Fazenda Barranco Alto

Dark, glass-clear water runs past the lodge's stretch of the Rio Negro, giving canoeists and swimmers a river so clean its bed is visible from the surface. Fazenda Barranco Alto sits within Nhecolândia, a subregion of the Pantanal known for its patchwork of flooded grassland, forest and open savannah. The Schweizer family has managed this land since 1979, and four siblings now run its lodge, cattle work and conservation programmes together. It is a family concern, not a corporate one. Six en-suite rooms, cooled by air conditioning and lit by large windows onto the farm, sit around a shared dining hall and terraces strung with hammocks. Meals are taken together at one long table, with produce grown on the farm itself. Guides lead boat trips for otters and caimans, walking safaris for anteaters and howler monkeys, and night drives for tapir and puma, alongside horseback rides with the resident cowboys. Fazenda Barranco Alto also hosts biologists studying giant otters, jaguars and capybaras, and guests occasionally meet the researchers at work. More than 400 bird species have been recorded on the property, hyacinth macaws among them. The nearest airstrip is a Cessna flight from Campo Grande, about an hour away.