Nigel Marven travels to Brazil in pursuit of the
amazing jaguar in this action-packed six-part

series. Jaguar Adventure follows Nigel to the
Pantanal, the world’s biggest wetland and home
to the planet’s largest population of jaguars – the
least known of the big cats. In this episode, Nigel
heads deeper into the wetland in search of more
extraordinary creatures; and achieves his closest
encounter yet with the king of the Pantanal.
Nigel Marven’s latest quest has brought him to the
swampland of the Pantanal in Brazil. Standing
between the Amazon rainforest and the
grasslands of the savannah, the Pantanal is home
to a stunning diversity of wildlife, including
armadillos, giant otters, iguanas and anteaters.
In just four weeks, Nigel hopes to get to know
the vast array of wildlife on offer and locate one
beautiful but hard-to-find mammal. Comparatively
little is known about this member of the big cat
family, because jaguars are notoriously difficult to film. With their brilliantly effective camouflage, jaguars blend perfectly into the foliage. Moreover, as Nigel discovers later in the series, they have become a sworn enemy of the ranchers to the south. Can Nigel realise his childhood dream of meeting jaguars in the wild?
Over the first two weeks of his adventure, Nigel has had “a ball of a time” with the wildlife of the Pantanal. He has been up to his neck in swamps infested with anacondas; he has wrestled caiman; and he has had three incredible jaguar encounters on the banks of the Cuiabá River. On the fifteenth day of his trip, Nigel decides to go below the surface of the water to enter the Pantanal’s magical underworld.
At the Rio de Prata – a body of crystal-clear water filtered through the limestone hills – Nigel plunges into a spectacular subaquatic community. “This is real paradise,” he says as he swims amongst a group of fish during a feeding frenzy. Known by locals as ‘pirapitanga’, these large, salmon-like fish gather beneath the brown capuchin monkeys in the branches hanging over the river, waiting for fruit to drop into the water. “I haven’t seen fish like this anywhere other than a coral reef,” says Nigel.
Soon after this encounter, the team runs into some giant otters hunting for food. Growing up to two metres long, these animals have been known to eat 20kg of catfish a day, and are capable of killing herons, anacondas and even caiman. Luckily for the film crew, however, these elegant creatures seem uninterested in their human visitors.
Above the water, there is another flurry of feeding activity. Nigel watches the aerial acrobatics of some black skimmers as they fly low over the river and use their unique bills to skim for fish. Then, when night falls, giant bulldog bats take over, trawling the water for food.
As Nigel’s final day on the Cuiabá arrives, he scans the popular haunts of the jaguar in pursuit of one final encounter with the king of the Pantanal. As he and the team approach a clearing on the bank where they spotted a lone male once before, they see a prowling female and turn off the boat engine to drift in closer. When they reach a distance of just five metres, Nigel is astonished by the animal’s nonchalance – but the fact that the jaguar is not threatened by the presence of the humans means that they can track its every move.
Nigel follows the female as she stalks down the bank, probably hunting for food. Then, she finds what looks like a beer bottle and grabs it playfully. “She looks like she’s got a taste for something
different!” says Nigel. Rubbish in such a wilderness is normally a cause for concern, but this bottle acts as a toy for the jaguar. “Really, she’s just a big pussycat,” says Nigel. After some time spent observing this beautiful animal, Nigel and the team eventually lose sight of her – but it has been his best encounter so far. “When I set out on this trip, I wasn’t sure I’d catch even a glimpse of a jaguar,” he explains. “Now I’ve found one that allowed me to follow her all afternoon!”