One night in Cuiabá

 One last drive in the Pantanal.

It is about 150 km from Porto Jofrey to Cuiabá, and it that distance you cross 120 small, wooden bridges. One of the very first of which was under construction when we started, so we had about an hour to do some last minute birding.

The area looks like this:

And the bridges look like this:

and this. That is our guide Aynore with me on the bridge.

Unbeknownst to us, Tattoo was also trying to get to Cuiabá, and ran into the same problem. So we took a photo op.

There was too much to say about that road, so I will skip right to Cuiabá.

Little did we know that Cuiabá is the geographic center of South America

And it was only about 1 km from our hotel.

So we walked over there and took a look. And a photo.

Some of you may recall that we were at the geographic center of the lower 48 US States a couple of years ago. We are really middle class people.

After that, we headed over to the Parque Mãe Bonifácia where we spotted this little marmoset. But that trip was marred by a text we got from United telling us our plane (the following evening!) was being diverted to San Juan, Puerto Rico! That was a bummer, and I wanted to find out what the heck was going on, so we didn't linger at the park.

That eventually all worked out, and nobody really likes listening to bad travel stories (I will just say this. United did their best to keep us OUT of Brazil, then they did their best to keep us IN Brazil. 

Our guide Aynore recommended a restaurant called Lélis Peixaria, which is an "all you can eat" (or Rodizio) fish place where they come by with endless "rounds" (hence the rodizio) of fish.

If you've ever eaten at a Brazilian steak place, you will be familiar with the concept.

It was really delicious! This waiter insisted we take a photo of this fish. It was very good.

And yes, we had caiman, too. Probably not this one, but you never know.

The next day we got on a plane to Sao Paulo.