Pantanal

Pantanal is a place I return to because it’s never exactly the same twice, even in the same month.

The trip in is less complicated than it looks on a map, provided you’re flexible about where you sleep.

The core habitat at Pantanal is seasonally flooded wetland and gallery forest, and the best of it is concentrated in a handful of places that reward slow walking.

My default advice is to go july through october. Outside that window there are still good days here, but the baseline quality drops.

Bring a scope e one. More of this place is at middle distances than you’d think.

My most memorable morning there was mid-season, soft fog, two dozen birds in a thirty-minute window, and I remember about three of them.

Anyone who tells you Pantanal is an easy place hasn’t been on a day where the wind picked up by nine.

I’ll keep updating this page as I visit through the year. Take the logistics as rough guidance, not a route sheet.