The Jaguar Under the Bed
If you think—or even hope—I’m going to talk about cars, you’re on the wrong page. But if you want to see photos of one of the most majestic big cats (and a host of other fabulous creatures) found only in South America—then read on.
Our three-week trip in search of jaguars in Brazil began in the sprawling metropolis of São Paulo. Of course, there weren’t any jaguars there (not the four-legged kind, anyway!). What we did find was over twenty million people, surely as many cars, and walls covered in graffiti—some of it spectacular, some of it decidedly not.
As we strolled the main drag, I felt the need to be streetwise—slipping my watch under my sleeve and hugging my bag tight across my body. São Paulo has a certain reputation. But in truth, with police cars parked every twenty yards and armed officers—military or civilian—on nearly every corner, I didn’t feel particularly unsafe. Still, this blog is about wildlife, not urban life, so I’ll move swiftly on.
After one night, we flew to the southern Pantanal—one of the world’s greatest wetlands—with our two brilliant guides: Max Waugh, wildlife photographer of the year 2025, and Fred, our encyclopaedic Brazilian wildlife guide.
Max (front) was on hand to advise Shaun on the best photographic angles, and Fred (back) was ever-ready with fascinating facts and a razor-sharp eye for movement in the trees.
Both had the impressive ability to sleep anywhere.
Our first lodge was called Caiman. Though we didn’t spot many caiman there, the excitement started before we even reached reception. An armadillo ambled across our path—our first ‘first’ of the trip.
No sooner had we dropped our bags than we were off on our first drive. Cue our second ‘first’—and the entire reason for the trip: jaguars.
Diogo, our driver and jaguar whisperer, was head guide for the Onçafari jaguar conservation team (Onça being the Brazilian word for jaguar. See what they did there?).
With unwavering dedication, he led us to jaguar sightings nearly every day.
He also earned my eternal gratitude after our first freezing evening drive
by providing not only warm ponchos the next morning, but also ‘bush babies’ (i.e. hot water bottles! Those who have read my other blogs will be familiar with the term). And… hot chocolate!
Since Namibia in 2023, no trip would be complete without a rabbit. (See ‘A Leap of Leopards’ available on this website).
But no one, least of all Fred himself, expected Fred to claim that seeing one is very rare, especially when, two seconds later, we saw another. He never lived it down. From then on, we had to question the rarity of every new sighting.
Caiman is also a working cattle ranch, complete with real cowboys and powerful horses bred with especially strong front legs—essential for pulling themselves through the marshes during the floods. You may wonder how they keep the jaguars away from the cattle. Simple: they don’t. The ranch factors in a 3% loss annually to jaguar predation. A small price, perhaps, for coexisting with such magnificent creatures.
Our list of ‘firsts’ kept growing. One day we stumbled across a giant anteater,
and moments later—almost as if conjured up by Diogo himself, who’d just finished telling me about them
we found a mother with her baby riding on her back. (Fred had also just finished telling us how rare it is to see one!) The baby’s markings lined up so precisely with the mother’s that it looked like one large animal.
Enchanting… until the mosquitoes arrived. These were no ordinary mosquitoes. I will never stop thanking my past self for packing my trusty personal fly net—acquired in Australia in 2010—which saved my face and ears, but nothing could save the rest of our bodies from the ferociousness of these steel-nosed, rule-breaking monsters that bit straight through our clothes.
I can’t help but confess to a particular soft spot for the Jabiru storks of the Pantanal. Even the name evokes images of Alice in Wonderland and they are such iconic characters. Not rare at all, they are found across South and Central America, and even occasionally in the US.
We often saw them wading in streams, fishing alongside caiman, but one evening a bizarre natural event unfolded before our eyes: I noticed dozens of tiny fish trying to swim upstream, forming a silver ribbon against the current. As we watched, they were joined by hundreds more and by the time we returned after dark, the pool looked like it had turned to molten metal—there were so many fish, you could barely see the water.
None of our guides had ever seen anything like it. It happened again the following two nights, and then stopped. A mystery still (and surely… a rare sight!).
