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At dawn on July 21, 2011, I began the long trip via Atlanta and Brasilia, arriving
in Cuiaba a few days early for what turned out to be a most enjoyable two-week tour of the
State of Mato Grosso, Brazil with Mark Pretti Nature Tours.
Led by Mark, our group of nine had a fabulous time visiting three distinct areas of the state,
including the Pantanal (at the Pantanal Wildlife Center and Pousada Piuval), Amazonia
(at Cristalino Lodge), and Chapada dos Guimares (at Pousada do Parque). The group
was a delight to travel with, and Mark is exceptional at weaving the stories of how
everything in nature is linked through multiple relationships into a grand whole (Ask
him to tell you the story of the fig wasp sometime.). Brazil was a delightful place to
travel, with very friendly people and good infrastructure, and the only place I've
been south of Texas that didn't have insane drivers. State Department Travel Advisories
made it sound like crime was rampant there, but maybe because I spent no time in the
bigger cities, just wasn't an issue anywhere we went.
As usual, I tried to limit the number of pictures shown here, but ended up
with more than normal. Deleting quite a few as we went along, I ended up getting
home with more than 1800 pictures, which were first boiled down to 450 and then further
cut to the 282 shown here. They're presented pretty much chronologically, except
for grouping all 73 of the butterfly pictures on pages 5 and 6. All were taken
with my Nikon D90 and cleaned up later with CaptureNX. Did my best to try to label
them correctly, and can easily fix them if anyone spots mistakes.
Click on any of the thumbnails below to see a larger image
of any of the pictures in a new window, or
Click here for the full-screen Picasa slideshow version.
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