57 Meters of Anaconda

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Franco Banfi, in the water, up close and personal
with the second anaconda that we found.
Photo: © Daniel De Granville, 2010

I spent the last three weeks working with Franco Banfi from Switzerland and Jiří Řezníček, from Czech Republic, two renowned underwater photographers that came to Brazil with the objective of photographing anacondas, freshwater stingrays and pink river dolphins. To accomplish these tasks, we traveled for 21 days through rivers in the Cerrado, Pantanal and Amazon Forest. Joining us were Shaowen and Jana, also photo enthusiasts and lovers of nature adventures. I will tell you the stories on my next posts along September.

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It was about eight in the morning when I left home with an unusual task: to find anacondas basking in the sun on river banks. After a sequence of very cold nights, the thermometer outside was showing 12 °C (54 F) as the lowest temperature overnight, and the sun shining strongly, still near the horizon, was the sign of a warmer day. Perfect for my upcoming mission.

The first part of our trip started here in Bonito, always with the indispensable presence of Juca Ygarapé and our “henchman” Dudu, besides the long distance support of Carol from Ambiental, who was always backing our needs with impecable competence. If the challenge of finding the snakes made Juca and I remain tense during the weeks before our clients’ arrival, with the possibility of not living up with the team’s expectations, the first day in the field was enough to fascinate and tranquilize us. After all, in the first hours of our adventure – that included going down waterfalls with a boat loaded of heavy and expensive equipment, passing under fallen trees, walking through saw grass and coping with bloodthirsty black flies – we already found two huge Yellow Anacondas in perfect conditions for our job.

The anaconda’s house...
Photo: © Daniel De Granville, 2010

Relieved with the sensation of “mission accomplished” (even though our demanding photographers did not consider that they had the ideal shots, what took us to the same place five more times), we went on with our activities and the encounters with these serpents succeeded repeatedly. To such extent that, after the sixth anaconda sighting, we started reckoning our success rate in total meters of anaconda (57 meters / 187 feet in total!).

... and the house’s owner!

Photo: © Daniel De Granville, 2010

It is worth remembering that, due to the difficulty of finding anacondas in the wild and the fact that they were the trip’s major objective, 70% of our time in Bonito had been reserved for us to search for them. Since we had such a high success rate in the first days, we decided to invest in the second critter of our list, the freshwater stingrays. Here, once again, success and mission (almost) accomplished, since we were able to find many of these fishes posing for Franco, Jiří and their companions at the bottom of the river.

Franco has a good time with a stingray surrounded by little fish...
Photo: © Daniel De Granville, 2010

In short, when we reached Day 9 of our expedition, we had already found two of the three main species that our clients were looking for, which meant more time to go for even better pictures and explore other natural wonders that these regions offer, such as macaws, caimans, caves and crystal-clear rivers full of fish. What did we see afterwards? Wait for next post :-)

Besides anacondas, freshwater stingrays and caimans, the program included relaxing dives in crystal-clear rivers full of life.
Photo: © Daniel De Granville, 2010
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