Our final evening at Caiman was pure magic. On our way to dinner in a clearing that looked like a fairy glade, lit by lanterns and stars, we saw a maned wolf—rare, long-legged, and fox-like—ghosting through the shadows.
Just before we left Caiman, we had one final reminder that this was very much not home. In full daylight, as we walked the tiled path from the bedrooms to the dining room, we spotted a tarantula—large, slow-moving, and entirely unbothered by us.
It sat on the edge of the walkway as if it owned the place. We observed it from a respectful distance, slightly awed, and if you know me, slightly alarmed. But even I must admit that these tarantulas are so chunky and furry, they are almost like small animals. Having said that, I still spent a considerable amount of time wondering how many more might be lurking in the shadows.
I could fill a book with stories from Caiman alone—but we had three more locations ahead and I don’t want to bore you. We took a small plane to Cristalino Lodge in the Amazon rainforest.
En route, we even landed mid-flight to refuel and use the loo (there were none on the plane), eat a bowl of melon and mango, and then take off again. A pleasant break—until I realised, mid-air again, that fruit is about 90% water which made last 45 minutes of the flight… uncomfortable.
Cristalino, sitting within a private rainforest reserve covering over 11,000 hectares, felt like another world: towering trees, deep rivers, constant birdsong. No jaguars here—at least none that we saw—but shortly after arrival we were summoned to a tree just behind the staff quarters where an astonishing sight awaited us: a silky anteater, curled up asleep.
Fred was beside himself. These elusive creatures, about the size of my fist, are so ‘rarely’ seen that even guides with decades of experience hadn’t been lucky before.
Our days were a mix of jungle walks,
boat trips,
and climbs up towers and lookouts
One particularly steep ascent was made easier by a rope ‘banister’. At least, it would have been useful had it not been adopted as a highway by a ceaseless stream of ants. At the top, the view was breathtaking—layer after layer of forest stretching to the horizon. I thought of all the people who’ve been lost in jungles and survived. I began storing all of Fred’s nuggets of wisdom in case I ever became one of them.
Cristalino highlights:
capybara, strange insects; river otters hunting and crunching their catch with alarming efficiency; shy tapirs spotted at last; iguana spotted in the lodge grounds and, whilst there were no mosquitoes, there were bees! Fred got stung. I hid behind my net again.
From the forest, we flew to what must be one of the most remote and beautiful places in the world: Rio Roosevelt. Named after President Theodore Roosevelt, who explored it in 1914, this wild, untouched corner of Brazil took my breath away. We were as far away from civilisation as I have ever been.
And, we had it to ourselves.
Apparently, there are two indigenous tribes living in the surrounding jungle, but we didn’t have the privilege to see them. Just knowing they were around though, gave the place a mythic quality.
The main event of interest in this area was the parrots who flock to the riverbanks in the mornings to eat the greenery that only grows there. On our first morning, they were too shy of us to come down. But the second attempt, when we hid from them in the vegetation, was more successful and it truly was impressive.
Here, boat rides were exhilarating, sometimes requiring us to split up so that Alvinete, our driver and spotter, could navigate rapids with less weight. Always a good opportunity for a selfie!
We christened one rock-strewn stop ‘Grand Cayman’ after we spotted a mother caiman guarding her babies in little pools. A black caiman—bigger and more aggressive—lurking in deeper water completed the scene. There were butterflies and wasps and shimmering dragonflies, and we were completely alone.
The evening drives back to base, in the cool that enveloped us as soon as the sun went behind the trees, were always magical. The perfume from the trees wafted across the water,
the macaws cackled as they flew to roost
and the sunsets were like oil paintings—bold, unfiltered, and mesmerising.
On the whole though, wildlife sightings were fewer here. We’d imagined large troupes of monkeys swinging from the trees, jaguars sunning themselves on the riverbanks, tapirs and giant otters abounding. But its very remoteness makes the animals wary of humans and they weren’t coming out to play!
