Travel Diary: Brazil’s Pantanal region (Sep 2022)

Last month’s travel diary (August – Travel Diary) ended with us hopeful that we had got to the bottom of Mr J coolant addiction and that we would soon be looking forward too many trouble-free miles across the continent and so having collected Mr Jones after a couple of days we began September by retracing our steps to the little historical and picturesque town of Pirenopolis. This was to be our third visit (thanks to previous radiator issues and backtracking) so we only paused for the night before heading further west.  While we hoped to find one or two places to spend a couple of nights at, our main goal at this point was to get across to Brazil’s western border with Bolivia and the Pantanal region.

The Pantanal is the world’s largest tropical wetland and one of its largest flooded grasslands, it covers an area slightly larger than England and supports both a large wildlife population as well as huge cattle ranches.  The floodwaters drain out of its basin between April to September making September a prime wildlife viewing month as the animals are more concentrated around the main water sources and rivers.  We hoped to do a river boat tour and get to spot the elusive Jaguar as a way to celebrate Stuart’s upcoming 50th birthday but first we had 1400km on minor roads to cover.

The first two days and 600km went by relatively easy apart from the extreme heat and then as we pulled into a relatively small town called Barra do Garcas, Mr Jones cut-out!  The symptoms appeared like a fuel starvation issue and as we have experienced this previously thanks to dirty diesel clogging pipes and filters, Stuart’s “go-too” solution was to hop out and quickly drain the fuel sedimenter.  This typically releases any vacuum created by a blockage and allows us to get going again, unfortunately this time it was not to be and Mr Jones would cut out as soon as his revs dropped to idle or thereabouts.  Most small Brazilian towns have an excessive amount of speed bumps, as a traffic calming measure, which meant every time we slowed for one of these Mr Jones would cutout.  It was midday on a Saturday with temperatures hovering around 40deg Celsius and the campsite we had been aiming for was only 10km away, with the possibility of shade and a calm environment to problem solve within so we struggled through town by wherever possible keeping the revs up high and when not just restarting every time he died.  With nerves frayed and tempers on edge we arrived at the campsite to find that while there was some shade, it was going to take quite some maneuvering to get Mr J into it which meant multiple “stalls”, restarts and high revs – the poor campsite owner must have really wandered about Stuart’s driving skills…

After lunch and a beer, Stuart put out an SOS WhatsApp to the mechanic in Brasilia (Patrick) for ideas as to what the issue could be and then set about trying to fix it.  Patrick reached out to a fellow Landy owner, who lived in the town to see if he could come out to the campsite and help us, however as he is a tour guide and was out with clients he could only come out the following evening which he duly did – arriving at camp at 8pm.  In the meantime, Stuart had drained and cleaned the fuel sedimeneter, tightened all pipe fittings, changed the fuel lift pump and fuel filter and made a bracket for the filter to fix the mounting we had discovered was loose but all to no avail as Mr Jones would start and run at high revs but die as soon as he idled.  Having by now exhausted both ourselves and any fixes we were capable of, all that could be done was to limp back into town the following day and visit a diesel mechanic.  Stuart did have one more trick up his sleeve for the journey and zip tied a bolt onto the accelerator cable to push it out further at idle and thus keep the revs up for the journey.

The issue turned out to be a broken camshaft in the injector pump which meant another Airbnb stay while it was overhauled and to complicate matters further a public holiday (Independence Day) fell mid-week resulting in an extended stay.  At this point the only positive we could take from the experience was that the Airbnb had air conditioning, as the temperature remained in the upper 30’s all day long and only dropped slightly in the evenings. In last month’s blog we mentioned Clecio, a Landy fanatic who had tracked us down while in Vitoria based on a sighting his friends had made of a foreign Landy driving through town.  Clecio lives in Chicago but had offered his help to us back then “for anything” we needed assistance with, at the time none of us knew how valuable that offer would be and, in this instance, Clecio become Stuart’s personal google translator. The google translate app is very handy but occasionally we would get a WhatsApp from the mechanic which google told us something like “the bomb is being assembled in the van”!  While we had a pretty good idea that he was referring to the injector pump, Clecio was always on hand to give us the correct interruption which in this case was that in Portuguese the word “bomba” can mean bomb or pump depending on context.

When we got news late on the 4th afternoon that Mr Jones was ready, Stuart eagerly set off, despite the heat, for the 5km walk to the mechanic (there were no Ubers in this small town and we had no means of summoning a taxi).  Apart from an expensive bill, all seemed good with Mr Jones until disaster struck only 2km from the mechanic when Mr J’s temperature and low coolant alarms both sounded.  It turned out that somehow, they had created a vacuum in the cooling system while removing and reinstalling the injector pump, exactly how is a mystery but the fact was Mr J had now quickly overheated.  After some arguing in which they refused to accept any responsibility we left town with a bitter taste in our mouth but hopeful that thanks to the alarms, we had detected the issue quick enough and that no lasting damage had been done.

Desperately needing a place to reset, calm down and restore a little bit of mojo we found the perfect spot 300km down the road called “Aguas Quentes do Buritizal”.  Fortunately, the name was deceiving as the water was not hot but a perfect temperature for just soaking in while enjoying the bubbles of the natural spring underfoot.  After a couple of nights and feeling duly rejuvenated we again resumed our journey towards the Pantanal.

