My wife Monica and I had visited Belize many years ago hoping to see a wild jaguar. But jaguars are incredibly hard to see in rainforests and we hadn't seen any. However, I recently learned of wildlife tours focusing on jaguars that are offered in the Pantanal region of South America. I asked Monica whether she wanted to go to Brazil and see jaguars. This was an easy question for her to answer: yes, yes she did.

We went with a company called Wild Jaguar Photo Safaris that had been recommended by my friend Tom Williams. Their tours take a maximum of six guests, so we needed four more people to fill an entire tour. It didn't take long before we were joined in our jaguar-viewing plans by my sister Mary, our friends Kathy and Andy, and our friend Supriya.

The itinerary we signed up for was called "Jaguar and Ocelot Photography Safari" and lasted for 8 nights/9 days. We stayed at three lodges in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, each one accessed from the one long dirt road that goes through this part of the Pantanal. This road is called the Transpantaneira. The rest of this account will be divided into one page for each of the three lodges.

First up: Piuval Lodge