However, while I was sitting alone on a log, a few metres behind the guys who were absorbed in a salt lick, I heard a rustling in the leaves. I turned my head slowly and saw two peccaries (forest musk hogs) approaching. My heart rate spiked because, back in Cristalino, Max had warned me that peccaries could be aggressive.
On the one hand, I didn’t want to frighten them away by calling for back-up. But on the other, having already experienced the strength of Brazil’s mosquitoes’ teeth, I didn’t fancy this little guy sinking his tusks into my leg. Luckily, after a few sniffs of the air, he decided I was no threat, nor even tasty enough for breakfast and he turned and wandered off.
Apparently, they were the collared variety and not as feisty as their white-lipped cousins!
Rio Roosevelt was paradise. I could have moved in permanently if it hadn’t been for its—teeth. And wings. And I’m not talking about giant predators. The bane of our stay was the midges. They were relentless. They couldn’t bite through fabric, but they could crawl into every gap. Caught unawares in short sleeves on the first day (it was 39°C, after all), we paid the price. We looked like chicken pox patients with arms, necks, and faces a mass of red, itchy lumps, each sporting a pinprick of dried blood. After that, we had to stay covered up despite the intense daytime heat. Desperate to undo collars and cuffs to allow the pouring sweat to hit the air and cool us, as it is designed to do, it was only when speeding along in the boat at 20 knots that we could push back a sleeve or pull down a buff with a sigh of relief for nature’s air-conditioning.
A week later, we were still scratching. (Maybe I should have called this blog The Bugs’ Breakfast Buffet.)
Amazingly, in three weeks in the Brazilian rainforest and wetlands, the only tarantula we saw was the one at Caiman. I did insist that Fred went and removed a rather spindly spider from our shower at the Pousada Rio Roosevelt, which caused Max, ever helpful, to comment, ‘You’re more worried about spiders than the jaguar under the bed?’ But the only other invaders we had were frogs in our bathroom!
Food at the Roosevelt lodge was exceptionally fresh and beautifully prepared, but not especially varied: fish, vegetables, and salad for lunch and dinner, every single day. Thankfully, I agreed to relax my vegetarianism and eat the fish, or I’d have gone hungry!
Leaving Roosevelt from Terminal One…
an epic travel day awaited: three flights, including a private charter, and finally arriving in Cuiabá at 2am. After a few hours of sleep, we set off again for our final stop: Porto Jofre, back in jaguar country.
Here, all transport was by boat—bigger, faster ones this time.
And colder.
We froze on the first evening ride,
but the weather soon warmed.
And the good news: we saw jaguars again.
And giant otters.
The not-so-good news: we were no longer alone. The river was crowded with people, boats, and camera lenses. After the exclusivity of Roosevelt, it felt jarring. And while we’d left the midges behind, the mosquitoes returned—with fangs.
Despite the seeming comfort of the more modern boats, after a few days of six-hour morning rides and three-hour evening ones, my back began to protest. I skipped two afternoon trips and instead enjoyed a quiet moment making friends with the lodge ponies who roamed free and were more than grateful when I nipped into the dining room and stole apples for them.
The highlight of every evening was the arrival of the economical, ecological, organic lawnmowers!
On the last day, we managed one more first: a not-so-giant anaconda! (Look away if you’re ophidiophobic.) Though it’s hard to tell it’s a snake in all that foliage.
Brazil is dazzling, enormous, raw, and unforgettable. It challenged me, delighted me, and left me with stories I’ll tell for years. We went in search of—and found—jaguars, but also so much more: armadillos and anteaters, wolves and monkeys, river fish miracles, midge ambushes, sabre-toothed mosquitoes, animals we didn’t even know existed!
Would I do it again?
To be honest, three solid weeks of breakfasting at or before 5 every morning to be out on foot, jeeps, or boats looking for wildlife until almost bedtime, was exhausting. (Okay, we had a quick break in the afternoon, but were back on parade in the heat of the day at 2.30. The Greek part of me wanted to siesta until at least 4 pm!).
So, probably not. But not because it wasn’t wonderful. Because there are so many more places in the world to visit. But if I ever do…
I’m packing two nets.
