The Death Train

So...when I last posted (for real), I was in Santa Cruz. From there, one can take a train to Puerto Quijarro, which is on the border with Brazil. The train is infamously named "El Tren de la Muerte" and until now I´m not sure exactly why. Perhaps it´s something to do with drugs being transported along this route.

With such a name, I was bracing myself for something quite awful. In truth, the worst of it was a little smell of mold, and two vintage tv sets in our compartment that kept blaring music videos by Julio Inglesias. (I thought, please not for the next 16 hours!). However, it soon changed over to a spanish dubbed version of the newly released `Taken` with Liam Neeson. Hmmm...wonder how they got that in DVD so fast.

Upon arriving at the border, I shared a taxi with some fellow brazilian backpackers and went direct to the bus station, for yes...more time sitting down on a bus. The route we took went smack through a section of the brazilian Pantanal. The Pantanal is an alluvial plane and is the best place in Brazil to see wildlife. Yep, don´t head to the Amazon - the vegetation is so dense there you won´t see much. But the Pantanal is another story...from the bus window I saw some gators (Caiman crocodilus), Emas (Rhea americana) which is the largest south american bird, some kind of deer, and Tuiuiú (Jabiru mycteria), also a bird, quite large, and with a very funny name. I seemed to be the only passenger glued to the windows and trying to spot all sorts of wildlife.

I stayed 2 nights in Campo Grande and from there had planned to either tour the Pantanal for a few more days, or visit another city called Bonito, the ecotourism capital of Brazil. In the end I gave up on both, for several reasons, including the fact that I had no more clean underwear. If that means I´m not a hard core traveler, fine. ; )

So, after more bus time (phew!) I made it to Sao Paulo, and have been happily resting at my grandmothers...eating good food, and wearing clean clothes.

The weekend promises to be full of travel and excitement again. Saturday I head to Sao Carlos, a smaller town in Sao Paulo state where I went to University. There I´ll get to see some really dear friends from ages ago. I can hardly wait...Sunday I travel to the island of Florianopolis in the south, and will be taking a week-long graduate course on reef fishes.