Brazil small group Jaguar safari Traveller Reviews

Our trip was a tailor made one for my wife and I with the specific aim of seeing certain mammals in Brazil, specifically Giant Anteater in Minas Gerais and Jaguars in the North Pantanal. Wildlife Trails prepared an excellent and full itinerary with this in mind and as a result we saw everything we came to see and much more. Sightings were also of a very high standard with excellent photographic opportunities. The guides allocated to us during the trip made it all the more enjoyable due to their knowledge and enthusiasm, and of course their excellent English. all travel arrangements were seamless and went without a single hitch. We enjoyed a 3 day stay in Rio de Janeiro at the end of the trip which was an ideal way to unwind after all the wildlife activity; accommodation here was excellent and right on Copacabana Beach with a full city tour organised for us. We will have great memories of this tour borne out by the literally thousands of photographs which we can now sort through to make up a memorable album.

Wildlife Trails is a very personable operator and one feels free to discuss at length your specific interests and requirements with the term before booking. One major advantage is that most of the locations concerned have beeb personally visited by the team themselves so first hand knowledge is available from the outset. We have travelled with Wildlife Trails twice now (Brazil, India) and have already recommended them to others. The booking process is easy with an early response provided and adequate information along the way. We fully intend to travel with wildlife Trails again if possible.

Following a hectic but enjoyable 24 hours in New York we (a family of four with two teenage boys) flew to Cuiaba in Brazil where we were met by Eduardo our highly-rated naturalist driver, boatman and personal guide for a week of wildlife watching in The Pantanal, Brazil’s great wetland wilderness. We were expecting South America’s greatest wildlife experience and we were not disappointed. Eduardo ensured that we had very close views of all the Pantanal ‘Big Five’ (jaguar, giant otter, giant anteater, yellow anaconda and hyacinth macaw) and also two ocelot. The sheer abundance of wetland wildlife was astonishing from the towering jabiru storks to the hordes of caimans in and around the drying pools. We then flew to Rio from where we were driven to Serra dos Tucanos, a small lodge for birders in the Tres Picos State Park in the heart of the Atlantic rain forest, approximately 100 km north-east of Rio. This provided very comfortable accommodation (four nights) and a pool in stunning surroundings, making it an ideal place to relax after the heat of the Pantanal. The birding was exceptional even within 50 acre lodge grounds and the many bird feeding stations, with their hordes of colourful tanagers and hummingbirds, must rival the best in the world. The holiday ended with a day’s city tour of Rio which made fitting finale to a wonderful and diverse holiday.

Our holiday was arranged by Allan Blanchard, the owner and founder of Wildlife Trails, a specialist wildlife tour operator. This was our second holiday with them. As previously, the itinerary was well thought through, the accommodation well-chosen and the arrangements all worked perfectly. However, what sets Wildlife Trails apart, in our experience, is the attention to detail at the planning stage: the iterative process of tailoring the itinerary to match exactly the requirements of the client, which Allan makes part of the total holiday experience. The end product is a truly ‘bespoke’ trip. The three lodges we stayed at in The Pantanal were all excellent in their different ways and together provided a diverse range of experiences from boat trips, night drives to look for nocturnal animals, horse riding and swimming pools which combined to keep all the family happy. It was also pretty cool to start our trip with a city tour of New York and finish with a tour of Rio; how many families do that?!