Creepy Critters

Lots of foreigners incorrectly believe that the Amazon covers the whole of Brazil and that exotic animals freely roam around. While that's not true, you'll still find some pretty interesting creatures even thousands of miles from the rainforest.

While we were in Minas, we came across:

-a troop of army ants lugging leaves up a wall

-a two-foot long snake on the sidewalk in the middle of the city

-several spiny poisonous caterpillars, which were about 7 inches long and 1 inch wide, one of which we found in Eli's grandma's kitchen (she very calmly swept it outside)

-a couple of wild capybara families along the edge of a river, which thrilled me to no end.

 

Eli took this from across the road of a capybara mom, her little capybara babies, and a bird friend standing on her back.

Comments

[Lisa]

We were in Belo Horizonte for 6 months and visited a further two more times all this year. When we took our visiting Canadian daughters (in their early 20s) to see the herd of 30 or so cabyvaras at Pampulha it was the highlight of their trip and we went back often with every visitor. One daughter said, "If I had known I was going to see cabyvaras I would have been REALLY excited to visit Brasil. I have been googling them every two weeks never knowing I would actually see them."

[Ray Adkins]

Rachel,

It sounds almost like Florida, we would see Alligators basking in the sun while walking our dogs and found "black mocassin" snakes all along the way in the side walks and in the city parks.
That is the main reason we left and came back to the Northeast.