Wild animals in the Pantanal wetland and the sharp contrast of Rio

After (another) 20h bus ride from Foz do Iguazu, I spent the last couple of days in very basic houses on wooden pillars in the middle of a wetland area in Pantanal, Central Brazil, which is an absolutely fascinating place to spot wildlife (as I heard even better than the Amazon-region because the animals are more centralized in a smaller region). First things I spotted were frogs in my shower and massive cockroaches in my room...and already on the first day, we saw some fascinating alligators which got kind of common during the next couple of days (there are 3.5 Mio of them in this area alone). Unlike the crocodiles, they're not really aggressive (as far as they told us...). Highlights were definitely the different very colorful birds (650 different species), giant otters who ate with their hands, a giant anteater and many smaller mammals.

Although I had to join a tour to go into this area (it was not allowed to do it on my own), it was a very spectacular and at the same time very relaxed experience. We went horseriding in the area, on a boat trip, a safari, a sunset- and a night-walk...everything very nice, but the most fascinating experiences were by far the tubing/swimming in the river which is full of alligators and piranhas and the piranha-fishing.
The tubing was somehow extremely intense especially because all the alligators who were lurking at the beach came into the water when they saw that we passed by with our tubes...I was quite relieved to go out of the water especially because I got bitten by one of the piranhas while fishing at the bank just before and therefore had an open wound...
The fishing was great! I was actually rather successful and got 9 piranhas in about 2 hours. The only problem was that 6 of them were baby-piranhas (as they called them) and we threw them back into the river....I tried to take one of these little beasts off the hook myself and throw it back, but somehow I held it not the right way and it caught my finger...quite a bloody matter...
At lunch when the Piranhas got served, I enjoyed the little monsters even more :)

I met some great people during my time at the Pantanal and so it was a little strange to move directly to the huge city of Rio de Janeiro. After another exhausting bus ride of 28 hours I came from the calm region of the Pantanal into the dazzling city of Rio where I strolled around today, also visiting the Copacabana. Looks like a very interesting city and I even had the pleasure to meet a very famous Chilenian painter called Selaron who painted a staircase in a very special way in the streets of Rio.
Because I already heard about 3 armed thefts in Rio during my time in Brazil, I decided to take nothing with me but a couple of Rias (that also means no camera and therefore no pictures of Rio)...But I'll try to upload some of the Pantanal-area within the next days...