Barely a century ago, in the early 1900s, South America was considered remote, mysterious, and dangerous. Less was known about South America than any other inhabited continent. Even today, there are as many as 200 uncontacted indigenous tribes totalling up to 10,000 individuals living in voluntary isolation in the depths of Amazonia. For many of them, the jaguar is revered as a sacred animal, a potent symbol of power and strength. In the Tupi-Guarani indigenous language, the name jaguar means “the beast that kills in a single leap.” Although thousands of jaguars hunt in the sunlight and shadows of the impenetrable forests flanking the Amazon and its tributaries, the greatest density of these legendary cats occurs just south of the rainforests in a seasonal wetland known as the Pantanal.
Van Os has been running trips to this wonderous wetland since 1997, when I led the company’s first exploratory photo safari. Since then, I have led 10 different trips to the area, and they just keep getting better. In the beginning it was a rare event to glimpse a jaguar, but in the last 10 years, multiple sightings have become a regular occurrence. On average, in the Porto Jofre area, we now have 3 to 8 jaguar encounters every day, and routinely see them lolling and grooming, scent marking and patrolling their territories for intruders, courting, mating, mothers interacting with cubs, hunting and stalking, and even successfully preying on caiman. Few tours in the world offer such a diverse range of visible and photographable behaviors of one of the planet’s most secretive and reclusive predators.
In 2024, I led two Van Os trips to the Pantanal during August and early September. This year, I chose to lead two trips in the earlier part of the season in July. I was anxious to see if there was much of a difference. As the summer dry season in the Pantanal progresses, the water levels in the rivers and wetlands drop. I was a bit surprised to discover that the jaguar and other wildlife viewing are equally good at both times. In fact, almost everything was the same.
All of our jaguar tours begin in the historic gold city of Cuiaba. From there, we travelled south for an hour to reach the beginning of the so-called Trans Pantanal Highway – 60 miles of gravel road that is informally known as the national park of the Pantanal because of the diversity of habitats it traverses and the wealth of birdlife visible from the road. The first habit we encountered was one of open grasslands studded with termite mounds. Here, in both tours, we saw our first greater rheas, the largest birds in South America. The flightless, 5-foot-tall, 75-lb greater rhea fills the same niche in South America as does the ostrich in Africa and the emu in Australia.
As we moved south along the highway, the habitats got progressively wetter, and roughly halfway down our route, we stopped for two nights at a hotel along the Rio Claro. Local fishermen have trained some of the regional birds to retrieve fish, allowing us to capture great images of cocoi herons, ringed kingfishers, and black-collared hawks plucking a meal from the surface of the water. With today’s sophisticated fast autofocus systems that include eye detection and subject recognition, most of us were able to capture dynamic flight shots that were rarely possible two decades ago before the generalized availability of digital cameras.
After leaving the Rio Claro, a morning’s drive brought us to the end of the Pantanal Highway and the tiny fishing outpost of Porto Jofre. For the next six days, we were surrounded by one of the highest densities of wild jaguars in the world. The most exciting part of that realization was that many of these magnificent predatory cats have become totally habituated to people, allowing us to view and photograph intimate behaviors that were never thought possible a mere decade ago. While staying in Porto Joffre at our comfortable hotel on the banks of the Cuiaba River, we made 10 outings in private speed boats. Each boat held just three photographers, and with 110 hp motors and the ability to travel at 45 mph, we were able to search faster and farther than other visitors to the area, and the success of our photographs is a testament to the effectiveness of this strategy.
Some of this year’s highlights included:
- A female jaguar scavenging and guarding a cow carcass that was caught in a log jam in the river, and comically chasing away a gaggle of black vultures trying to steal some morsels.
- Three different jaguars hunting for caiman from overhanging tree limbs in the sweet golden light of early morning.
- A mother jaguar training her one-year-old cub to search the river’s edge for vulnerable capybara and caiman.
- A mother capybara grazing in a meadow with five photogenic young, each no larger than a loaf of bread.
- A trio of endangered giant otters fishing for piranha and eventually spending nearly 30 minutes scent-marking their so-called campsite on the river’s edge.
- Multiple pairs of jabiru storks, the unofficial avian emblem of the Pantanal and the largest storks in the world, courting and renovating their large treetop stick nests.
- The distinctive morning serenades of loquacious chachalacas, undulated tinamous, and white-tipped doves against a backdrop of the distant guttural roars of territorial howler monkeys.
- Handsome snail kites, with their uniquely curved beaks, deftly plucking large apple snails from the water’s surface when the hapless invertebrates fatally come up to breathe.
- Photographing hungry boat-billed, cocoi, and tiger herons as well as black-crowned night herons hunting the abundant sailfin catfish that must momentarily gulp air at the water’s surface when the oxygen levels in the wetlands drop.
- The rarely photographed vociferous courtship calling of rival male green ibises trying to lure a reluctant female partner to their side.
- An old-fashioned cattle drive being driven by a trio of local cowboys, called Pantaneiros, blocking the road, and the serendipitous chance to photograph one of the good-spirited men.
- An adult female jaguar swimming across the river and accidentally discovering a large caiman that was too slow to escape her lightning-fast attack and lethal grip on its neck. The ensuing struggle and ultimate successful predation were something I will never forget.
Besides this wide array of wildlife experiences and photo opportunities, many other subjects captured our interest and were the focus of our cameras: foraging iridescent hyacinth macaws, handsome turquoise-fronted parrots, and black-hooded parakeets, curious hooded capuchins that ignored us as they searched the multiple limbs of a straggler fig for a breakfast tidbit, and the colorful blooms of flowering water hyacinths, crimson ant and yellow cambara trees, and pink ipé trees. All in all, a trip not soon forgotten.
If you are an adventurous spirit that loves to see wildlife in distant locations, photograph unique animal and bird behavior, and enjoy the companionship of like-minded travellers, then consider joining me in August 2026 on one of my Van Os trips for “Jaguars and Wildlife of Brazil’s Pantanal.”
