blearily made my way to the boat. I stumbled my way to my seat successfully and put on my sunglasses in displeasure, even though the sun wasn´t really out yet. I really didn´t think there was going to be much point to our venture, but Vagno took us to some pretty cool river ways around Caceres, and the morning was actually extremely beautiful.

After our day yesterday, Jon had documented 95 different species, so we only had 5 more to go. Douglas decided the best way to get to our goal of 100 was to find some more species of birds in the tree, so we stopped at the bottom of several while he made owl noises for a good 15 minutes in the hopes of luring out some new creatures.   We found a few and were suddenly left with one more species to go.

I could tell we were getting closer to Caceres because there were a lot more fishermen out in the water and plenty more residences on the banks of the rivers. Still, we were mainly alone and there were more caiman and capybara around.

Suddenly, Douglas saw something moving in the tree tops up ahead. We pulled over and found a large family of marmoset monkeys, which officially completed our total of 100 species of wildlife documented.   It was a great way to say goodbye to the Pantanal…

As we pulled up to the bigger boat docked in Caceres, Douglas announced that we had officially logged 39 hours of time on the motor boat, and had traveled over 620 km. No wonder I was tired of boats…

After our arrival in Caceres we packed our bags and waited for the transfer that we going to come pick us up and take us to a bus that would transport us back to Cuiaba.  The bus ride was much like China: we were truly experiencing life like the local folk in Brazil.  The journey was not long, but I don´t really enjoy bus rides on two lane roads because I don´t really enjoy passing cars in a large vehicle.  I always envision us careening off the road and into the ditch below.  But luckily we arrived in Cuiaba safe and sound.  We had the most disgusting pizza with no tomato sauce, WAY too much cheese and peas and corn on top and then we took a brief nap back at our Diplomata Hotel before arising at 2:00 in the morning for our 3:30 flight.  It was not a fun day of travel and extreme turbulence at 3:45 AM is never my favorite way to begin a six hour journey.   But we made it!  What a trip!

Day Five: Cabin Fever Sets In

      We resumed our regular 5:30 AM wake-up today and the big question of the day was, “Will we see another jaguar?” The morning started off a little cool as the sun was behind some clouds. After a while whizzing around on the motorboat, it became clear there also weren´t a lot of creatures out. I was getting tired of being on the boat and wished we could get out and do some hiking. No such luck.   This made me wonder about explorers and pirates back in the olden days. How did they spend months and months on a boat without any exercise? It is definitely not something I´m used to doing.

The most exciting spotting of the morning was a family of river otters playing on the bank of the larger Paraguay river.   I actually spotted them. Well, to be fair, I only saw a black object splash into the water and it turned out to be one of the few large animals we hadn´t seen yet: the giant river otter. Douglas is actually an expert in river otters as well as birds, so as soon as we pulled over to photograph them, he and Vagno began making all of these ridiculous sounding otter calls. They must have been dead on, though, because several more otters emerged from their den up on the hill and joined the others in the water. The otters were probably some of the strangest looking things I´d ever seen. They looked a bit like seals but with razor sharp teeth. And they were long and black and slithered around much like an eel would. They also had this amphibious layer over their eyes, which made them look blind. Douglas said it is protection for their eyes so they can see fish in the river. We watched the otters play in the water for a bit and they were really putting on a show for us. They scrambled up the sand dunes and then barreled their way back into the river, peeking their heads up behind the water hyacinth every so often, so we would know they were there. I truly think they were playing hide and seek with us. They were fascinating!

On the way back to the boat we also stopped to pick up the night camera that Douglas had left underneath the wood stork rookery. When they emerged from the brush the camera was absolutely caked in bird shit. So much so, that the camera was completely unrecognizable. While we were waiting for lunch we downloaded the pictures from the camera. There were only ten, but in the last picture it was clear that a jaguar had indeed, been under the rookery at 10:10 PM the night of the 14^th, which seemed very exciting to all the crew on board. The image of the jaguar in the night camera gave me the chills.

