Black eagles are gliding high up in the beautiful blue sky, the sun is shining, little birds are sitting in the trees just in front of a beautiful panoramic view of the canyon. It is quiet, the wind is whistling and the birds are quietly greeting me from across. I am sitting on a rock platform…and enjoy a peaceful and quiet break, only a few trucks can be heard from the distance. A tiny green bird came to join me for a while… when I mean tiny then I mean not even the size of half my hand. It took me a while to understand it was a humming bird.
The longer I was sitting there, the more birds were coming… blue parrots, eagles and other birds I never saw in my life before, a good indicator for the Pantanal. I was feeling like the only person in the world… the average tourist stayed 500 meters on top of the platform, too lazy to make a few more steps down to another small natural platform where no one else but me was enjoying the view. Luckily!
5 mintues ago I experienced another scenario… a collateral crash of two cars on the land road. Police, firefighters and a huge traffic jam in both directions. Slowly, I passed one car after the next until I saw the complete picture of the accident. The involved people must have been already carried away and in the meantime hopefully in hospital. There was nothing much left of what I was seeing. Everywhere burst metal and glass on the road…
After a while people started to get impatient and the farmers started to go off-road with their 4×4 pickup trucks resulting in massive clouds of dusts which were making the work of the helpers even more difficult. Obviously, the police finished the paper work and the firefighters could finally do their job. Instead of normal brushes they only had sort of garden tools available which recalled me more of farm workers than of firefighters, lol. Consequently, leaving still a lot of glass behind, the green light for continuing came not 2 minutes later. I was afraid to damage my tires but luckily nothing happened…
Usually a crash of such a dimension should give some thoughts but no 5 minutes later I got passed by multiple cars, speeding 20-30 km/h too fast and even in curves. “They have learned nothing”, I got upset while trying to ignore the rowdies.
However, after enjoying the beautiful view from the natural platform I continued my way towards Cuiaba, but not before enjoying a fresh coconut from a street vendor 🙂 I love fresh coconuts, hehe.
As I continued my way, I got deeper and deeper into the natural park of Chapada dos Guimaraes which is about an hour from Cuiaba. Every new curve was revealing a more beautiful view on the red canyon. It could have been also the small brother of the American “Grand Canyon” 🙂 It was an absolutely fantastic day, exhausted and relieved I arrived late in the afternoon to the city of Cuiaba.