Corner View - Bliss

CAYOS ZAPATILLO

PULAU KAPAS

PRAIA LOPES MENDES

Apart from the obvious bliss we share at certain moments with loved ones, there is a special kind of bliss that I feel when I am in paradise. For me paradise involves a voyage in a sailing boat to a deserted tropical island, where I can then snorkel in crystal clear waters with the rich marine life there. This has happened to me several times during my life. The first time was when I lived in a wooden house on stilts at the edge of the South China Sea. Opposite my house, a few miles offshore, was an idyllic desert island, called Pulau Kapas (Cotton Wool Island), which I could visit in a local fishing boat. This was my first time snorkeling in clear, warm, tropical waters, and the coral and marine life were stunningly beautiful. Island hopping in the Seychelles was another blissful experience, but, for me, Ilha Grande off the coast of Brazil is even more beautiful. There, you can be dropped off by a schooner and walk through the rainforest to what I consider to be the best beach in the world, Praia Lopes Mendes. I have had some wonderful times in the Caribbean, but the most idyllic desert island I have visited there is, without doubt, in Cayos Zapatillo off the coast of Panama. It is a picture perfect paradise. The most blissful experience I have ever had snorkeling, however, was on the reef near Caye Caulker in Belize, where after a beautiful trip in a schooner, I was able to swim with and touch sharks, stingrays and turtles, which was incredibly exciting and sheer bliss!

Caimans

One of the things I enjoy on my travels is getting close to wildlife. In Africa, I learned not to get too close to the crocodiles as they can come shooting out of the water like a rocket and drag you in, but in South America I was able to get really close to some members of the crocodile family, caimans, which although they are up to three metres long and have teeth like razors, eat capybaras and fish, not people (well, at least that's what I thought at the time).

I took the first two photos of Yacare Caimans, last year, in one of the largest swamplands in the world, the Pantanal. I was sleeping in a hammock in a hut in the middle of the swamp, was soaked in sweat, got bitten to death by mosquitoes and chiggers (small insects which burrow into your legs) and couldn't sleep so I walked out at dawn and there were hundreds of caimans all around me. The one in the first photo was standing on the path right in front of me. After a while he slipped back into the water and carried on fishing.

The Pantanal teems with wildlife. As well as hundreds of caimans, I saw Capybaras, Swamp Bush Deer, Black Howler Monkeys, Green Iguanas, and a fantastic variety of colourful birds, including Hyacinth and Red and Green Macaws, Toco Toucans, Greater Rheas and Jabirou Storks. I went fishing for piranhas, which although they don't have a great deal of meat on them are delicious. They also have razor-sharp teeth, a bit like the caiman's.

Whoops! I just did some online research: although caiman attacks on humans are rare, they do occasionally bite humans. "The force of the bite itself produces crush injuries, fractures and soft tissue injuries. Bite force is proportional to animal size and complicated by head thrashing. The teeth often leave puncture wounds, and the animals tend to thrash once they have bitten down, leading to skin tears and further injury. The location of caiman habitat and attacks could lead to drowning." Whoops again. You can read more about caiman attacks here: Wilderness Medical Society. Perhaps if I'd read that before, I wouldn't have got quite so close to that caiman. He was a big one and from what I saw of him in the water, liked thrashing too. That reminds me of the time I went swimming with sharks.

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