However, lunch was extremely delicious and made me forget all about the eerie outline of the jungle cat captured on the camera. We have actually eaten very well on the boat which means I´ve definitely not lost any weight, like I was anticipating. Douglas grilled up some beef ribs with some of his homemade bbq sauce (including liquid smoke imported from the United States) and I ate my fill. Douglas´s philosophy is, he eats well at home, so why shouldn´t he eat well on the boat? I guess I agreed with that philosophy so I ate so many ribs that I actually felt quite ill and had to lie down and take a nap after lunch. After the meal, Jon stayed upstairs with Douglas going through all of his pictures and classifying the animals. They decided that it would be Jon´s new goal to document 100 different species on the trip and Douglas was going to help him do that.

So, during our afternoon boat ride we were looking for jaguar, but really trying to find other species of birds that were new to add to our species count. My favorite was the toco toucan, which somehow Jon spotted high up in the trees. I´ve decided that I´m not really a great wildlife spotter. If we haven´t seen anything in more than 10 minutes I tend to close my eyes, relax, and let my mind wander. It was at this point after being on the motorboat for over an hour without any exciting wildlife sightings that I decided I´d had enough of being on water. Before the afternoon ride I slipped while getting in the boat and seriously banged my shin, which almost led to a total meltdown, but I kept it in check. Only two more days, I thought. But I guess I shouldn´t complain though- good food, relaxing boat rides, wildlife I´d never even dreamed of seeing… plus Jon is really enjoying himself. Snapping away with his camera, he is truly in his element.   It has been a joy to be here with Douglas who goes out of his way to point out new species to both of us and to help Jon figure out his expensive new camera, which happens to be exactly the same as his. Douglas is a professional photographer, so I´m glad that Jon is getting some lessons. I could definitely see him becoming quite the wildlife photographer in our future travels. He definitely has the patience for it.

During dinner at the end of the day we lamented that we didn´t see another jaguar and, actually, I noted that there wasn´t a lot of wildlife out and about in general.   But Jon seemed to be happy enough with all of the birds and mentioned several times how sad he was that our big boat had started the long journey back to Caceres. I realized that I had absolutely nothing to complain about, except some seriously swollen feet. Not sure what´s going on with that, but perhaps tomorrow I will wear compression socks and really complete the wildlife nerd look.

      Our morning passed rather leisurely since we weren´t in a rush to get out in the boat at daybreak, so I felt very rested for our day´s journey. Today, instead of coming back to the bigger boat for lunch, we had loaded a grill, our cook, chairs and tables into the smaller boat in preparation for a bbq on the go. The day was warm and the sun was high in the sky as we set off to find the elusive jaguar. Normally jaguars come to the river in the late afternoon to cool down from the heat. They also tend to congregate where there are the largest populations of capybaras, which are their major prey. Vagno and Douglas had already planned out our lengthy journey through the nature reserve in areas 4 and 5, highlighting the most probable jaguar spotting locations. The morning was beautiful and the area we were in was ripe with caiman (we saw over 50 in total), but we saw few capybara.

There were also, unfortunately, no large, spotted cats in sight. The most exciting wildlife of the morning was a family of howler monkeys that was climbing around in the trees closest to the river. This meant that Jon was able to get some good pictures of them, which made him very happy.

By the end of the day we had seen 13 monkeys in total. We also spotted a marsh deer, the first animal on Brazil´s endangered species list back in the 70s. It had some amazing antlers that stood out against the miles of blue water and reedy grass.

For lunch we pulled over to a small clearing underneath some trees on the riverbank. I was a little wary of having our lunch in the wild, because Douglas mentioned that a man had been eaten by a jaguar not too far from where we decided to have our picnic. Grilling fresh steaks and chicken by the riverbank seemed like a pretty good way to lure the cats out of the jungle, if that was our goal. I made sure to place my chair in the inner circle of humans close to the boat, just in case the jaguars decided to share our meaty lunch and we had to make a quick escape. Lunch was delicious- the cook had brought out the choicest Brazilian cut of beef, picanha, and we munched on that until it was gone. The meat washed down nicely with a few Heinekens and after awhile, I was pretty stuffed.

I really enjoyed sitting under the trees, which were alive with all kinds of tropical birds. Douglas, the bird expert, began imitating the call of the ferruginous pygmy owl, which brought in several rare species of birds because I guess they feel safer when the enemy is in sight. It turns out that there actually was one of those owls in the vicinity and he got really pissed that there was another owl in his territory. Normally I would probably make fun of a grown man getting into a fight with an owl, but after a few days out in the wilderness I found this pretty amusing. What I did NOT find amusing was the story about how the man was eaten by a jaguar. I had to know more!

