Tough Pantanal
Now I know why the Pantanal has been preserved after 200 years of Western-style cattle rasing and exploitation like fishing, hunting and so on. Mosquitoes. It is hell on earth. This is my first winter here. I had never expected that it could be so wet, that it could rain so much, that there were so many species of mosquitoes, that life of pantaneiros could be made so miserable. In the subject of mosquitoes, there is one that is all white, fast and looks like a white shadow and worse, it is not a friend of diplomacy. When it stings, you feel. There is a variety that is heavier than the shadow and that swarms into people's skins by the hundreds. Last January I walked 12 kilometers on the Pantaneira Road, with, anytime, 400 of them following me, landing over me, buzzing around my head. There were so many of them that my nose started to itch and I ended up developing a sneezing crisis. One day, I had prepared lunch for four of my mountain bike tourists from Japan. Lunch, I phantasize