The launching point for the boat tours which will hopefully take you to see a Jaguar is a little village called Porto Jofre, of which the last 200km is along a badly corrugated (wash board) road through the Pantanal grasslands with no cellphone signal.  Sadly, within 1km of these corrugations, Mr J come to a grinding halt with once again symptoms of fuel starvation. Once again it was midday and stinking hot and once again we limped forward towards a campsite which was 20km away, every time he cut-out we did our best to freewheel forward into a small patch of shade in which to fiddle and get him started.  At the campsite that afternoon, the long process of trying to figure out the issue began again.  

It was clear that Mr Jones was trying to tell us he didn’t want to go the Pantanal in search of Jaguars and so the following morning having tried all the standard fixes (tightened hoses, looked for leaks, blown compressed air down the pipes, check condition of filter and sedimenter) we set off, hoping to get back to Cuiaba and a mechanic. We didn’t make it 200m down the road before he cut out again and so opted to return to camp and try find an alternative solution.  Mr Jones has 3 fuel tanks, the first two are connected and fuel flows between them naturally whereas the third one requires a small electric fuel pump to transfer fuel from it to the main tank.  The alternative solution Stuart come up with, was to reroute a number of pipes in order that we could use the electric fuel pump to feed the injection pump directly and thus hopefully avoid any vacuums being created.

This solution worked reasonably well but not perfectly as we still ground to a halt a number of times over the course of the next day as we tried to get back to Cuiaba culminating in near disaster when a short in the wiring caused a small fire.  Fortunately, we were quick on the draw with the fire extinguisher and put it out quickly and after some repairs to the now damaged wiring could move forward again.  As we pulled into a truck stop that night (it had taken 10 hours to do 100km), the emotions finally boiled over!  Not only was Mr J broken but we were both physically and mentally exhausted and seriously reconsidering the concept of travelling in Mr Jones.

As with the previous breakdown, once we had got signal on the phone Stuart had sent an SOS to the mechanic in Brasilia and together with one of his customers they had found a garage in Cuiaba for us to visit the following morning.  It was only 30km away but still involved one “forced stop” to quickly reroute the piping in order to transfer fuel from one tank to another and then reroute it back again so that the electric pump could send fuel to the engine.  The recommended garage was expecting us on arrival and immediately set about fixing Mr J.  Eight hours later we were back on the road and holding thumbs that this was the end of our issues even if Stuart did still have another day of work ahead of him to fix some of the burnt electrical wiring we hadn’t needed to fix on the side of the road, two days prior. And Tania had a day of cleaning to try and get rid of as much white fire extinguisher powder from the interior as possible.

Up until this point we had always pushed onwards after leaving a mechanic but this time we decided to take the cautious approach and rather tour around the area, in that way if everything hadn’t been fixed we could go back and request a re-work. Near to Cuiaba is a small mountainous region called Chapada dos Guimaraes and so that is where we headed which unwittingly meant Mr J got a real test as the drive involved some long and very hot climbs.  Thankfully he passed with flying colors which left us feeling more optimistic.

We aren’t ones to really collect and tick-off the places visited but as an interesting side note we now found ourselves in the geographic centre of the continent and with a bit of luck will hopefully reach its southern most point in a few month’s time.

A rather unfortunate side effect of all the mechanical expenses the last month was that our arms at this point had become incredibly short and unfortunately there was nothing to do in the region that did not require dipping into the wallets to pay for a visit to a waterfall or other attraction.  It is something we have struggled with in general throughout the central interior part of the country: the need to pay for visiting any attraction whether it be natural or not.  The concept of tourism generating local revenue is good, but on some days if we had wanted to just visit 3 very average waterfalls it would have cost us in excess of ZAR800!  A real reminder of how lucky we are in South Africa and why South Africa should be an even more popular tourism destination.  A tipping point for us in this particular area was when we wandered into town and sat down at a bar for a drink which had some live music, when calling for the bill an entertainment surcharge was tacked on which was more than the drinks!

With Mr Jones having not exhibited any issues on our little excursion to Chapada dos Guimaraes, we felt comfortable to now point his nose South as we had roughly one month left on our 6-month visa and didn’t want to rush through the south western portion of Brazil. Sadly, Murphy was still hanging around inside Mr J which we were only to discover a couple of days later when during his standard morning routine checks Stuart noticed the coolant level had dropped and when we stopped for lunch it had dropped again!  At this point in time when it came to Mr J and his issues we had very short fuses and you therefore do not need fantastic imaginations to know what the mood was like inside him that afternoon, fortunately we stopped at a lovely campsite on the banks of a river. Apart from the campsite being in a lovely location it also had no cellphone signal or WI-FI, which forced us to switch off and reflect on the status quo.