Back in 2008 a fisherman and his 18-year-old son, Alex, were camped along the river. Their job was to catch river eels at night with a big net in order to sell them to the fishermen as bait during the day. The story goes that one day Alex got fed up with his job, not surprisingly, and left to get drunk on one of the larger fishing boats in the vicinity. When he arrived back to his encampment he passed out in his tent and left his father, Alonso, to catch the eels in the river alone. While Alonso was out with the net he heard his son scream and rushed back to the shore to find two jaguars, one with his son´s head in his mouth. Alonso apparently charged the animals but the other jaguar lunged at him so he fled into the river and took the boat to go get help. When Alonso returned with around 15 men they found the jaguars munching on the body. The animals then fled into the forest with Alex and the men chased them, hoping to recover the body. Eventually they were successful and scared the jaguars off. They hung Alex´s remains in a bag in the tree and by the time that they returned in the morning, they discovered that the cats had gotten into that also. It sounded like a true nightmare! As we pulled up to the gravesite on the river (which looked exactly like the place where we had eaten lunch, mind you) I was thrilled that there were no jaguars in sight. After this story, I´m sure you can guess how excited I was about going out to look for more large, man-eating cats. We pulled over to ask a local fisherman about the jaguar situation and he declared that four had been seen yesterday, in the same grassy area we had visited that morning. As we travelled across the water I decided to take a nap in the boat, because it was really hot and I had a belly full of beer and steak. It turns out I´m not such a great wildlife spotter, sleeping on the job and all.

About thirty minutes later, at exactly 2:10, I was jolted awake by Jon shouting “Jaguar, Jaguar!”. We quickly stopped the motorboat and turned around. Sure enough: there behind a swath of tree branches was a large cat lying in the shade, sleeping. I´m still not sure how Jon saw the jaguar, because it was almost entirely hidden by his surroundings. Vagno turned off the motor and we silently slipped towards the shore where we had a clear shot of the animal through the branches. At our closest point, we must have been about three meters away from the jaguar, and I was relieved to find he was sound asleep.   Little did I know that this was the closest that Douglas ever gets to a cat, but I guess he and Vagno felt a little safer since he was asleep and did not seem agitated. Jon and Douglas must have taken about 300 pictures each of the jaguar in the span of a few minutes. What I remember most about the cat were the enormous size of his paws and also how cute and peaceful he looked lying there, similar to how Chingy stretches out when he takes a nap. It was clear that there wasn´t going to be a lot that was going to wake this guy up. In fact, the cat only opened its eyes and lifted his head up when Vagno started banging on the side of the boat. I didn´t think this was such a great idea since I knew that jaguars can jump and swim, but it sure did make for some great pictures. We also were able to see how big the animal was when we lifted his head. Douglas estimated him to be around 170 kilos and he seemed like a really jaguar to me. Much bigger than when he was on his side, asleep. I, for one, was happy when he put his head back down and returned to his peaceful slumber. After Jon and Douglas had their fill of the jaguar pictures we went back down the river, all of us hyped up and brimming with excitement. Vagno seemed to take it pretty hard that a tourist had spotted the jaguar and not him, so there were a lot of good-natured jokes about who was really the wildlife expert. I know Jon was pretty happy about his sighting, and I was too, because I had finally seen my jaguar and lived to tell the tale.

I didn´t particularly care what we did the rest of the day as I had just seen what I came to the Pantanal to see, so I simply enjoyed the afternoon of sun and wind on the boat. We had traveled a good distance to find the jaguar and still had two research areas left to peruse before sun set. It made for a long day on the water. Douglas told us that, in all, we traveled over 200 kilometers that day and it certainly felt like it. At one point it felt like we were going around in circles. When we got back to the boat I took a minute to remove myself from the sun´s glare and cool down a bit. We dined on some piranha soup (not my favorite) and pizza and cooled down with a nice caiparinha. It was a great end to our day of jaguar hunting.

