Wild Pantanal
It has always been one of my dreams to see (and photograph) a jaguar in the wild. This year it came true when i went to the Pantanal in Brazil. This wetland in the state of Mato Grosso is only accessible in the dry season roughly from June to November. To get there you need to take the transpantaneira, a 140km long dirt road with more than 100 wooden bridges, some of them in pretty bad conditions. Along this road you can have fantastic sightings of anteaters, crab-eating foxes and tons of birds. At the end of this road is Porto Joffre at the banks of Cuiaba river. Jaguar encounters are most likely from boats along the Cuiaba river and its surrounding channels. We were lucky to see several different jaguars, giant river otters, giant anteaters an elusive ocelot and many more mammals as well as more than 200 different bird species. This place is really a wildlife heaven.