Peter Allison - How to Walk a Puma

The next morning, foggy headed and with hyena breath from the caipirinhas, but not in such poor shape that we couldn’t get up, the Minke and I met Marcello and a driver, and set out again by boat. This time we were joined by two Germans who might have wondered why I couldn’t stop smiling.

We went well away from areas used by other tourists and casual fishermen. The Pantanal was again vibrant with birds, but mammals made an appearance as well—howler monkeys high in the treetops blended well with their surrounds, despite their shiny red fur, while capybaras lazed by the banks, looking remarkably content as the sun’s first rays warmed them.

Eventually we stopped at an island formed by a myriad of intersecting channels, and set up there for the day. Marcello had seen a jaguar’s tracks there a few days earlier, and felt that she might have come this way again. The two Germans were just as keen as I was to see a jaguar, so we eagerly set off on a trail, attempting to pick our path carefully but somehow managing to tread on every crackly leaf, every snapping twig, while Marcello’s broad bare feet moved noiselessly over the forest floor.

I scanned the ground for tracks, seeing the hippo-like splayed-toe tracks of capybara; the pads and claw marks of some smaller predator that I couldn’t identify, maybe a raccoon species; a fox’s clear prints—but no sign of a large cat. Marcello looked from side to side, up and down, as trackers do, but he also found nothing to indicate a jaguar had passed this way.

It was another bust, but the area was so idyllic that I couldn’t feel too disappointed. The boatman had strung up hammocks while we walked, and we lazed in these under the shade of canopied trees while he cooked us a lunch of more fresh fish, the river flowing gently by mere metres away. After eating we returned to more lazing, and then I felt the need for some exercise, and decided to go for a swim.

I wandered upstream until I reached an open section of the bank, the muddy trail down to the water dense with capybara tracks. I waded in, feeling a current far stronger than the mellow surface had led me to believe. Lisa soon joined me, and in a sheltered, slow-flowing part of the river we splashed at each other, and I went to chase her. In a few long-limbed strokes she was so far ahead of me that pursuit was clearly futile. Like most Australians I am confident in the water, but the ease with which she outswam me stripped away some of my assurance and put a small dent in my ego. I recalled her once saying she’d represented Wales in swimming, so I shouldn’t have been surprised, nor as concerned when she swam straight into the strongest part of the current and disappeared around a curve in the river.

‘Minke?’ I called after her. ‘You okay?’

‘Fine,’ she said casually, stroking easily back into view, a feat that would leave me panting and close to cardiac arrest if I tried it. Then she let the current take her again, and was lost to my sight once more.

But there was something else in the water with us. Close to the bank opposite me a dark head appeared, then another beside it. They were only ten metres from me but it took me some moments to establish what I was seeing. Then two more heads appeared, and one looked directly at me, its sleek head swivelling on a submerged neck, dark brown eyes expressionless as they took me in.

‘Giant otters!’ I shouted gleefully, forgetting all the times I’d berated tourists for speaking loudly around animals. But the otters ignored me. The largest of the otter family (as the name suggests), giant otters can weigh up to thirty-five kilograms, and while they look cute they’re known to be aggressively territorial and vicious in defence of their young.

Surely they wouldn’t see me as any sort of threat, I thought, and did an inelegant flop into deeper water, immediately feeling the tug of the flow. My plan had been to swim across to the other side where the otters were holding almost still, backstroking into the current with no visible effort. But angling into the current soon sapped my energy, and before I could reach them the otters casually flicked their tails and took off downstream, their heads bobbing lightly as if they were laughing at my feebleness. With no hope of catching up to them, I turned to go back, only to see the bank where I had entered the water rapidly disappearing as the current took me. I swam towards it nevertheless, but below me was a mess of tangled vegetation and I was wary of snags that could trap an ankle and pull me under.

There was no going back to my entry point; all I could do was follow the otters and Lisa downstream and try to get out where the boat was. A fast-moving object stroked my belly; most likely it was only a branch swept by the current, but travelling at speed it could cut me deeply, and that would surely excite nearby piranhas. Feeling foolish, and wondering once again why I always felt so compelled to get close to animals, I made cautious backwards strokes to slow myself, but was still moving fast enough to hit our boat at ramming speed, generating a resonant dong from its hull.

‘ Tutto bong? ’ the boatman asked me as I clutched the side of the boat, trying desperately to look calm and unflustered while gasping like a dying goldfish.

‘ Tutto bong ,’ I replied, two of the only words I know in Portuguese, which mean ‘all okay’.

‘You just hit the boat, didn’t you?’ the Minke asked. She presumably had had far less difficulty in the current and getting out of it, and was already as relaxed as a cat in her repose.

‘Maybe,’ I said sheepishly.

Despite this rather humbling experience, I decided to leave the others to their rest and dry off by going for a walk alone in the forest near our picnic site. Parrots squabbled in overhead branches, their green feathers a perfect match for the leaves, while green and orange rufous-tailed jacamars sallied forth from low perches to nab damselflies. An agouti, the smaller and daintier cousin of the capybara, picked its way delicately through some undergrowth nearby. Life was everywhere, but there was no sign of jaguars. Still, I felt relaxed in the forest in a way most people describe being while lying on a beach, and only reluctantly made my way back to the group, figuring we would push back into the current soon.

We had a lazy, wonderful afternoon puttering on the river, and as dusk set in we came to a place where Marcello said we might see jaguars. Once again, no matter how I resisted it anticipation took hold of me, my relaxed mood dispatched as swiftly as the sun had been.

We beached the boat on a muddy bank with tangled, looping vegetation, the gaps between branches just wide enough to squeeze through. Still barefoot, Marcello led us quietly along the bank, then held up his hand for us to stop. My pulse ratcheted up at the sight before us, and I held my breath.

In the mud in front of us were the clear paw prints of a big cat, and a smoother patch of ground where the cat must have lain down. The edges of the prints were sharp and no insect tracks crossed them, which in this place teeming with life was a sure sign the marks were fresh. A jaguar had been here only moments before. I breathed out, puffing my cheeks, not wanting to get too excited.

‘Look there!’ Marcello pointed urgently ahead of the tracks we were looking at, and my pulse shot up again. But it was only more tracks—this time, as well as the tracks of an adult there were two smaller sets as well. ‘She’s got babies!’ Marcello whispered to us.

I was initially excited, but then my heart sank. It gets dark suddenly in the tropics, as if a switch has been flicked, and following a jaguar in their prime hunting hours would be beyond dangerous. Add in the mother’s natural protectiveness of her cubs, and as foolhardy as I have been in pursuit of animals in the past, even I would have vetoed the idea of trying to approach them on foot. Marcello clearly agreed, and with hand gestures indicated that we should back away until we reached the boat.