The summary of that reflection was that while the last month of travelling had been very hard and far from enjoyable we in general did not want to give up on the lifestyle, however we couldn’t (and didn’t want to) do it with a car as unreliable as Mr Jones currently was.  This left us with two options, either ship him home and find an alternative vehicle somewhere in the Americas or alternatively attempt to get to the bottom of his issues while still in Brazil, which has reasonable access to Land Rover parts & expertise.  As Tania wisely pointed out at this point, to ship him home would be costly and would still require additional expenditure to fix him in South Africa, so it was a “no brainer” decision to attempt to fix him now and to then continue travelling with our “own home”.

Having made the decision and to some extent taken a load off our minds, we decided to stay an extra day and enjoy the hot weather and lovely cool river.

The following morning Stuart did his usual pre-drive check of fluid levels and a general engine inspection and was almost grinning when he popped his head out from under the hood.  Any normal person would not be grinning upon discovering lumpy residue on the oil dipstick but for Stuart this confirmed what he had suspected (and feared) for some time, that there was an issue with the cylinder head gasket and it also hopefully indicated that we had found the source of the current issues.   We have always said that Mr Jones is an Officer and a Gentleman in that he has never truly let us down and always gets us to a place of safety, no matter his issue, and it felt like once again he had done that – we had affirmed our commitment to him the day before and he rewarded us by revealing the source of his ailment.  

All that we now needed to do was drive the 200km into the next big town, Campo Grande, and find a suitable Land Rover mechanic.  As soon as we had signal, Stuart put out another SOS to our Brazilian friends for them to recommend a mechanic but as it turned out this time we beat them to the punch as we found a mechanic almost immediately upon our arrival in town.  

It didn’t take long for the mechanic to also confirm the head gasket as being the likely issue.  Unfortunately, we weren’t about to get off that lightly as when he sent the cylinder head off for pressure testing it was discovered that, that also had a crack in it and as that is not a serviceable item the hunt immediately began for a replacement which could only be found in another city out of the state.   Thanks to the marvels of modern logistics this was shipped overnight and arrived the next day.

Stuart’s 50th birthday was approaching and life on the road can make celebrating such events rather strange as you often can’t predict where you may be, who you may be with or even if you will have Wi-Fi so that family and friends can be in contact.  Getting Mr Jones back with a new cylinder head and hopefully the end of his current woes was, weirdly, the best present and then as an added bonus we got to meet up with two fellow South African’s.  We had been chatting with (but never met) Louis & Kareen from @fearless_on_fourwheels since 2021 when we were trying to figure out shipping of vehicles to South America with all the COVID restrictions in place at that time.  Ultimately, they didn’t ship their vehicle and instead opted to purchase a small van in Chile, and as luck would have it they had just entered Brazil and were heading North so our paths crossed.

As our breakdowns had prevented us from going into the real “wild” Pantanal we had been considering doing a short 250km loop that overlanders have termed “the anteater” road thanks to the high probability that you will see Giant Anteaters along it.  It is a dirt road that joins the towns of Rio Verde and Aquidauana as it cuts through the cattle ranching grasslands of the Pantanal with a number of spots where you can wild / free camp.  As Louis & Kareen had also been considering doing it, we decided to drive it together.

Our first night on the anteater road was Stuart’s actual birthday and Kareen very kindly presented a bottle of sparkling red wine (which she had brought from Argentina)) for us to share around the campfire in celebration.  

The following day we took a leisurely game drive along the road before pulling over in a little cutting for the evening.  Even though the road traverses’ cattle ranches (Fazienda’s) we managed to spot a wide variety of animals including: the Giant Anteater, Caymans, Capybara’s, a wild pig/boar with lots of babies; a Jabiru (Giant stork), vultures, and many many smaller birds.

The original idea had been to spread the drive over 3 nights but when torrential rain arrived during night two and we awoke to water lapping at the wheels of Mr J (the cutting we had slept in was in a slight dip) it was obvious that a 3rd night would be just a miserable mud fest and that it was time to head out.    Louis & Kareen’s little van is effectively a Toyota Hi-Ace with a raised roof and as we all know a Hi-Ace can pretty much go anywhere but the rain had made the road very slippery so Mr J escorted them out.  Overall the Hi-Ace did very well over the next 100km and only needed a tow out of a particularly muddy section once, nonetheless Kareen was visibly relieved to reach the tar a few hours later. At this point they headed North and we headed south back towards Campo Grande for another round of repairs to Mr Jones.

Thankfully these repairs were not engine related, the awning on the side of the car has a cover with zips to close it.  Apart from the lifting roof the awning is one of the best upgrades we ever made to Mr J as it is quick to both open and close, which means we use it almost daily for both shelter from the sun and rain.  It has been exposed to some very harsh environments for nearly 7 years and done admirably well but some of the stitching had started to come undone and more importantly the zip to close the cover broke on the Anteater road.  It was time to find someone to fix it, which after a a fairly extensive search in which we cross-crossed Campo Grande having been referred from one possible place to the next we eventually found an auto trimmer who could assist.

And that rounds off the month of September, it will be a month we remember for a very long time thanks to all the mechanical issues but in between we did have some nice days and visit some nice destinations. Most importantly we finished the month enthusiastic for further travels and looking forward to new countries as our Brazilian visa soon comes to an end.

As usual below you can find links to other parts of the blog which complement the travel diary: