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she said "de nada." I had wanted earlier to take her picture but never got to it. She looked beautiful there in the morning sun -- her round face & dark eyes and more than ample figure. But it seemed no time to ask her then. So we left, climbing thru the fence into the boat, which, today, was to tow a second boat to the landing. We started across the shallows, poleing, and, soon after we were well under way, the boatman asked Tom to grab a branch & hold on - He had forgotten his tool kit and was taking the other boat back to the farm. There we sat in the Pantanal. "This," I said, "is what they do to people who don't tip." After a short while, back he came and we were off. We had a longer ride than ever with fewer birds. Had the rains or winds affected the distribution? Were we hurrying too much? Anyway it took us from about 7:40 to 10:20 to reach the docking area at Maipu where the trucks awaited us and the man who met us at the airport helped us unload and told us to keep moving because of the ants. I knew all about the ants at that spot. They covered my feet & ankles with countless bites before I knew it on the way out. I have felt, since then, as though I had walked, ankle-deep in poison -- and that is what it amounts to.

We were offered the chance to walk around the Maipu area while they loaded both boats w. supplies -- no doubt for the party of 16 birders due in later this month. Maipu is just a site with room for a few trucks to park, but a bulldozer was busy making more (or less) of

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the place. We strolled along a red road to a corner & cross road and found a private niche. Then started bird-watching -- saw several new types -- robin-like thrush, "grosbeak" for two. Finally, the truck came & picked us up. While we were still on the unpaved road, we came upon a big bird standing at a curve: a red-legged seriema! Recognizable from Ridgley's picture in Birds of S.A. (altho his is a black-legged specimen) & the driver called it a seriema. As we approached, I expected it to bolt for the underbrush, but it just stood there. Afterward, I wished I had tried for a picture -- after all, the truck I was in said "Safari fotographica" on the door. But I didn't think of it in time, and the act of stopping probably would have scared the bird off the road. To park around the bend and walk back would have been my best chance. Our view was no good. I think our picture would have topped Ripley's.

On the paved road we sped up to the Piriputanga Range and on past it. There are [[underlined]] many [[/underlined]] more high mountains edged with cliffs than I remembered in this area. As we came up to the base of Urucum, the motor gave out. It was almost noon and blazing hot. We got out while the driver got his tools from under my seat and discovered he was out of gas. He explained that he had had twenty gallons in his tank, but he had been away from his truck for about 5 minutes at Maipu and somebody drove alongside and siphoned it out. A short time earlier we had met a second, bright red, Pousada de Pantanal truck, headed for a ferry ride to the bridge near the Fazenda, and they had stopped for a conference. Incidentally,