Day Three: A Cold Front Rolls Through

      When I rose bright and early at 5:30 this morning it seemed a good deal cooler than the past two days and there were some clouds on the horizon. I was also completely covered in mosquito bites that itched like the Dickens. So, I was not really in a good mood, probably due to a combination of the early hour and all of the bug bites. I had put bug spray on last night during our island dinner, but I guess I had missed my feet because they were absolutely riddled with bites. Regardless, I tried to put on a smile and climbed into the motorboat with my rain jacket in hand.

It was a good thing I had the rain jacket because the temperature kept dropping and the cloud cover became more intense as the boat rolled on. I needed the extra layer to keep myself warm as the breeze from the boat hit my arms. Due to the lower temperatures and the grey skies, there weren´t too many creatures out and about. We saw a few caimans and Jon glimpsed some howler monkeys high up in the treetops a good distance away. We listened to their call which sounded more like a deep, throaty groan than a howl to me, but I guess I´m not the one who names the monkeys, so what do I know?

We continued on down the river and passed a small abandoned looking group of homes on the riverbank. Douglas and Vagno decided that we needed to stop there for a potty break so we pulled over. Douglas told me that the “village” used to be a slaughterhouse that provided beef jerky for the Allies during WWII. The factory, however, was completely run down and broken. He also told me, as we walked over the perimeter of electrical wire that thankfully was not working, that the complex belonged to the brother in law of one of Brazil´s most notorious criminals. One of the buildings there masquerades as a tourist lodge, but apparently no one stays there. However, the owner still claims millions of dollars each year in tourism revenue. Can anyone say money laundering?

Anyhoo, I was glad when our visit did not yield a run-in with the owner. However, moving around in the tall grass set the mosquito bites on my feet on fire and it was all I could do to stop from scratching myself raw. At that point, we called the morning a wash and decided to head back to the big boat and find some anti histamine cream for my bites. Douglas told us that sometimes, if a cold front lasts for more than a few days, he has to completely throw out his research because it´s no longer valid. Since the animals don´t come out during colder temperatures, a weather front will inadvertently skew the numbers of species.

Around noon we were served lunch; the spaghetti and meatballs were delicious and completely made up for the sandy food from the night before. During our really long lunch break, Jon and Douglas geeked out over their camera equipment and I pulled out my fleece that I was glad I brought and busied myself with some writing. It was actually very endearing to watch Jon busily downloading his pictures and trying to classify all the different species of animals that we had seen. It was a throwback to the relaxed, outdoorsy Jon that I fell in love with when we lived in Asia. He and his new mentor (Douglas) spent hours pouring over the photos and searching for different species in the Birds of Brazil book. Eventually I even got in on the action and managed to identify a few species of birds in the pictures as well.

Luckily the clouds began to disperse a bit for our afternoon wildlife viewing. However, the temperature hadn´t risen that much and there was still quite a bit of wind that made the river choppier than before. Through patches of sunshine we ventured into the National Park that covers sections four and five of Douglas´s research area. The river in the region was called the Cai Cai and it turned out to be incredibly beautiful. Here, there were few trees and lots of water hyacinth and marshes. The waterways were twisty and narrow and eventually opened up into these vast lagoons, which allowed us to see for miles and miles around. Douglas pointed out two hills that marked the border with Bolivia and told us that they were completely unexplored by scientists. He imagined there was a great deal of biodiversity there, and I´m sure he was correct. As we twisted our way down the different waterways I got the feeling that we were some of the only people on earth who had ever seen this land before. I felt like a true explorer with the breeze in my hair and the sun glinting over the water. We were definitely in the wilderness. My favorite moment was when we approached a beautiful lagoon with a juvenile caiman lounging on a small island of sand in the middle surrounded by a flock of black skimmers. The ducks took off into the setting sun as soon as we approached with our cameras. It was truly spectacular, like something straight out of a National Geographic documentary.

Considering we were also far from any fishermen, I was also really happy that Douglas´s girlfriend had made him purchase a satellite phone just in case we found ourselves a bit lost. A few times the motor stalled and Vagno had to climb into the back to pull some weeds and things out of the propellers.

We saw many more creatures down the various paths of the Cai Cai river, and it was then that I learned Vagno likes to get the boat as close to the caimans as possible, and then scare them so they either jump into the water or back into the grasses. He seemed to get a big kick out of it. This made for some great pictures but also some tense moments for me. While Jon and the other men crowded around the teeth of the caiman, I decided to cower in the corner of the boat instead of appreciating how close we were to the animals. The men, of course, laughed at me, but I didn´t care: better to be safe than sorry, I always say.

Apparently caiman are not aggressive like crocodiles and they don´t lunge at humans like the ones I had been imagining in my mind so I probably shouldn´t have been as nervous as I was but I was glad when we decided to leave the creatures alone and head on our merry way.

In addition to the many caiman we also saw a lot of smaller beautifully colored birds hanging out in the water hyacinth. Those made for some great pictures as well. When we finally found our way back to the bigger boat we were treated to a clear sky and an absolutely gorgeous sunset. The big red ball of the sun fell below the horizon and our day was complete.

In preparation for dusk I sprayed myself down with Deet and covered myself completely from head to toe so as not to exacerbate the mosquito bite situation.   Luckily the temperature was cool enough for me to stay bundled up. The three of us celebrated that night with some rather large caiparinhas, the national drink of Brazil, and some fried piranha ribs. The piranha was delicious and very meaty, almost like a chicken wing. The batter was nice and light, and after squeezing a little lime on the fish we were completely addicted. That evening we had more drinks and Douglas told us some of the most recent Brazilian history and we shared what we knew about Chilean politics. Indeed, a good time was had by all. My spirits were also buoyed when Douglas informed us that we would be leaving tomorrow at 8 instead of 6:30 so that we could try to catch the animals in the heat of the day. YAY! I hate waking up early. And since we went to bed a little after 8 that night, we probably got close to nine hours of sleep. ExcellentJ

Day One: We Board the Boat

      Douglas had arranged for someone to pick us up at our hotel at 9 AM to take us to the boat where he would be waiting. At about 8:45 a nice looking man and his son arrived in a car decorated on the outside with lots of animals and the research projects logo, Bichos do Pantanal, emblazoned on the sides. The man turned out to be the boat´s captain, Vagno, which we didn´t figure out right away because there was a problem with our language communication. Since Vagno was a bit early, we hadn´t eaten breakfast yet, so we grabbed some dry rolls and cheese to go and headed to the car. I was a bit grumpy at this point because I am really not a morning person and I definitely don´t like to be rushed. I sat in the back of the car with the young boy and we kind of just stared at each other and smiled once or twice since I didn´t speak any Portuguese and he didn´t speak any English. I had no idea how far away the boat was and neither did Jon, but I don´t think either of us were that surprised when the car ride took close to three hours. Cuiaba reminded us both a lot of China. The streets were dusty and nothing was modern or clean. The sights and sounds of the city, especially the large amount of busy storefronts, all screamed developing world. Upon leaving the city of about one million people, the scenery changed into an arid grass-land, similar to what I would assume the savannahs of Africa would look like.  Since my friend Randi is currently in Tanzania on her safari honeymoon, I made a lot of mental comparisons between the wildlife we were going to see and the wildlife she was probably photographing at that very moment.

Considering we were in the Amazon basin, and not central Africa, amid the grass there were lots of tropical plants and small palm trees, which made the car ride interesting.   We didn´t see any animals from the road, however, and hardly saw any signs of civilization either. Gradually the scenery changed to reflect a more wet and tropical climate and a few hills began to appear. When we crossed through the hills we discovered we had arrived in the city of Caceres, where we would embark on our river journey. Our driver dropped off his son at their home, a tiny square house on a dusty, dirt street with many other tiny homes, and I began to realize again that I should never complain about my life and all that I have. My standard of living is so superior to most people´s around the globe that sometimes I get pangs of guilt for all the complaining I do about this or that. Compared to most people in South America or China, Jon and I are extremely wealthy and get to experience things that hardly anyone else in those countries do. Of course, there are also extremely wealthy Brazilians, but I would hazard a guess that not many of them reside in the Pantanal or Caceres.

