The Happy Abandon: Border crossing

We decided to take the overland route from Bolivia into the Pantanal region of Brazil. To do this, we took a long overnight train, known as “el tren de muerte”, which translates to “death train” to get to the Bolivia-Brazil border. Despite the name, the train isn’t really dangerous or scary. We were told that there was once a serious Yellow Fever epidemic in Bolivia, and this train route was used to transport the bodies, hence the name.

While Peru and Bolivia are similar in a lot of ways, everything about Brazil felt different, especially in the area of economic development. Better infrastructure, more modern cities, cleaner/safer water and food, etc. Brazil is one of the fast growing and up-and-coming economies in the world, and you could tell. In international economic and political circles, you often hear countries described as either “developed” or “developing”. But after traveling from Bolivia into Brazil, these distinctions seem to be pretty misleading for a country like Brazil, which is generally referred to as a developing country. Compared to a country like Bolivia, Brazil to me seems to be in a totally different league. I’m sure the same could be said about other countries, such as China. There needs to be a middle classification for these rapidly advancing countries.

Other random things stood out to us about Brazil:

-Brazilians really know how to have a good time. Where else do you find mobs of people dancing on the street on a Sunday afternoon for no apparent reason or special occasion?

-People seem to take fitness pretty seriously in Brazil, with lots of gyms, runners, bike riders and of course, soccer. This culture of fitness seemed to be totally absent in Peru and Bolivia. (Having said that, we did meet people in Peru who had to hike four hours just to get to the nearest town, and they seemed to do this on a pretty regular basis like it was nothing!)

-Brazil’s surprisingly really expensive. After traveling in Bolivia, most places would feel pricey, but we weren’t expecting NYC/SF-level prices, even outside of the big cities that we visited.

-Decent coffee. More often than not, we came across instant coffee in Peru and Bolivia (the coca tea made up for this).

-Rice and beans - woohoo!

Our first week in Brazil was spent in the Pantanal, the world’s largest wetland, located South of the Amazon rainforest in Western Brazil, and a town near the Pantanal called Bonito. After spending a month and a half in the mountains of Peru and Bolivia, it was a shock when we arrived in the hot, muggy and mosquito infested climate of the Pantanal. We saw insane amounts of birds (it is a wetland, after all, which is where birds like to hang out) including macaws, toucans, egrets and parrots. We also saw river otters, capybaras (large, hairy rodents), and lots of caiman (small crocodiles, similar to alligators). The Pantanal has one of the largest jaguar populations of North and South America, however much to our dismay we didn't see any on our trip. Apparently the crew from 60 Minutes had a lot more luck than we did in spotting jaguars. They just aired a segment on the jaguars of the Pantanal, which includes some great footage of both the jaguars and the Pantanal in general.

One afternoon we went on a safari hike that qualifies as both our best story from the Pantanal and the most uncomfortable/least fun experience. Hiking through knee-deep swamp water we spotted a caiman just a few feet away from us, and then moments later we saw a highly poisonous snake also just a few feet away.

Bonito, a town know for having rivers with some of the clearest water in the world, was cool place to visit. The rivers are clear because this area has a lot of limestone in the ground, which acts as a natural filter. We went on a snorkeling trip on one of these rivers, which was really different from other snorkeling we’ve done because they gave us life jackets and we just floated on down the river without really needing to swim or move at all.

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The journey to Brazil began with an overnight bus from Sucre to Santa Cruz, Bolivia on dirt "roads." Not the most luxurious, that's for sure. About an hour into the ride, women in one town sold food and drinks to passengers directly through the bus windows.