When we pulled up to a group of boats moored along the Paraguay River in Caceres we realized we were, indeed, at our destination. Our bags were taken to the cabins below deck and we climbed aboard. The boat we were staying on was certainly not a new boat and the facilities were nothing to write home about. But I haven´t spent a lot of time on boats, so maybe this is what most are like. The room smelled pretty damp and musty and Jon and I realized we would be spending our vacation on bunk beds. The bathroom situation was rudimentary, but we could shower and at least we had our own bathroom.   I realized then that our week on the boat was going to be more like camping and less like a stay in a boutique lodge. I quickly got used to the idea and changed into my Havaianas, since it did not seem like we would be needing boots and hiking gear aboard the boat. Little did I know we would be spending pretty much all of our time on the river, and therefore I would not need half the items I had brought in my duffle. Like a dutiful wife I smiled and tried to make myself comfortable. Luckily Douglas was really nice and we both took an instant liking to him as he showed us around. I am not super open with strangers so it took me a few minutes to warm up, but Jon seemed to be in his element. I realized I would need to stop my urge to complain and simply enjoy our trip since it was something he seemed pretty excited about. Douglas´s energy and enthusiasm for wildlife soon made me feel excited as well.

We spent the rest of the day on the boat sailing down the river to find the spot where Douglas would begin his census research. The river was really wide and we passed many local fishermen on our way. Our boat had a covered deck, so even though it was hot and sticky outside we were able to keep out most of the heat. And the breeze felt glorious. As we sailed along Douglas pointed out all the various species of birds, and it was then that I realized how much unique and amazing wildlife we were going to see on this trip! I don´t actually know that much about birds or animals in general so I also realized I was going to learn a lot in the next week. Douglas was a veritable bird encyclopedia so soon we were spotting cocoi herons, giant black vultures, jabirus, southern screamers, yellow-billed terns, and other such birds of flight. The first two birds were our favorite because they were absolutely enormous. A jabiru is a giant stork with a black face and neck and a pink collar around its neck. It is much larger than a pelican and is about 3-4 feet high. To watch one eating a fish or flying past us like a mini-jumbo jet was simply amazing. Watching the colors change along the river´s edge as the sun set was also quite magical. It took pretty much the entire afternoon for us to reach our destination on the edge of the first and second research areas, but we didn´t mind the journey.

Once we parked the boat along the side of the river, the three of us hung out on the top deck, ate some yummy food cooked for us by the cook Douglas had hired for the week, and swatted away the mosquitos. I am pretty picky about the quality of the food that I eat, which I blame on my mother´s fabulous cooking, but, much to my surprise, the cook did a really nice job. Some of the combinations of flavors were a bit interesting, such as beef filled crepes, topped with parmesan and a tomato barbeque sauce, but it was definitely edible and I decided I wasn´t going to have to starve myself on the trip. The sun sets pretty early in the Pantanal, around 5:40 PM, so we were soon enveloped in darkness and mosquitos. I quickly made use of the DEET we had brought and stopped the mosquitos in their attempts to eat me alive. Much like on a camping trip, there is not a whole lot to do after dark on a boat so Jon and I crawled down into our room for the night almost immediately after dinner. We tried to work the air-conditioning and apparently must have failed because we spent the whole night drenched in sweat. Jon also moved his mattress to the floor because he was too big for the bunk and the other sleeping space was covered in tiny bugs that had fallen from the light that we had inadvertently left on during supper. Mistakes not to be repeated the next day, I assure you. And we fell into a half sleep to the sound of the boat´s generator humming loudly below us. All in all, it was a pretty great first day in the Pantanal.

 Day Two- Our Research Begins in Earnest

      I hadn´t quite realized how early we would have to get up in order to view wildlife in the Pantanal, but 5:30 was the time we were supposed to rise and eat breakfast. Normally I would completely balk at the idea of waking up so early during my vacation, but I also realized it´s probably necessary to view wildlife in the best light of the day, in the early morning and evening. Also, the sun seems to rise pretty early here (before six) so it wasn´t such a hardship to get out of my steaming hot bunk and take a cold shower when there was light outside. In Santiago the sun often doesn´t peak over the Andes until around 7:45 or 8, long after the first bell for class has rung and we are teaching inside our darkened rooms. However, even though I could force myself out of bed without too much trouble, let me repeat, I am still not a morning person. I don´t like to talk to people in the morning, especially if they enjoy mornings. I don´t like to look at my lion´s mane (unruly post-chemo hair) in the morning when I wake up, and I don´t like for people to wait for me to get ready. I left all my makeup by accident in my school bag back in Santiago, so there was significantly less for me to do to get ready, but it definitely made looking in the mirror less rewarding.  Ever since chemo I have very few eyelashes and my eyebrows need to be penciled in so they look more full. Barefaced, I tend to feel old and weathered, which is exactly how I felt when I woke up this morning. Anyway, enough about how my face looks- this trip is about viewing wildlife, not me looking pretty while viewing wildlife. But suffice it to say, there are not going to be many people pictures on this trip… YIKES!

After breakfast I joined Jon, Douglas, and the captain, Vagno, by climbing aboard one of two smaller motorboats that our bigger boat has been towing along with us.   The boat had comfortable seats and seemed really sturdy so I was really excited about the day ahead of us. Zooming along the river with the sun on our face and the boat cutting through the glass-like water I felt alive again. It was such a beautiful morning and I was reminded that TRAVEL is the point of life, for me at least.   I had spent a few dark weeks before the trip trying to figure out the meaning of life and pull myself out of a mild depression. And that boat ride did the trick: as long as I can travel and see new places and experience new things, then that is enough to make me want to keep on going. I absolutely loved it! There was hardly any wind, so the river was very smooth and reflected all of the greenery, the sun, and the shadows of the birds in flight above. As soon as we turned off the main river, onto some of the smaller waterways, we started to see some spectacular wildlife. I´m pretty sure Jon´s camera rarely left his eye.

Our first stop of the day was to a small hotel along the riverbank. It was called Recanto do Dourado, and once we climbed up the pathway and viewed the spectacular pool with the bar next to it and the hammocks all around I felt a pang of jealousy. “Now that´s what I´m talking about”, I thought. Seeing wildlife during the day, relaxing in the pool with a tropical drink, and sleeping in a comfy air-conditioned hotel room at night was more of the trip I had originally envisioned. But I had to sweep all those thoughts out of my head and focus on the fact that I had already learned so much about the Pantanal that I´m sure most of those tourists will never pick up while sipping caiparinhas in their hammocks. At least that´s what I told myself as we tried to avoid staring at the sparkling, inviting waters of the pool, and instead followed Douglas to check out the bare faced curassows on the hotel´s property. Curassows are an endangered species and look a bit like large pheasants. They pecked around the corn in the clearing in the forest and were quite neat to watch. Usually there are also wild boar and capuchin monkeys who come to the hotel to eat the corn, but they weren´t there that day, which was a bit of a disappointment. But Jon was too busy photographing the black collared hawk hanging out by the dock to be upset for long. When we begrudgingly left the hotel Jon knowingly winked at me and told me that he was proud of me for doing this kind of a trip and also promised that I could pick the next trip. Although the hotel would have been great, Jon was really digging our current situation so who was I to complain? Tropical beaches, pools, and romantic hotels in Colombia this January, I quickly decided, though.

As we pulled out on the motorboat for our afternoon jaunt, I focused on enjoying the trip and was astounded by the amount of wildlife we saw in just a few hours. We glimpsed some capybara on the banks of the river and Vagno pulled up closer so we could photograph them. While there we discovered there were two caiman (the name for the alligators in the Pantanal) just hanging out in the water hyacinth right next to our boat. Vagno pulled even closer to the caiman so Jon could stick the camera basically right into his eyeball. This I didn´t enjoy so much, but I figured if the captain thought it was safe, it must be, right?! Anyhoo, we continued on down the river and made our way into some of the beautiful back rivers like the Jauru river. There were more capybara and they stayed pretty still so we could watch them for awhile. I really like this animal: It´s sort of a cross between a large rodent, a hippo, a brown bear, and a seal, and when they are with their babies just lounging on the beach in the sunshine, they seem really cuddly and cute. The capybara are almost always surrounded by smaller birds that stand on their heads, flit around, and eat all of the bugs off of them. They are quite adorable.

According to Douglas, the best place to see most of the animals of the Pantanal is along the riverbank. The birds and mammals come there to eat and swim in the water to cool down. Often, the jaguars also come to the riverbank to eat the capybaras that are hanging out there. I know Jon was hoping a jaguar would pop out and eat the cute capybara family we were intimately photographing, but I was secretly hoping that it would not, considering our boat was very close to the shore on both sides. Sometimes we almost got stuck in the waterways because they were filled with floating grass, but somehow Vagno was able to make his way through. Those giant bursts of speed before the boat cut through the water hyacinth was both thrilling and terrifying. I held on to the boat for dear life, as I certainly did not want to be thrown into the water and become breakfast for one of the caiman. Luckily, this did not happen, and we made it safely out of the passageways. After viewing several different kinds of species of hawks, herons, kingfishers, and falcons, we headed back to the big boat for lunch.

By this time it was quite hot outside and we were all tired and ready for a siesta. But it was only about 11:30. We ate a delicious lunch of rice, beans, steak and grilled onions, and then I decided I was really tired so I retired to our air-conditioned bunk where I lay still and read and typed. I guess the typical routine on the trip is wake up early, go out in the smaller boat for a few hours, return for lunch, take a nap till about 3:00 and then head back out in the smaller boat until the sun sets. This seemed like a pretty good deal to me and I decided that the life of a researcher is really not so bad. Although Douglas has to take lots of pictures of birds and then count them all, which can be a bit tedious, life on the boat is definitely relaxing. Plus, if you have a cook to make all your meals for you, it doesn´t require a lot of extra effort on your part. You can simply enjoy the boat rides, memorize hundreds of species of birds, count numbers of capybara and caiman, and that is basically your day. Not bad!

Our second trip out in the boat that day yielded even greater wildlife viewing. There were a few birds that Jon had not captured yet, such as my new favorite, the Roseatte spoonbill, a bright pink, flamingo-colored bird that seemed to worm its way into the other white and black birds nesting in the trees or on the banks of the sand islands that we often came across in the middle of the river. We also saw many families of capybara, including a mother and father swimming across the river with their two babies. Super cute! And luckily, or unluckily for Jon I guess, there was no jaguar waiting to eat them on the other side. Although I definitely got the sense that there could have been. Most of the riverbanks we saw that afternoon were either flanked by flat, open, fields, or dense brush. It seemed quite plausible that a jungle cat could pounce from the greenery at any minute and devour those cute little babies. Or maybe my image of a jaguar is too vicious. Maybe they are just sweet creatures that would be simply lounging about on a fallen tree above the sand, just waiting to be photographed. Who knows?

Our last mission of the day was to install a night camera under a rookery of wood storks located on the banks of the larger Paraguay river. We pulled over to the side and Douglas and Vagno disembarked in order to the camera under one of the trees laden with birds up above. Apparently predators often camp out by these rookeries in case one of the birds falls down and they can eat it. The camera was supposed to capture the predators in action. Luckily the two men successfully placed the cameras and were not attacked by predators while we waited for them in the boat. In fact, Douglas and Vagno emerged from the bushes just in time for Jon to snap some gorgeous pictures of the rookery´s silhouette against the bright orange sky. It was truly spectacular. Upon arrival at the big boat, Douglas decided he wanted us to eat our dinner on the nearby sand island and enjoy an evening on dry land.   The Brazilian crew thought this quite odd but loaded our motorboat up with a table, chairs, and the food, and off we headed to the island. It was very picturesque and I was enjoying myself quite a lot, considering the food had been very edible up to this point. Unfortunately, though- somehow a large amount of sand found it´s way into the chicken and creamed corn dish and I could not stomach gritting my way through the dinner. I switched to beer instead and attempted to lather up with DEET to prepare for the nightly mosquito feeding at dusk. I must not have done such a good job though, because the mosquitos felt like they were everywhere! Again, Jon and I were exhausted by our day when we got back to the boat and so we pretty much retired to the room, uploaded more wildlife pictures, and called it a night. We figured out how to work the air-conditioning so we were a lot cooler, but unfortunately about an hour into our sleep an odd odor permeated the room. It smelled like burning plastic or like when a car engine gets overheated. I, of course, started to freak out and made Jon get out of bed to find out if the boat was going to explode. He was not too happy with me, and the smell continued, but he went back to bed. I attempted to read my book because I could not sleep and simply hoped that the boat would be okay and that I would awake the following morning.